A westerner friend of mine used to work as an in-house Japanese-to-English translator at the offices of a world-famous Japanese vehicle manufacturer in central Japan. His Japanese boss (an engineer who had recently been transferred to head the documentation department) was something of a slave-driver, who showed little appreciation for the complexities of the work involved in taking a Japanese text and transforming it into an English text that conveys the exact same information to the English reader as the Japanese original conveyed to a Japanese reader—in the same tone and register.
One day the boss handed my friend a document in kanji script and ordered him to put it into English. My friend quickly scanned the document, before responding: “erm … this document is actually in Chinese, not Japanese.”.
“So what?”, retorted his boss. “You’re a translator—just translate the thing!”.
This may seem like an extreme example (most people would intuitively understand that you at least need a translator who understands the language of the original document, in order to obtain a faithful rendition into English). However, it does nicely underscore the point that people who are not closely involved in the translation industry tend to be blithely unaware of the level of expertise and specialisation that a translator requires, if he or she is to be able to produce accurate, top-quality text.
The Japanese-English translation industry is not monolithic—it is divided into several major subject areas, such as law, finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, business, international relations and sport. There are also numerous translators working in the media and entertainment sectors, and still others who translate novels. In most of these disciplines, the translator requires a certain level of knowledge of the subject matter, so translators tend to stick with the field(s) which they know best—perhaps an industry in which they worked prior to becoming a translator.
Only translators who have a good grasp of the field in which they are working will be able to identify the correct terminology, find the right turn of phrase, and produce translations that read as smoothly and convincingly to industry insiders as if they had been written in English in the first place.
It is not uncommon for experienced translators to span two or three distinct but related subject areas (e.g. medicine and pharma), but a translator who claims that they have more than four specializations, or that they “can translate anything” should be regarded with considerable skepticism.
Hence, when we at Honyaku Plus receive a new project from a client and begin to search for the most suitable translators, we keep the following criteria in mind: (1) specialization, (2) experience, (3) native ability and (4) proven reliability.
That is, we search our database for a translator who (1) specializes in the subject matter at hand (e.g. computer technology), (2) has been translating in this field for a minimum of three years, (3) is a native speaker of the target language (English in the case of Japanese-to-English translation), and (4) has (preferably) worked for us in the past and delivered high-quality output on time.
All these factors are important to us, but the absolute No. 1 priority is specialization. There is no point asking a translator who normally translates manga comic books for a living to pivot and translate a pharmaceutical-industry clinical trials study—they simply will not be able to make a decent job of it.
Interestingly, this philosophy of ours often comes as quite a surprise to prospective new clients or to the layman in general. However, most people “get it” pretty quickly when we explain the logic behind our approach.
And no—no matter how good our translators’ Japanese-language ability is, they will not be able to translate your Chinese service manual for you!