Translation Studies

This is a long overdue post--my apologies! This past summer I attended the "Summer School" of the British Centre for Literary Translation in Norwich, U.K. It was a week of working with about ten other translators, Japanese to English, AND the author of the work we were translating. The last part was perhaps the most exciting, because there's nothing like having the author sitting next to you so that you can ask for clarification. There's also nothing like sitting next to an award-winning, nationally acclaimed author--in this case, Yoko Tawada. The other translators were for the most part professional translators (unlike myself...sure, I translate and publish, but it's not my "day job" as it were) and I was familiar with much of their work. The group was also very international, with members from the U.S., the U.K., India, New Zealand, Canada, and Japan.

I could write a too-long post about the experience, but what I thought was appropriate for this blog was this: translation is VERY HARD to make work as a career. The folks in my group, even though they managed to put food on the table by translating boring manuals for Toyota and the like, universally did their literary translation as a not-really-lucrative activity. They did it because they loved doing it, not because it pays well. I know many of my students have said in passing that they want to be translators someday (and yes, I know that they're largely thinking of manga) but I want to send out a word of caution that this is probably pie in the sky. That isn't to say that language learning is useless--goodness no!--but rather that one needs to be realistic about how many jobs there are doing literary translation (few) and how many there are doing technical translation (not a lot, but more). So, if you're thinking of a translating career, get used to "Toyota speak" and learn to live it. Then maybe you can afford a few spare hours to subtitle that anime you love...