I’ve been doing freelance translation for a number of years now, but this book made me wish I had read it before getting started. It would have helped me get off to a better start—and definitely would have helped me avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made.

A lot of the advice contained in this book you can get from working translators for the asking (for example, on SWET-L, Honyaku, or the JAT list), but this is the only resource I know of that gathers all of those useful tidbits of information into one convenient book.

McKay starts out with an overview of the translation business in the first chapter, and then follows it with practical advice on how to start and build up your business, maximize productivity, set up your office, make use of speech recognition and translation memory software, set and negotiate rates, and keep your clients satisfied. The book is written in general terms, so there is not a lot of advice specific to working as a translator in Japan, but it provides a great starting point for further exploration. (For information specific to Japan, take a look at Tom Gally’s Getting Started as a Translator: Gleanings from Honyaku.)

How to Succeed As a Freelance Translator can easily be read in a single day, but that one day’s worth of reading can really help you get off on the right foot for the rest of your career in freelance translation.

•  Hans Brinckmann, Dutch-born ex-banker living in Tokyo and London, and the author of The Magatama Doodle, Noon Elusive, The Ballad of Hope Hill, and the forthcoming Showa Japan
•  Deborah Iwabuchi, translator, author and long-time Japan Resident who has translated Crossfire (with Anna Isozaki) and Devil’s Whisper by Miyabe Miyuki, Beyond the Blossoming Fields (with Anna Isozaki) by Junichi Watanabe, Translucent Tree by Nobuko Takagi, Love From the Depths (with Kazuko Enda) by Tomihiro Hoshino, and others.
•  Sarah Mulvey, instructor at Nanzan University in Nagoya and candidate for a Masters in Creative Writing (U. of Lancaster), where her thesis is “One Way to Tokyo - Experiences of Western Women in Japan”
•  Owen Schaefer, Canadian writer living in Tokyo with work appearing in the expatriate anthology Jungle Crows, Dimsum Literary Journal, the Tokyo Advocate, and McGill Street Magazine; and winner of the New Brunswick Writers’ Federation prize for poetry

Each author will read in English from his or her fiction or nonfiction prose for 15 minutes, under the theme “Life among the Locals: Tales of expat writers in Japan”

The Four Stories experience: like a 19th-Century salon, only 150 years later?same socializing, same witty banter, corsets optional.

Venue:
Portugalia: Osaka’s hippest Portuguese bar and grill
Sunday, June 15
6-8pm (venue opens @ 5)
Nishi-Tenma 4-12-11, Umeda, Osaka
[Just north of the American Consulate]
06-6362-6668

Admittance free and open to the public

More information, plus free MP3s and pictures from past events, @ http://www.fourstories.org

Also of interest in the discussion was this BBC article from earlier this year and a much earlier article in Wired, Why the future doesn’t need us.

Thank you!

Have you read this book? How is it? Do you know other books about the same topic?

My standard offer applies: Will send the book to anyone in Japan for free, but you have to pay the cost of shipping when the book arrives.

My standard offer applies: Will send the book to anyone in Japan for free, but you have to pay the cost of shipping when the book arrives.