Articles & More

Articles

Who in the World is that Chatbot Learning From? (March 24, 2023): Garbage-in, garbage-out gone live in the wild hills of cyberspace.
One Japanese-to-English Translator's Journey into the World of Translation (April 29, 2022): Just one of the myriad ways people enter the field of translation.
Some Sobering Facts about the Translation "Industry" (July 16, 2022; updated October 19, 2023): Common sense among translators and true translation companies, but probably surprising to people outside the translation tent.
Distinguishing Between True Translation Companies and Translation Broker-Agencies (March 7, 2021): All translation sellers are not created (or operated) equally.
What You Don't Know about your Translation Supply Chain Can Hurt You (June 19, 2020): Many aspects of what happens to your documents after you order translations of them remain purposefully hidden from your sight but can affect accuracy, accountability, and security.
The Holy Trinity Skill Set for Translation (March 14, 2019): Engagement with your translation provider is the key to verifying whether the people doing your translations have these skills. But substantial engagement with a bulk translation seller is virtually impossible.
In Translation, One Size Definitely Does Not Fit All (February 12, 2019): There are serious differences between bulk translation brokers and translation companies that actually have translation capabilities themselves. Active engagement with your translation provider can help you discover which you are dealing with.
Field-specific Knowledge is a Valuable but Fairly Rare Asset in Japanese-to-English Translation (February 8, 2019): Are your Japanese documents being translated by people who understand the texts they are translating? Probably not, for reasons that are not obvious and seldom discussed.
Third-language translators: Humans or machines, they demonstrate how you get what you pay for in Japanese-to-English translation. (January 28, 2019): Japanese-to-English translators with neither Japanese nor English as a native language can look forward in the near future to replacement by machine translation systems suffering from the same handicap.
Translating Japanese Names: A Bit More Troublesome than Green or Greene (January 4, 2019): One troublesome characteristic of the Japanese language is the uncertainty of how Japanese personal names are pronounced. Many names can be pronounced in numerous ways, the pronunciation options sometimes being totally different.
Basic Facts about the Japanese Language, its Position in the Language Landscape, and Things Translation Consumers Should Learn (January 2, 2019): A few basics for people in need of Japanese-to-English translation.
It's Really Not That Difficult: Translators, Interpreters, and Linguists (December 26, 2018): These three are too-often confused by people outside the language service domain.
The Use of Seals in Japan (March 10, 2007): Used in place of signatures, seals are dying a hard death in Japan.

Reports

"An Investigation of Terminology and Syntax in Japanese and US Patents and the Implications for the Patent Translator" (Major edit 2011; more recent edit December July 4, 2022): A version of a paper presented at the IJET-5 Conference in Urayasu (Chiba), 1994.

Presentations & Publications

Getting from Tier Two to Tier One in Japanese to English Translation: The founder's 2019 presentation at the last IJET Conference to be held before the Covid pandemic. It might not offer advice that many colleagues could take or implement, but the content has certainly not gone stale. This content currently resides in our Content for Translators section.
Chapter 5 of the ATA Japanese Patent Translation Handbook (Original March 1997; Revised Version April 6, 2021): A greatly revised version of this content describing Japanese-to-English patent translation for US filing, fixing some content of the original version (March 1997) which has gone stale in the years since the original was published.
"JA-EN Patent Translation" (April 13, 2008, Nineteenth International Japanese/English Translation Conference (IJET-19) Proceedings, Okinawa, Japan): The original version, which might include broken links and email addresses; a somewhat modified version is currently planned.
"Symbols, Abbreviations, and Layout Issues in JA-EN Translation" (June 21, 1997 at IJET 97 (IJET-8) Proceedings, Sheffield, UK): The original version, which might include broken links and email addresses; a somewhat modified version is currently planned.