The GITS Blog

Masked Translator advises new translators to stay away from translators' organizations and conferences at first (he specifically mentions the ATA).

I've never been a member of the ATA or been to an ATA conference, but I joined JAT shortly after going freelance as a translator, and scraped together a few hundred dollars to attend my first IJET in 1999.

My impressions from IJET are very different from Masked Translator's description of an ATA conference:

One of the saddest things I found at the ATA conferences was a lot of people wishing someone would take them seriously, wishing people would value them as professionals even though they may work in their bathrobe in their own basement. The translators who attended were sort of desperate (they wanted to earn more money but had no idea how to do it and they wanted more respect but had no idea how to get it) and unprofessional.

In contrast to this description, IJET was full of very successful translators, who were making a good living doing what they liked. They cared enough about their profession to go to conferences and talk with other translators. OK, and the nijikai are pretty famous, too.

(Whether they work in their bathrobes in the basement is an open question. I personally don't have a basement, and besides Okinawa is usually a bit warm for bathrobes).

At my first IJET, I got invaluable advice about how to make it as a freelance translator. I was very anxious to do this successfully, since I was just about to quit grad school and move to Japan with my wife and baby to work. No matter how much information is available on the Internet these days, there's some information that's very hard to get unless you're face to face and in the right setting.

I was so grateful for IJET's role in my development as a professional that I helped organize one here in Okinawa this year. There I got to meet a few new translators and give them my own serving of advice, though at 10 years into my career I'm not nearly as experienced as some of the mentors who've helped me out.

So my advice remains that IJET is a very good idea for new Japanese-English translators, and I highly recommend going if you can afford it. By the way, the next IJET will be in Sydney, Australia in February 2009. See you there!