Of all the careers I ever imagined pursuing when I was young, translation never made the list. Nor did I ever consider studying a foreign language, much less Japanese, after ninth-grade French made me realize that I would never be ordering food in a French restaurant like James Bond. It would always be much more like Maxwell Smart.
And yet here I am now, an ordinary American living in Japan with nearly 30 years’ experience as a translator.
The plan upon leaving Honolulu and my first job after university had been remarkably simple: go to Japan, learn Japanese, return to America, and work for a Japanese company as a Japanese-speaking American liaison.
The only major problem to overcome was the fact that I spoke virtually no Japanese aside from the one phrase “Yubin kyoku ga doko ni arimasu ka” or “Where is the post office?” Unless I had a letter to mail, opportunities to use it were extremely rare, and people today would just show me the Google Maps app instead.
Nevertheless, I arrived at Osaka’s Itami Airport in the evening from Honolulu, with An Introduction to Modern Japanese, a one-year open-return ticket, a large mountain backpack, and $300 in my pocket. I had no hotel reservation, no job, and no particular reason to believe that a plan rooted in such extreme optimism would end in anything other than utter catastrophic failure — a testament to my happy-go-lucky, nantoka naru approach: somehow, everything will work out.
And yet, with a helping hand here, a lucky break there, and lots of instant ramen noodles in between, the plan did work out, sort of — except that decades later, rather than working as the American liaison for some important Japanese executive in the United States, I’m still in Japan, unheralded and underappreciated, diligently slaving away at translating the documents for some other American liaison to hand to that Japanese executive.
So, how did I wind up becoming a translator in Japan? Good question. Certainly not how you may think.
In retrospect, my training, if you could call it that, probably began years earlier with a second-hand car purchased at a police auction for $200.
That automobile was a blue 1970 Opel GT, a two-door sports coupe styled like a baby Corvette. German-engineered with the temperament of an Italian car, the car muffler would, without warning, disengage from the rest of the car. Just as unpredictable was a fickle battery that capriciously shunned its responsibility to start the engine, leading to an embarrassing situation in which a petite traveling companion would have to supply the needed forward inertia while I popped the clutch for a push start.
As any Opel GT owner will tell you, if cars could suffer from bipolar disorder, this car would have all the symptoms.
This is why I spent many days during high school lying on my back looking up underneath the car, with a wrench in one hand and a car repair manual spread open to the latest problem. More paramedic than mechanic, when an emergency arose and I was stumped, I would consult Sandy, who worked the counter at my nearby NAPA Genuine Parts store. A redheaded automotive guru and single mother in her late thirties, Sandy was uncanny in her ability to instantly visualize the problem, disappear into the back, return with the replacement part within seconds, and explain exactly how to install it.
“But my world of thermodynamics and wiring diagrams would soon become short-circuited.”
Which was good for me because my blue baby had a voracious appetite for oil and replacement parts. To feed that appetite, I worked various part-time jobs in construction after school and in the summer, where I learned the basics of carpentry, electrical wiring, HVAC, and plumbing. Combined with above-average scores in mathematics and science on my college entrance tests, these practical skills led me to believe that I was destined to be an engineer.
But my world of thermodynamics and wiring diagrams would soon become short-circuited.
After declaring a major in engineering, I spent my first year in university in the School of Engineering attending core classes. Then came my sophomore year, when I took a required World Literature course at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays (for God knows why).
That’s when a literature professor changed my life by changing how I read books. He taught the class that the words and images a writer chooses are not simply ornamental. They reveal the writer’s individual perception of life, much as the colors, subjects, and composition chosen by a painter reveal the way the painter sees the world. Why does a writer choose one word rather than another? Why does one image remain in the mind while another disappears? How can a small change in language alter the feeling of an entire passage?
Until then, reading had largely been about acquiring knowledge and information. Now I became interested in how a writer created the world I was reading. Writing, I began to understand, is often a search for that one word or phrase that most eloquently captures the image and sentiment an author wishes to convey.
That concept has stayed with me.
From that literature class, my interests began to stray from engineering. I studied drawing and music history and became involved in drama — even landing a part in a university play. I took part in small creative-writing workshops taught by established contemporary authors, including James Leo Herlihy and Ken Kesey. Suddenly, engineering no longer seemed my destined path and I changed majors to English literature.
None of this was part of what I initially conceived: I was simply following what interested me. Looking back, however, I can see that my interests were teaching me different ways of seeing and communicating. Drawing taught me to look. Music taught me to listen. Drama taught me to understand words not only as text, but as something spoken by another person with an intention, a character, and an emotion aligned with a theme. Creative writing taught me to search for my own words. Literature taught me to pay attention to someone else’s.
Years later, when I began translating Japanese into English, I found myself trying to do something analogous to what my literature professor had taught us to recognize, and it made me realize that a translator is not simply looking for the English equivalent of a Japanese word. The real challenge was to find the corresponding word or phrase that creates the same image, conveys the same intention, and leaves the reader with the same essential impression as the original Japanese.
Whether it came from books or practical experience, I never clearly knew the path I was following, but I let my curiosity guide me, and I trusted my instincts to tell me when it was time to deviate from the path I was currently following.
After university, I took an entry-level position at an S&L in Honolulu. Life in the land of paradise has its own rewards, but rarely were they monetary. My salary was just high enough to eke out a living, but the high cost of living on Oahu prevented any possibility of saving money, and the uncertainty of promotion combined with the looming S&L crisis eliminated any chance for advancement in the near future.
It was at that time that I started hearing the siren song of Japan: “Come make money teaching English and see Asia. You can learn Japanese from your students.”
This was the era of Japan as Number One. Japanese companies and products appeared unstoppable, and Japanese billionaires and mega-corporations were aggressively acquiring hotels, private golf courses, commercial properties, and luxury residential homes. Meanwhile, Japanese tourists outspent tourists from the mainland nearly 2 to 1. As the U.S. slid toward a recession, Japan seemed to represent the future.
So I went to Osaka.
As fate would have it, I quickly got a job teaching English, and after saving tuition money I began studying in a Japanese intensive course for six months at a Japanese school in Kyoto. From there, I worked even harder to study the language in earnest.
I read a Japanese newspaper article every day, looking up unfamiliar kanji in a dictionary by counting the number of strokes. With a nagging brother telling me I had to learn Excel for my future, I built a barebones computer and installed DOS/V so that I could write Japanese. My desire to create multimedia content — and install audio and video boards — often displeased the Windows 3.1 deities of IRQ lines and DMA channels. When something went wrong, I read technical manuals and called tech support in Tokyo.
Years later, I would realize that those technical manuals had been teaching me another language: the language of technology.
Then Japan’s bubble economy collapsed, and I found myself in an entirely different role. I became a labor representative at the English conversation school where I worked. Suddenly, I was reading Japanese labor law, leading labor demonstrations, appearing on television, and negotiating with my school’s management.
Newspapers, computer manuals, labor law: none of these looked like translation experience at the time. But they were. Each one was teaching me how to take unfamiliar information, understand its meaning and context, and accurately communicate its nuances.
Eventually, I saw an advertisement in The Japan Times for freelance technical translators at a Kyoto translation company. I had never worked professionally as a translator. Still, my résumé contained journalism experience and work proofreading medical papers for physicians at Osaka City University Hospital and Kyoto University Hospital. That was apparently enough to get my foot in the door for an interview.
The translation test was an astoundingly low-tech affair but typical of that time. I was taken into a room alone and handed a Japanese manuscript, a Japanese-English dictionary, two sharpened pencils, and an eraser. Thirty minutes. That was it. For someone accustomed to today’s translation technology, it sounds almost prehistoric.
The company specialized in technical translations for manufacturers throughout Kansai. Much of the work involved semiconductors, but the company also handled consumer electronics, industrial machinery, and operation manuals. I had no idea what would appear on the test, but I knew that I had to prepare in some way. I chose the “Getting Started” section of a software manual in my bookcase and translated it. When I saw the translation passage at the interview, I discovered the passage to be extremely similar to the one I had practiced.
I received a high score and soon began my first professional translation assignments.
But getting translation work and becoming a good translator are two different things. My Japanese was still developing. Because I had never formally studied Japanese at a university, I spent many late nights identifying unfamiliar kanji characters by counting strokes and searching dictionaries. It was a slow, painstaking process, and it was necessary.
But Japanese ability alone wasn’t what ultimately gave me an advantage. My real advantage came from everything I had done before becoming a translator. I understood technical material because I had spent years repairing cars and studying engineering. I understood manuals because I had read them to build computers. And I understood language because I had spent years thinking about why writers choose the words they do.
Many translators had stronger Japanese skills than I did, but I could often determine what a document was actually trying to communicate and then search for the right English word or phrase that would communicate it naturally to engineers, technicians, and ordinary users.
That became my competitive advantage.
Freelancing taught me another lesson. A freelance translator who relies on only one client eventually becomes a freelance translator without work, so I joined several agencies and translated everything from semiconductor documentation to company brochures. Each field had its own terminology, rules, and audience.
Then the semiconductor industry began moving offshore, and the translation work in Kyoto gradually dried up.
Once again, I needed a plan.
I began looking for an in-house translation position. Just as I was preparing to return to a steady diet of instant ramen noodles, I saw an advertisement for an in-house translator at a midsized company in Kyoto.
I applied, completed the interview, took the translation test, and later I was hired. Lady Luck had smiled upon me again.
Several months later, I asked my department manager why he had selected me.
“You live closer to the company,” he said. “I figured it would be easier for you to get to work on time.”
That answer serves as the perfect counterargument to people who meticulously plan out their lives. Sometimes you just have to have courage and take a leap of faith, knowing that somehow things will work out. Nantoka naru. A phrase I never knew until I came to Japan, but one that expresses a philosophy I’ve been living all my life.
