I say "generally" because this isn't quite a universal truth. For example, unlike in the United States, Japan is a country where a movie subtitle translator (and arguably not even a stellar one) can become a television celebrity. But that's a post for a different time (and a different blogger!).

So let's assume that a translator who has done her job is effectively invisible — there is no awareness of her presence between the author and reader. The implication is that despite the ubiquity of translation, the general public has a poor awareness of it.

This makes customer education pretty difficult, to say the least. Yes, we can sometimes find savvy consumers of translation, but most of the time they're in turn beholden to an ignorant consumer of translation down the line.

It also makes marketing translation as a profession a losing proposition.

Not be be a pessimist, but I don't see the market changing any time in the near future. Translation has been around a long time, and attitudes haven't really changed. The best we can do as translators is insulate ourselves from the ignorant consumers as best we can by surrounding ourselves with the savvy ones, and slowly, slowly educating our existing customers and culling out the bad ones.

I'm candid about this with clients. I tell them I prefer not to do that sort of work. Sometimes they ask anyway, and if they're good clients (i.e. they send me lots of the kind of work that I like), then sometimes I'm not too busy to do it.

The other day, a client I occasionally work for (the one that was having quality issues with another translator) called me and asked me to proof their new translator's work.

Feeling vaguely sorry for them because of their lousy past translations, I said I'd do it. They asked me to quote a rate for doing this proofing work, and I quoted roughly one third my translation rate, softy that I am (a lot of people charge half).

Now, this client obviously knows what I charge them for translation. From my turnaround, they should also have a decent idea of what I earn per day. And they know that I don't like proofing. So when I gave them my rate, did they thank me for the great deal I was cutting them? No. Instead I get the sucking of teeth, and asking me to work for an hourly rate instead of the per-word rate I quoted, for what amounts to less than a third of what I can make translating.

Let's see: translate for some other client doing work I enjoy, or work for less than a third of the money doing something I hate. Tough call!

Come to think of it, the reason for this company's quality problems have now become a bit clearer.

The agency wanted to pay me to review their translation, and the sample provided by the client, and point out specifically what the quality problems were. They wanted to feed this back to their translator, who had been with them for several years and never had any quality complaints.

Being kind of a sucker, I agreed.

The original translation was indeed a big steaming pile. It looked like the (native Japanese-speaker) translator had spent a lot of time translating Japanese into English, but had never actually seen an English document.

The first thing that jumped out was that the file was full of double-byte characters. There were double-byte spaces mixed in, and instead of using a space and parenthesis ("hello (world)"), the translator had used double-byte parentheses ("hello（world）").

It was like a demonstration of all the things I have said to avoid in J-E translation. The English text itself was, as the client complained, unreadable. It was as if the translator had semi-randomly chosen an English translation for each Japanese word out of a dictionary, and mashed them together into semi-grammatical sentences. If it had ever gone through a "native checker," that person had done a lousy job, because the translation was still rife with basic errors like subject-verb agreement. Completely worthless as a translation.

I've seen a lot in this biz, but I was shocked by this. How could such an obviously unqualified translator have made it so long without complaint? My first thought was that the translator had been using a very good checker/rewriter, and for some reason, the translator had been unable to get the checker's services and had turned in the translation as-is. But then how had the agency missed it?

Then I saw what "Mika Jz" said in this post to the Honyaku mailing list regarding strange English in an email received from a client:

英語の読解ができる日本人でも、
それを見て「よく書けている、いい英文だ。」
と感じる人は多いのではないでしょうか。

それのどこがおかしいのか、については
おそらく、全く通じていないと思います。

And another possibility occurred to me: maybe the agency and its clients had been using "native Japanese speakers with good English skills" to proof this translator's translations. And since every Japanese word was translated, and every translation could be found in a bilingual dictionary, they must have thought that they were fine.

So I had a couple of possible explanations, but the question was how to deliver the bad news. If someone had asked me to simply evaluate the translation, I'd have said it was unreadable and useless, end of story. But the agency wanted feedback, presumably so the translator could improve. What to do? I personally don't think that this translator will be up to producing professional-level English text for many years (if ever), but I had to put it in a somewhat more diplomatic way.

So I wrote up a report, comparing several passages of the translation with the client's sample (which was actually quite good), pointing out errors or poor style (e.g. write "the team investigated the issue," not "the investigation of the issue was conducted by the issue-investigation team"), and finally stating that writing natural English requires an extremely advanced grasp of English that takes many, many years to acquire. Hopefully they'll get the hint.

Or at least make sure to get a "native checker" to rewrite all future translations by this translator.

I avoid using these symbols in my English translations. Even if a legend is included, I think they're too "foreign" to be easily understood by non-Japanese speakers.

The "translations" I use depend on the context. If the full range of symbols is used for ratings, I often go with the letters E, G, N, and U, with a legend:

E: Excellent; G: Good; N: Needs improvement; U: Unsatisfactory

Other alternatives are numerical rankings (3/2/1/0) and letters (A/B/C/D), also with appropriate legends.

If it's something like a list of features, where the Japanese would use 〇 for "feature supported" and × for "feature not supported," my preference would be to use checkmarks for the supported feature, and leave the unsupported feature blank.

In something like a matrix with 〇/×, I'll often go with a green check for 〇, and a red X for ×:

Every time some new development in the machine translation world comes out, translators start to worry about whether they're going to be put out of work. Let me spare you the suspense: not for the foreseeable future. And perhaps more importantly, by the time machine translation has replaced human translators, just about every knowledge-intensive job — from programming computers, to flying jetliners, to performing brain surgery — will also have been replaced by a computer.

The reason is simple: machine translation is an AI-complete problem, which means that in order to solve it you've got to be able to make the computer as smart as a human. And although I think that this day is coming — probably within my lifetime — when it does come, everybody is going to be out of work. Hopefully that will be a good thing, because the alternatives would be very, very bad.

Despite what the relentless barrage of "articles" from the PR machines of megacorps would have you believe, machine translation hasn't gotten much better since the 1960s. The reason that so many smart people go to work in this field is that the solution always seems so tantalizingly close. That's been true ever since the first "machine translation" system — really just a very small phrasebook — was demoed. Fresh, bright young minds enter the field, find out how intractable the problem really is, and hopefully move on to a more productive field, or at least lower their expectations :)

What is changing, and what the article about NEC shows, is that information and services are becoming ubiquitously available. A glorified voice-activated phrasebook on your mobile phone is just a small part of a transformation of our society and culture whose end result will be something that frankly, I can scarcely imagine.

I live in Japan, and spend most of my day immersed in Japanese. I speak Japanese with my family members except for my son, and nearly all my friends (such as they are) are Japanese.

I do read a fair amount in English, and write a lot in English too, but by far most of my English writing is translation. The problem with translation is that it's hard to make a translation read like natural English. It's possible, but it takes effort.

Meanwhile, my Japanese clients tend to resist natural English. They want something they can understand, or something that looks like what their English textbook says, or something like what the last translator did for them. It takes courage for them to trust you. And even if they do, their boss/client might not.

So with resistance on both ends, I started to worry that my English writing might be gradually turning into translationese.

When I write something original in English, however, natural English comes natural. The main challenge with original content is that I'm writing without a net — I don't have a Japanese original to provide my content. That minor problem aside, writing original content exercises the writing muscle like translating never can.

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to get some practice writing original English, rather than just translation. Blogging is a good way to improve your writing skills, because you're writing for an audience (however small), so you tend to polish and edit a bit more. The format is also good — short, frequent articles that just take an hour or so when you've got the free time.

It's often said that native-language writing skill is the most important ability of the translator. I think this is true because while it's fairly easy to become a competent writer, becoming a good writer is another thing entirely. I also think this is the big differentiator between the journeyman and the master translator.

How do you become a better writer? Read read read, and write write write. But it's hard to improve your writing if all you're writing is translations. Blogging can be a good way to get practice writing natural English.

I still need to create a localized form for the Japanese page; I've got the text, but I need to do some JavaScript trickery to get it into the form because we're using a Wufoo form instead of hosting it ourselves (long story).

But I'm still glad to have the registration open, because this is a big step in our preparation for IJET.

1. Removed stray file attachments (including a couple resumes; marked with "[[attachment stripped]]")
2. Decoded base64 emails
3. Removed quoted digests (marked with "[[digest stripped]]")
4. Fixed some mojibake problems

There is still some mojibake, but already the archive has far less mojibake than Mizuno-san's old archive — I'd say about a 10th. Some of it's beyond fixing, but I'm going through and fixing what can be. I've found this mojibake fixer to be very useful for doing this.

The subtitles for the film are also available from the above site, but they're shockingly bad: the English itself is horrendous, and the translation seems to have been done by a Chinese or Korean person with very little knowledge of Japanese (e.g. 武術 [bujutsu] is rendered as "kung fu" and Chinese and Korean pronunciations are given for Japanese names — Sugata, for example, is called "Chee").

I spent about an hour correcting the most egregious errors in the subtitles, but they can still use a lot of work. Nevertheless, the modified subtitles are still far superior to the dreck available for download elsewhere, so I'm linking to them from my site here.

I'm planning to make the source code for the site available, as well as the data, so that others can mirror the archive or use the code for their own purposes. Right now, I'm exploring the best way to make the code public (possibly Google code).

I've also set up a blog for the IJET-19 committee, to give the committee members a place to report on general IJET-19 preparations and happenings.

With less than six months to go until IJET-19, I'm getting really pumped up. This is shaping up to be a really great IJET.

My rule of thumb is to consider reading one book on your field per month. If that sounds like a huge chore, you probably want to avoid that field. If it sounds like fun, that field might be for you. Then again, topics can grow on you as you get to know them, and there's not much harm in giving a field a chance.

When I first started freelancing, I took just about any work people sent me. Part of that was because I was afraid of turning down work — I was just happy to be getting it — and part was because I didn't realize just how over my head I was. My first freelance job was the translation of a report on the health-care system of Vietnam. In retrospect, I'm afraid I must have botched the translation pretty badly. But the agency was very nice, sent me a few corrections, and kept sending me work. I guess they thought of me as a work in progress.

As I got more work, and could be more choosy — and started to get more professional pride — I started turning down work I didn't feel qualified to handle, and to actively seek out work in the fields I like (computers & telecommunications). And I found that rather than scaring away clients, turning down work I wasn't confident about usually made them trust me more.

How to specialize

Assuming you don't already have some specialized knowledge, how do you go about getting it? One way is to work as an in-house translator at a company in your field (or at a translation agency specializing in your field of choice). One of the good things about working in-house is that they usually don't assume you know the field, so it can be a good way to get yourself a specialization.

I have worked in-house at one place — a subsidiary of a big automaker. At the time I had almost no experience with translation, and the pay was good (compared to my alternatives). But I hated it, and quit soon after. I found that I really dislike automotive translation. However, they did put a lot of effort into giving me knowledge. For example, once when I was translating a document about molding bumpers, one of the engineers actually took me to the equipment, and walked me through the entire process of making a bumper, from feeding pellets from the hopper to painting.

Another good thing about working in-house is you often get to interact with the people actually using your translations. It's a nice feeling to see people getting use out of your work — something I don't often get as a freelancer.

Another way to gain this knowledge is as an apprentice or assistant to an experienced translator. Once, a translator offered to make me an apprentice in her field — medical translation. She makes a ton of money (like multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars per year) and has a backlog of work going out six months. So I tried it, but after about three translations of rat studies, I knew the field wasn't for me.

Companies hiring for these in-house positions are generally willing to take on novices to the field because it's very hard to hire experienced translators — they're usually making too much working freelance. That's partly in jest, but it's true that at most companies there's a very real ceiling on what a non-management employee can be paid, and that's usually less than one can make freelancing. So, the trade-off is education and security vs. more money and freedom. And of course there are all sorts of arrangements — for example, sometimes companies will pay freelancers "retainers," a guaranteed income in return for prioritizing work from them.

If you're living in Japan, I imagine it'll be easier for you to get started than it was for me, starting from Ohio. There's lots of work here in Japan — someone once told me that there are over 1,000 translation agencies in Tokyo alone.

Getting a job as an in-house translator at a translation agency or large company could be a good way to get experience. I'm not much of the corporate type, but working in a company does teach you a lot. If you have an area you want to specialize in, it might be a good idea to work in-house at a company in the field. For example, I recently saw an advertisement for an entry-level position at a securities firm in Tokyo.

I work mostly for agencies, and it's pretty easy to get work from them. Just send them your resume, take a short trial if they've got one, and if they like you they'll start sending you work. If you have sample translations, that'll probably help. Then over time, as you build a reputation, work will start coming to you. For several years, my new clients have all come by word-of-mouth introductions.

The Japan Association of Translators (JAT) has monthly meetings in Tokyo. They're a great way to meet other translators, network, and get tips on starting out. The November meeting is about taxation, so is probably of more interest to established translators, but it could still be useful for you to attend, and meet some working translators. It'll also be followed by a nijikai, which is a great way to network.

In December, JAT will have a Christmas party, and if you're in Japan at that time, I'd definitely recommend attending. There's also joining JAT itself, which costs money (10,000 yen/year), but is a good way to start networking with other translators.

In April, the annual IJET conference will be held in Okinawa, and while that may be a budget stretcher, there will be a lot of useful information for starting translators there as well. When I first decided to make a go of translating as a career, I put together the money to attend an IJET, and found it very useful for everything from translation techniques, to advice about getting clients, to setting rates and invoicing. If you're a member of JAT, you get a significant discount on IJET as well.

JAT also has a translation contest for new and aspiring translators. In addition to great prizes (free JAT membership and free trip to IJET), it's a fantastic way to get exposure as a translator.

I got some valuable feedback from the workshop, and that made me happy, because clueful feedback is hard to come by in this biz.

What kind of surprised me, however, was a comment by the workshop instructor that two of the biggest subjects of discussion about my translation were whether lessons are "drilled" into people or "drummed" into them, and whether you ride "on" an elevator or "in" an elevator.

The surprising thing about this is that in both cases, either alternative is perfectly acceptable English. Both variants are used by educated native speakers, and further neither choice has any bearing (IMHO) on the quality of the translation.

So why did the workshop participants spend so much energy focusing on these bits? I can only guess, because I didn't attend the workshop, but I think that it might be due to a knee-jerk reaction to fight off "translationese" and the slightly wonky English phrasing that even good writers can fall into when swimming in a sea of Japanese.

I know that when I'm translating, I am constantly asking myself, "Do people really say it that way?" Incidentally, that's another reason why specialization is important — you have a better chance of knowing how things are actually said in the field, rather than coining your own little contribution to the canon of translation-speak.

I think that due to the workshop environment, the participants might have had their "wonky English" filters cranked all the way to 11.

The song is about a shy girl — probably in junior high or so — who has a crush on a sporty, popular (but still smart) girl. It's interesting to me because you don't see a lot of songs on this topic in English.

大キライだった眼鏡はずせない　この何日も
I used to hate my glasses, but lately I keep them on all the time
‘気を隠す’にも‘ちゃんと見る’にも　都合がいい
They're handy for hiding my feelings and for seeing well

あなたの夢を見た朝　何故か　少し泣けた
I had a dream about you, and for some reason the next morning I cried a little
さえない私を思ったら　少し泣けた
When I thought about what a dweeb I am, I cried a little

短い髪　シャンとした後ろ姿　思い出す度
Whenever I think about your short hair and straight back
あなたのようになれたらと　憧れる
I get starry-eyed, wishing I could be like you

図書館で借りた　空の写真集
I borrowed a collection of photos of skyscapes from the library
カードに　つよくてきれいな　あなたの名前がある
The card has your name written in a confident, pretty hand

大キライなのは眼鏡じゃなく　こんな自分
What I hate isn't my glasses, but myself like this
ガラスの奥で叫んでいても　誰も気づかない
I'm screaming from behind the glass, but nobody notices

防御壁の役ばかりでごめん　やってみるね
Sorry for using them just as a defensive wall — I'll give it a try
私をきちんと見せてくれる　レンズに変える
I'll turn them into lenses that show the real me

短い髪　シャンとした後ろ姿　思い出す度
Whenever I think about your short hair and straight back
あなたのようになれたらと　憧れる
I get starry-eyed, wishing I could be like you

机に置かれたままの写真集　背表紙の三日月だけが
The photo collection is still on my desk. Only the new moon on the spine
そんな私　知ってる
Knows about that me

あなたのようになれたらと　憧れる
I get starry-eyed, wishing I could be like you
その想いが　ちからをくれる
That thought gives me strength

あなたのようになれたらと　憧れる
I get starry-eyed, wishing I could be like you
その想いが　ちからをくれる
That thought gives me strength

I'm longing to be like you
Some day I won't hide my heart
I'm longing to be like you

Probably the biggest argument in favor of specialization is that it improves throughput and quality. When you know the field, you're more likely to be able to understand the source text and write convincingly in the target language. Since you spend less time looking things up, you also work faster.

Specialization doesn't have to be in a technical field. Finance is probably one of the more lucrative fields for J->E translation, and I wouldn't call that technical. Politics, business, economics, marketing — these are all valid specializations.

There's no single way to go about acquiring expertise, either. A lot of people learn their specialties in college, and/or by working in the field. Most translators did something else before they became translators, and that something else often becomes their specialty. Some translators turn hobbies into fields of expertise, and others simply pick it up on the job, perhaps as an in-house translator at a pharma company or the like.

There are various arguments in favor of not specializing. A common one is that it's boring — some translators would rather take jobs in a variety of fields, even if they work slower. One worry I have about such translators is whether their lack of specialized knowledge might keep them from realizing that they're making errors.

Other translators don't want to spend the time needed to acquire expertise in another field, and others claim they can't make a living unless they take all the work that's thrown their way. Another argument I've heard is that translation is a specialized skill, and some translators specialize in that.

Of course translation is a skill apart from source and target language mastery, and it's also essential for being a good translator. But that doesn't preclude expertise in a specialized field (or fields) either.

In the end, it's up to each person whether they specialize or not. I personally think specialization is a good idea, but I also branch out once in a while to fight off tedium. I've translated everything from an essay about string to a semi-erotic ode to motorcycles to the death certificate of an Allied POW in Thailand.

But for day-to-day translation, give me some nice juicy computer documents any day.

On the face of it, this sounds like good advice. But I've found that it isn't really the case.

Maximize throughput, not rates

In my experience throughput has much more influence over income than rates. Let's take two hypothetical rates: 20 cents/word, and 10 cents/word.

Client A pays me 20 cents/word. They send me a blurry fax, with lots of hand-written corrections, a glossary as a hard copy, and several dozen pages of "reference" translations (also hard copy). The work is just at the edge of my expertise, so while I can do it, I need to do a lot of googling and dictionary work.

Between squinting over the blurry fax, deciphering scribbled Japanese handwriting, thumbing through hard copies of glossaries and reference translations, and doing Internet searches, I can only manage about a page and a half an hour. Even so, after 8 hours I'm exhausted.

My hourly rate: 1.5 pages = 300 words x 20 cents = $60.00

Client B pays me 10 cents/word. They send me the original as a Word document. I've done lots of similar work for them in the past, so I can leverage my translation memories. They send me a glossary as an Excel file, which I can import directly into my translation memory. I am very familiar with the field, and need to do little or no googling or dictionary work.

I can do the translation almost as fast as I can type. Even so, at the end of the day I'm still fresh. My output is about four pages an hour.

My hourly rate: 4 pages = 800 words x 10 cents = $80.00

So in this scenario, it would actually be more profitable for me to work at the lower rate. The scenario may seem far fetched, but I've seen it time and time again. My own rates don't vary quite so much, but my output can vary by a factor of three, with my output tending to the higher side for my lower-paying clients.

Another problem is client quality. Good clients are hard to find. If I've built up a good relationship with a client over several years, I think it would be rash to dump them for an unknown entity because they pay 20% more. Higher-paying clients also tend to be more demanding.

So rather than focusing exclusively on higher paying clients, I try to maximize my throughput. I've found it to be much more effective at increasing my income.

Working faster improves quality

Choosing jobs that I can do the most quickly has the additional benefit of improving the quality of my translations. That might seem odd at first — you'd think that working faster would mean poorer quality. But that only holds for the same job. If a job should have taken 10 hours, but you rushed and did it in 8, the quality is likely to suffer.

But the amount of time it takes varies greatly from job to job. When you can work faster because you don't need to look things up, it means you know the field better, and are likely to put out a better translation. When you don't need to spend time squinting at blurry faxes and scribbled handwriting, you have more mental energy to focus on the big picture. When you're working with an electronic document and translation memory, your translations are more consistent and you're less likely to omit entire sentences/paragraphs.

So while I do like to earn higher rates (I wonder if part of that isn't an ego thing, though), and I do take on work from new clients, my focus in finding new clients is finding work I'm better at, can do faster, and enjoy more. This way everybody's happy: me because I earn more money and enjoy my work more, and my clients because I do a better job and have better turnaround times.

As far as I know, their song Go for it! is the only J-POP song with a Monty Python reference, so I just had to translate it.

想像もつかない毎日が 送れると思わない?
We can lead an existence beyond imagining — don't you think?
一緒なら 無敵の毎日が 過ごせると思わない?
Together, we can be invincible — don't you think?

強引な展開 穏やかな口ぶりだけど
You forced this development, but with a calm tone
用意周到 小さな反抗も空しい
You foiled my painstakingly prepared little rebellion

手の平の孫悟空状態 居心地は悪くない‥ん?
Acting like an angel doesn't feel so bad…
危ない! これも作戦ね
Uh oh! This is all part of your plan, isn't it!
ポイントは まるで違う2人 平常心 取り戻そう
My point is that we're completely different — let's calm down
何もかも まるで違う2人 欲しい言葉 わかってない
We're different in every way — we don't know what we want to hear

兄妹のような恋人達 たくさん知ってる
I know a lot of lovers who are like brother and sister
"以心伝心"誰もが 憧れている
Everybody would like to have a soul mate

あなたとは とうていかなわない
I'm no match for you
もしも'ツー'と言えば 笑って'スリー'と答える…バカ
If I said tsuu you'd laugh and say three… dummy!

ポイントは まるで違う2人 趣味どころの騒ぎじゃない
My point is that we're completely different — our interests are worlds apart
何もかも まるで違う2人 欲しいのは ひとつなのに
We're different in every way — even though we both want the same thing

黒は好きじゃない モンティー・パイソンも
I don't like black, or Monty Python either
あなたの好きなのは 好きじゃない!
I don't like what you like!

Darlin' oh, no? uhmmm… but I love you.

想像もつかない毎日が 音立ててやって来る
An existence beyond imagining will come roaring round the bend
一緒なら 無敵の毎日が 音を立ててやって来る
If we're together, an invincible existence'll come roaring round the bend

それぞれの引力が違えば 広がっていく 世界はもっと
Having different interests broadens our horizons
今夜あたり 見直してみよっかなぁ?
Maybe tonight I'll rethink it
あなたの好きな カラックスも ジェリー・アンダースンも…
Those Carax and Gerry Anderson guys you like too…

Funny how "simple" things like songs are the hardest to translate. One of the toughest things I've ever translated was a children's book. I think it's because they use a lot of idioms that don't translate as well as universals like death, taxes, and Moore's Law.

I'd be happy to hear any comments on the translation.

Actually though, I believe that you shouldn't be doing too much dictionary work in your translations, because it means that you don't know your field very well, and are likely to put out a lousy translation. IMHO, of course.

For a lot of translators, Google has partially — but not completely — replaced dictionaries. Dictionaries are still a vital tool, however. There are also a couple of free online glossaries — 英次郎 and Glova are two I occasionally use — but their lack of professional editing shows pretty clearly. They do have lots of entries, however, so at least they can give you ideas.

Like most professional translators, I own a metric ton of dictionaries, both monolingual and bilingual. Probably also like most professional translators, I rarely use any of them, and some of them I haven't even opened in years. Below are some of the bilingual dictionaries I find the most useful in my work.

研究者　新和英大辞典 (AKA The Green Goddess)

The Green Goddess is the queen of J-E dictionaries. The fifth edition has almost half a million entries. Prior editions of the GG were a favorite source of amusement for their many translations ranging from quaint to bizarre, but the fifth edition is really quite good. Native English speakers were used extensively to translate and proofread entries, and it shows. A few howlers still remain, but it is really the best general J-E dictionary available today. It's also one of the most useful for translators, since the huge number of examples allows it to serve as a kind of translator's thesaurus.

I own the fourth edition, and subscribe to the fifth edition electronically (which was 29 years in the making!). A great thing about the electronic edition is that it's constantly updated. That means it carries translations for a lot of neologisms, which as a translator I've got to deal with a lot.

電気情報和英辞典 (Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science Japanese-English Dictionary)

This is a great dictionary. It's really more a glossary than a dictionary, since it's just a glorified terminology list, but it has a lot of useful terminology in the IT/telecom fields, and the translations are usually very good.

It's also a bit out of date, having been published in 1991, but it still has a lot of great terms.　Here are some terms found through semi-random flipping:

数学英和・和英辞典

This little dictionary has got me out of more translation scrapes than I'd care to mention. When I've got some pesky mathematics term that I can't find in any other dictionary, and maybe can't even find any references on Google, I'll often find it in here. Despite the funky romaji headwords, these guys really know their math!

One thing you shouldn't expect from this dictionary is mathematical explanations. It's a terminology listing, plain and simple. If you don't know what the math term means, look it up in a monolingual mathematics text. It's also quite old, having been published in 1979. But new mathematics terminology doesn't pop up like IT terminology, and the dictionary is still very relevant today.

Japanese-English Dictionary of Computer (AKA The Lacker)

I don't care for this dictionary much, and not just because of the stupid name. The translations it gives are pretty good — it just seems like the words I look up are never in there. Either the lexicographers did some serious padding, or I've been really unlucky.

I'm including this dictionary mainly for the sake of completeness, but if you're not up to speed on computer terminology, it might be useful to have.

Proof listening is a great way to catch errors and strange phrasing ("translationese"), because often our ears catch what our eyes will just roll over (especially if you wrote the translation yourself). Proof listening also lets you read the original while listening to the translation, which makes it easier to catch errors and omissions.

The synthetic voices do take some getting used to, but once you do, I've found this to be a valuable tool for ensuring the quality of my translations.

Microsoft even has Japanese voices (one male and one female) that will read Japanese for you, although the Japanese voices are much worse than the English ones.

The JAT article mentions an application that can be used for proof listening: a free program called Say Hello! This is a neat little program, but I found it a hassle to have to copy my text into it in order to proof listen. Then if I had a correction, I'd need to go back to my translation, find that spot, make the correction, then copy it back to Say Hello! to listen again…

That was basically my motivation behind writing WordSpeaker. I wanted to do my proof listening from right within Word, with the ability to stop, go back/forward, and do some simple configuration. It works fairly well, despite being written in unfashionable Visual Basic. Lately I've been considering delving back into the code to write add-ins for MS PowerPoint and Excel, as well as a tie-in with translation memory for reviewing. If I do that, I'll probably port to Python first, of course, since Python is such a joy to work with (especially compared to VB).