The GITS Blog

Last week, I gave a talk at Naha Nishi High School about the translation profession, as well as language learning and some of my experiences in Japan. The talk was arranged through an educational company called Kids Corporation.
Although my talk was in Japanese, the students emceed the presentation in both English and Japanese, and I [...]

Just a month after writing about how agencies should give translators direct access to their clients, an agency asked me to go with them to meet their client for a big new job.
The back story
The end client had been burned a couple of times by horrible translations. So they contracted with this new agency, on [...]

Translation agencies tend to bear the brunt of translator complaints, but there are some great agencies out there that truly "get it." I want to list 5 things that agencies can do to win the loyalty and commitment of their translators.
1. Offer to raise rates without being asked
Of course, everybody likes to make more money, [...]

In an auction, buyers compete to offer the highest buying price; in a reverse auction, sellers compete to offer the lowest selling price.
Reverse auctions are one of the ways that big corporations cut their expenses down to the bone. They know that everybody wants a "big" client, and they take advantage of this fact ruthlessly.
A [...]

One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to create a Japanese-language website. I waited until November, but I managed to get one up by year's end.
Here it is:
BetterTechEnglish.com
My goal for the site is to give pointers on technical-English writing to Japanese native speakers, while creating a presence that will help me attract Japanese [...]

The other day, I wrote about when translators should leave information in the original out of their translations.
Today, I want to write about the opposite case: when you should add information not included in the original.
This often happens when the grammar of the target language requires certain information to be explicit that's optional in the [...]

What if the Japanese-to-English translation industry were the rocket-science industry? What if instead of clients with dubious English skills "incorrecting" your translations on the authority of high-school English textbooks and long-retired sempai, they used hoary old physics textbooks to correct your equations?
I think it might be something like this.
Acme Rocket Industries: Hi, Joe. Have you [...]

A couple of days ago, I got an email from one of the translation agencies I work for, addressed to all their freelancers. The email warned translators not to use Google Translator Toolkit (GTT) for any work done for that agency.
The reason they gave was confidentiality: they said that even if you don't save your [...]

Last Friday morning, I woke up with a bad cold. All I wanted to do was lie in bed and be miserable, but I had a deadline; so I had to drag myself out of bed, translate a few paragraphs, go lie down again, and go back and translate a little more.
By this process, I [...]

On Monday morning, I got a call from a client. "How's the translation coming?" she asked.
"Fine," I replied. "I'll be sending you the translation a few hours early."
"Really?" she asked. "Even that second set of files I sent you?"
At this point I began to feel the symptoms of panic setting in. "What files?" I asked.
"The [...]