On 7/7/2003 5:01 PM, Declan Murphy wrote:

> Scott Reynolds wrote:
> 
>> On 7/7/2003 4:07 PM, Declan Murphy wrote:
>>
>>> Thats one thing that's been bugging me. You, Scott, Louise and Ryan 
>>> all seem to get by without doing any E > J gigs. When I was 
>>> translating (mostly mechanical/automotive) through 93-96, each of my 
>>> 3 largest customers in turn began requesting that I provide E > J 
>>> quotations and services as part of the overall deal. It reached the 
>>> point where it was one of the factors leading me to give translation 
>>> away and go back to school. I'm not sure if it was due to my 
>>> location, the strong yen at the time encouraging companies to 
>>> commercialise new imports, plain bad luck or too narrow a customer base.
>>
>>
>> If your location was Australia at the time that might explain it. I 
>> remember potential clients in the States asking me if I did E>J work, 
>> but I have never been asked such a thing by a Japanese agency. In 
>> fact, I cannot imagine a Japanese translation agency asking a gaijin 
>> to do E>J work.
> 
> 
> Maybe - I was in Oz during almost all of '94, though the two largest 
> clients both asked at different points in '96. Maybe the reason was 
> simply that I wasn't working with an agency, but instead commissioned 
> directly by the manufacturers? 

That seems likely. It also sounds like the people who asked you to do 
the E>J work were unusually open-minded in such matters.

> It might have been that all of the other 
> translation services they had contracts with were companies that 
> employed both native and gaigin bods. I dunno. 

So in other words they might not have been expecting you to do the E>J 
work yourself. That would make sense.

> I just found that having 
> to pay for proofreading reduced the margins too much for it to be 
> worthwhile. It wasn't the only factor in giving up translation, but 
> determined the timing at least.

You seem to be doing pretty well for yourself these days, so it sounds 
like you made the right decision. I sometimes wish I'd gotten into some 
line of work other than translation, but I'm pretty much stuck now 
considering my age and lack of other marketable skills.

>> Of course, they see nothing questionable about asking Japanese people 
>> to do J>E work. ;-)
> 
> Don't be silly. That makes perfect sense. No gaigin can read Japanese.

Of course not.

-- 
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Scott Reynolds                                      sar@gol.com