1. Age:
  2. Your experience as a translator (education, courses, formal training, etc.)
  3. How long have you been working as a translator/interpreter?
  4. Which CAT suite(s) you prefer to use?
  5. Why exactly this/these CAT suit(s)?
  6. Which text types for you are easier to translate with CAT suites?
  7. Is there a text type which you would never translate with CAT?
  8. Any suggestions for the translators who face the problems translating some texts with CAT?

Thank you for your time!

Self-Help for Editors

The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself). By Carol Fisher Saller. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-73425-5, ISBN-10: 226-73425-0, $13.00.

Some Notes on Anthologies

American Suzanne Kamata has lived in Tokushima Prefecture for the past twenty-one years. She is the author of a novel, Losing Kei (Leapfrog Press, 2008), and the editor of three anthologies: The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 1997), Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs (Beacon Press, 2008), and Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering (Wyatt Mackenzie Publishing, May 2009). She has also contributed to several anthologies including, most recently, One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love (Riverhead Books, 2009) edited by Rebecca Walker.

Keene, Seidensticker et al.: Products of War, Commodities of Peace

Focusing on recently published biographical works by the late Edward G. Seidensticker and Columbia University professor Donald Keene, William Wetherall evokes the personalities and the times of two great promoters of Japanese literature in the postwar era.

Wetherall’s articles on a variety of subjects are posted on his websites at www.wetherall.org.

Swimming With the Flow

Jiho Sargent was a technical writer and editor, proofreader, programming expert, and a SWET stalwart for more than two decades. She was also a Buddhist priest who served for a time at Taisoji near Sugamo station. Her health took a turn for the worse in 2006, however, and she decided to return to the United States to live with her daughter.

The following article, which appeared in the SWET Newsletter in September 2000, reveals Jiho as someone with an awesome résumé of accomplishments and a mind-boggling talent for learning how to learn. She described her life’s journey as “moving with the flow of worldly transience,” but friends and those she mentored will always remember that it was guided by a firm sense of purpose and generosity of spirit. She died in Eugene, Oregon, on June 17, 2009. The photograph accompanying this article was taken for Sargent’s book, 108 Answers: Asking About Zen (Weatherhill 2001).

SWET seeks permission from the photographer for use of this photograph in SWET publications. Please use our online form to contact the editor of the SWET Newsletter.

Recently I created a set of support pages for an international prehistory congress that will be held in Hanoi later this year (IPPA 2009), with researchers coming from all over Asia and the Pacific, from a great variety of linguistic contexts (including Japan). These pages are not a substitute for the official congress website; they are merely a place where session convenors, speakers, and other participants can gather (and hop between sessions) to:

(1) help each other prepare papers for the congress,
(2) contact each other during the congress, and
(3) communicate about further writing and eventual publishing after the congress.

At the same time, editors, translators, language service companies and so on that have joined the Research Cooperative can also view the public session pages, become familiar with emerging plans for publication, and offer help where appropriate. Conversely, congress participants who have a need for help with editing or translation (for example) can easily look at the various service-orientated forums of the Research Cooperative, and the profiles of the entire member base, to seek help if needed.

This close juxtaposition of conference support pages within a wider context of editors, translators and others is an original social experiment. I invite members of SWET to visit the Research Cooperative to observe what happens and to participate.

I would also be grateful for any comments and advice from members of SWET about this project, here, within the SWET forums. There might be other meetings and conferences that could be supported in a similar way by the Research Cooperative. If any members of SWET would like to develop a conference support system at the Research Cooperative (for a client, for example) then I can explain how this is done.

Academic Editing in the Humanities

A senior scholar in the field of history (premodern Japan), professor at Sophia University in the Faculty of Liberal Arts, and editor of Monumenta Nipponica since 1997, Kate Wildman Nakai has worked assiduously to improve the quality of the academic writing and scholarship that flows over her desk. In an event co-organized by Monumenta Nipponica and SWET, Nakai shared some of her extensive experience with the writing and editorial issues involved in preparing academic articles in the humanities for publication and answered questions from the audience. This article was prepared from a transcription of the talk.

Kurodahan: Selling to a Niche

Ginny Tapley interviews Edward Lipsett, Kyushu-based translator and editor who has spearheaded the founding and development of Kurodahan Press, specializing in genre fiction translated from Japanese. This article brings SWET Newsletter readers up to date on this ambitious project.

I am seeking advice from experienced Japanese-English translators on beginning a career in the field. I speak and read Japanese, have a background in business journalism, and have done some ad hoc translation in the past, mainly related to business and finance. Now that my kids are growing beyond the toddler stage, I am interested in putting my Japanese and writing skills to use as a freelance translator. I imagine that business and finance would be my area. I should mention that I am currently in the U.S., but I am interested in working with agencies in Japan.

Would any seasoned veterans out there be interested in sharing their wisdom on any of the following topics?

* Selecting agencies
* Presenting oneself to an agency
* Setting rates
* Creating a manageable work schedule
* Broadening one’s area of expertise

Thank you in advance for your suggestions. I truly appreciate your help.