One reason sometimes cited by translators for not wanting to deal with direct clients in Japan (i.e., the reason for them staying as tier two providers to agencies, which are shifting quickly away from professional translators) is the need to “deal with” Japanese clients, doing all those things that are thought to be required to do business in Japan. This is often imagined to include entertaining clients and having “connections.”
Entertaining Is Rare.
My personal experience tells me that the need to entertain is blown out of proportion and is derivative of either lack of knowledge of business here or a need to rationalize not stepping up and becoming a tier-one translation provider. I have done business in Japan for over 45 years and I have probably entertained clients about 15 times. That includes a three-year span when I was with a US company and more than four decades providing language services for direct clients. Entertaining is largely a myth. Put it in the myth bin.
Connections Can Be Made.
Another misconception about Japanese business is the notion that you succeed by having connections. To be fair, an argument can be made that this is true, but the “I don’t have connections” excuse for not trying is often given with little attention to what connections might mean. It’s almost as if some people believe that business people here are issued with connections when they leave the hospital shortly after birth, and that they get to use those connections in business for the rest of their working lives, leaving non-connected people out in the cold. Nonsense, of course.
What can be said about connections is that they are valuable, but also that they can be made, and that most people who have connections they use in business have connections that they made themselves.
Having a Life Before Translation
For a translator, one way to make connections—and probably the best way, as I will discuss elsewhere—is to have a life before translation. That was true in my case, at least. I established and managed the Japan branch of a US manufacturer of electronic test equipment. When I left, my first translation clients included the company one of my former salespersons moved to (a company making sphygmomanometers—blood pressure guages) and several of my former competitors for the test equipment business.
I came from industry and research and had an engineering backing, but my position in that company provided me with additional valuable learning opportunities, which I will discuss sometime shortly in a post about specialization and how specialization is most certainly not the ability to search the Internet for terminology.
The imagined need to entertain and the misconception about connections aside, a serious problem for native English-speaking translators trying to survive by acquiring Japanese direct clients here is the need to speak sales-ready Japanese. Few have that ability. I will have more to say about that in another post or two, and I touch on that briefly in an article I have on my business website.