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1. #REQUIREMENTS TO BECOME A ENGLISH JAPANESE TRANSLATOR PROFESSIONAL#
2. #REQUIREMENTS TO BECOME A ENGLISH JAPANESE TRANSLATOR SERIES#

The freedom that comes with freelance work is great, but the amount of experience needed to get this freedom and the corresponding instability are considerable. But also, you will have to deal with the tax office all on your lonesome, and this work has no long-term security, so you had better be very confident in your abilities before you dive into this field (for what’s it’s worth, I’m STILL not that confident, so to keep my eggs in many baskets, I’m a seishain (full-time employee) of a patent law firm while supplementing my income by doing freelance stuff). getting up early, dealing with rush-hour train commutes, meetings, company politics etc.). Freelance translation, if you’re good at it, is great because you have total freedom in how much you work and when you work, and you don’t have to deal with the headaches concomitant to being a normal salaryman (e.g. In addition, freelance translation has certain benefits but also has certain drawbacks when compared with in-house translation. If you do not have confidence in your translation abilities, I would not recommend diving into the field of freelance translation. With freelance, you are expected to be an absolute expert: there is no checking, there is no feedback (other than negative feedback), and this is very deadline-heavy work.

#REQUIREMENTS TO BECOME A ENGLISH JAPANESE TRANSLATOR PROFESSIONAL#

Getting your foot in the door is difficult, but once you do, my advice is to stick to it for three years because, from the experience of applying for jobs, three years of professional experience is usually required for freelance work.Īlso, as mentioned previously, being “capable” of translation work and being “experienced” at translation work are two very different things, so I think joining a company and really honing your craft is a good idea before diving into the field of freelance translation. Now, I do freelance patent work, advertising work, and legal work, but I have the formal experience of working in-house at a large Japanese patent law firm for seven years, so my gut tells me this is pretty useful in securing freelance work. On paper, I had JLPT 1, but I had no formal work experience, so I could not get hired for translation work.

Well, in my own personal experience, translation is a field where you need to show people you have experience before being hired, but you need to have experience to get hired.īack in 20 when I was trying to become a translator, this was a brick wall I smacked into many times. Freelance or In-house: Which to do First?

#REQUIREMENTS TO BECOME A ENGLISH JAPANESE TRANSLATOR SERIES#

You can find the first article, part one of this series here. Allow me to continue with my conversation about becoming a translator in Japan.