Day: April 21, 2025

The gloves are off, part II: More background of my anger with the Japan Association of Translators:

Last year I was scheduled to make a presentation on translator survival strategies in-person for JAT, after deflecting counter-offers to make it an online presentation, ostensibly in line with JAT’s recent approach of not having in-person events if they can be avoided. It was going to be an expanded and updated renewal of the presentation I gave at IJET-30 Conference held by JAT in Cairns in 2019. (Because that presentation has apparently been lost or deleted from the JAT website, I have preserved it on my parent website.)

After the new presentation was already approved and scheduled for July last year, and after I had already spent some hours preparing it, a former JAT board member piped up and demanded that I appear in person at a JAT social gathering as a condition for giving the presentation, because it was needed to develop a “relationship of trust” between presenters and JAT. I had been earlier told that the demand was because of things that I had said critical of the way JAT was operating, those comments being made in a JAT online forum. The demand was absolute, and it was explicitly stated that JAT would not entertain further discussion without that meeting, even after a plea for clarity and reasons from the then-President of JAT, who subsequently resigned.

Naturally, I was not going to submit to a job interview where I needed to pledge allegiance to an organization that I had at one time been the president of (back when some current JAT directors were probably not yet out of diapers or maybe not yet in diapers) in order to give a presentation that I had already spent time preparing and that had already been scheduled. I backed off, and that was a good decision.

Having experienced the above, the chances of me doing anything for the Japan Association of Translators (perhaps better named Japan Anodyne Translators) are about as good as the chance of pigs filing flight plans.

The translators and organizations that will sink are well into the process of sinking. The few translators who will survive will do it without me telling them how to do it. It’s ending for most freelance translators; the Translatanic is on its way down, and rearranging the deck chairs isn’t going to help. Nor is the approach that JAT has taken, which is to look away at all costs, perhaps in a desperate attempt to maintain the appearance of relevance. It is a lost cause, and I cannot change that.

There is no reason to pretend that the above was a misunderstanding. It was extremely easy to understand, and I have it documented.

The gloves are staying off.

The gloves are off, part I: Facebook wasn’t a welcoming refuge.

Comments about things I feel should be discussed regarding translation are not welcomed, not in the translators’ association I have been most active in here in Japan, Japan Association of Translators, and not in an online group of translators that is ostensibly not related to JAT, my problems with which being commented on elsewhere.

Rejoining Facebook demonstrated some of the problem.

Because JAT no longer has active online interaction between members, I recently reluctantly returned to Facebook with the sole purpose of rejoining a translators group that I understood was still active. I was told by the admins that I would need submit to being the only member to be moderated, as I was a “problem.” I was told not to criticize JAT, and I, amazingly, was given examples of acceptable and unacceptable forms of posts. I had never been subjected to this barrage of instructions when I was an active participant in the group before.

Perhaps the admins thought my leaving and returning would be a good opportunity to fix the “problem” with me. It was preemptive micromanaging at its worst. I have a copy of that exchange. The protection of the honor of JAT was probably a reflection of the emotional investment some of the Facebook group’s members have in that organization. That is an investment that is not paying off, but they are welcome to continue deluding and feeling hurt.

Mentioning of the futility of trying to continue to work for agencies (which is decidedly no longer a promising path for survival) is seen as particularly annoying. Yes, the truth is sometimes very annoying, but ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

Fine. I’m gone from Facebook again. It took only a day or so to bring the message home: Comforting anodyne messaging is more welcomed than the truth.

People can believe what they want to believe. I am not going to spend any more time trying to dissuade people from their denial behaviors. It gains me nothing and doesn’t change anyone’s belief system. But, on the other hand, I will cease and desist in writing things that might hint that freelance Japanese-to-English translation is a promissing career choice; it certainly is not, and I should avoid being so deceitful.

I’m now deleting anything I have written anywhere about survival strategies that hints that I believe such strategies might be useful in helping freelancers. I do not believe that, because they are not helpful. That includes content on my website, this blog, and on the Pollyanna Paradise called LinkedIn, provided by Microsoft as a platform for mindless cheerleading and delusions of security.

Broker-dependent freelance translators can sit with their thumbs up their ass and enjoy post-editing work or perhaps learn how to give prompts to or teach AI. I have better and more enjoyable things to do than to try to dissuade them.