How’s the Economy Treating You? JET Alums Share Their Perspectives
Anecdote Article, Article/Journalism, Career, Translating/Interpreting, Writers 
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Marc Carroll (Gifu-ken, 2001-03)
Senior localization engineer, translation company, New York, NY
As for the economy and me? Hmm, well, I was reassured, unofficially :-), that I am safe, but it could be a mixed blessing if my group was ever reduced in size. A ton more work for fewer people = longer hours. It’s really hard to say what’s going to happen.
And as for the economy and my company? I’d guess we may see a slight shift in our focus. While projects for domestic advertising and marketing materials my decrease, there could be opportunities for companies who are looking overseas to jump the USS Titanic. With all the fanfare, we’ve been contracted to translate a tsunami of internal memos and press releases. It’s not the meat and potatoes of our business, but it seems a bit ironic that some U.S. institutions are basically paying us tell to their foreign investors and constituencies it’s gonna be a’ight and not to panic about their financial situations.
All and all, we’re just following the money and providing a voice for businesses on whatever shores they choose to operate, foreign or domestic. It’d be naive to say we are recession-proof, but hey, we’ve roughed the dotcom bubble burst,Y2K and the cancellation of Baywatch.
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Anonymous
Finance, New York, NY
I work at a major financial institution that has suffered billions of dollars of losses over the past year. Thousands of employees at my company, including many friends of mine, have been laid off, and it seems that the wave after wave of layoffs is never ending. Just today there were more rumors about a further “massive” reduction at year end. It is debilitating to morale, and worsened by the fact that all I read about are all the other laid off finance employees and how there are no jobs out there for us. In addition, because of the credit crisis, the secondary market for the product that I sell has dried up, and my own bank has no balance sheet available to extend credit to our clients, so our business flow has slowed to a trickle. I got into this business expecting to work long, hard hours and learn a ton, but in fact I have spent the bulk of the year struggling to get my hands on what work there is to do, and I have no idea what kind of future my group has. It really has been an awful year and I just hope we see the bottom soon.
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Stacy Smith (CIR Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03)
Freelance translator, interpreter and writer, New York, NY
The economic situation is not good, and as a freelancer I think I am feeling the effects. But it is also one of those things that is hard to gauge as peaks and valleys are par for the course. However, after being away on business for the majority of last month for interpreting work and then coming home to a much slower schedule, I decided to focus on professional development. Over the summer I took a course at NYU regarding the business of translation (i.e. the market, setting rates) and found it to be incredibly useful and my professor wonderful! This month he is offering a web site and localization course so I jumped on the chance to join. In this class we are becoming familiar with HTML (something I did a bit of in college but have totally forgotten) and then how to localize a web page (this goes beyond translating and takes into account technical details like font style and size as well as cultural aspects like how to make the content relevant for the target country). I figure that I’m killing two birds with one stone by acquiring a new skill and doing something productive during a down time. I’m hoping to be able to create my own web page by the time I’m done with the course, something I have been wanting to do for a while to bring in more business.
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James Kennedy (Nara-ken, 2004-06)
Author of the novel The Order of Odd-Fish, Chicago, IL
How’s the economic situation affecting me? I just got attacked and beaten up in a park near my home a few weeks ago, so I suspect that those gangbangers who jumped me had significant investments in Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. I guess they were just trying to blow off steam after their 401(k)s took a dive. And really, who could blame them?
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Lee-Sean Huang (Oita-ken, 2003-06)
Grad student/part-time Web developer, Oita-ken, 2003-06
As a grad student, the economic downturn hasn’t really affected my day-to-day life yet. However, this summer, one of my student loan lenders stopped accepting loan applications, so I had to find a new lender. It was all sorted out in a week, though. One of the big NGOs that I’m doing some freelance multimedia and web work for just sent out a memo about cost savings during the economic downturn, which involves a hiring freeze and a cut in discretionary spending, so I don’t know if my consultancy will be renewed after my three-month contract with them is up at the end of November, but I’ve been getting buzz about other gigs anyway. Plus, I was thinking about doing an internship or taking on a heavier course load next semester anyway, so I’m OK either way. I think this “crisis,” if you want to call it that, is an opportunity for our society to reexamine itself and for us to have a deep social dialogue about what our values and priorities are. Just to be clear, I am talking about things like universal health coverage and money for education. I mean, isn’t turning threats into opportunities what business is all about? That is part of the game in a capitalist society. What made this country great was its sense of fearless innovation. It’s time to return to that. Failure is sometimes necessary on that path. It’s not pretty, but it’s necessary. I’m hoping for the return of craft as well. Time to return dignity and economic viability to American craftspersons, artisans, and other creators of goods. The American worker is better than a cog in an industrial machine. With the costs of transportation and fossil fuels so high, this economic situation is a time to reconsider our policy of offshoring production. I’m dreaming of an American economy based on innovation, craft, and “making stuff.”
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Clara Solomon (CIR Tottori-ken, 1999-2001)
Director of Career Services, NYU Law School, New York, NY
When jobs go down, graduate school applications go up. There is no question that NYU Law is a safe place to work at a time like this, when people who can’t find jobs, or are worried about their future careers are flooding our admissions office already. So, is my job safe? You bet. Now more than ever. However, as the Director of the Office of Career Services, I’m in charge of figuring out how to get all of these budding lawyers jobs, even in a time when mega law firms are dissolving and laying off hundreds of lawyers. With a published placement rate of more than 99%, I’ve got some very high expectations to live up to.
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Alexei Esikoff (Fukushima-ken, 2001-02)
Editor, Scarletta Press, Minneapolis, MN
Right now we’re not feeling the strain, possibly because we’re in the arts, and arts are always strained, lousy economy or not.
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Shannan Spisak (Kanagawa-ken, 1996-98)
Program Officer, international education non-profit organization, New York, NY
Not sure. working at a non-profit, we get operational funding as well as scholarship/fellowship support from banks and corporate foundations. In addition to government-funded programs, my organization manages scholarship programs for some of the investment, insurance and banking companies that have run into trouble, so it could severely affect us. It won’t be a direct immediate reaction, but eventually it will have an impact on our organization and our employees. The good news is that the organization has existed since 1919, meaning it’s weathered several economic downturns and maintained its reputation, so there’s a hopeful chance that this time will be the same.
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Brian Hersey (Fukuoka-ken, 1994-96)
Japanese bank, New York, NY
I work in the marketing department at the subsidiary of a Japanese bank in New York. Over the last few weeks, the biggest impact I have seen has been from the collapse of Lehman. There are too many deals to unwind — lots of stuff is just in limbo. Keeps everyone busy and me busy answering customer inquiries. Over the next couple of months, however, I expect (secretly hope) to see a temporary slowdown in setting up new investment vehicles (my job) as everyone waits to see how the recent turbulence shakes out. For me personally, a slowdown lasting until through the holidays would be welcome…
I think (emphasis on me — I am not really in a position to know) that this crisis could be an opportunity for Japanese investors who I serve. Japanese banks in general are sitting on large cash reserves as a result of Japan’s high savings rate and having just recovered from its own series of banking crises over the past 10 years. So there are opportunities for them (witness Mitsubishi-Tokyo’s recent tie-up with Morgan Stanley).
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Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02)
Financial editor, NY, NY
In a perverse way, the market turmoil has given me even more work: my line’s in business and financial news. So I’m not hurting for material, but it is depressing to read about these age-old institutions going under overnight. My company has insisted there won’t be any layoffs, so it looks like we’re safe for the time being. The current economic state does makes work juicer, and I wonder if things will feel unusually vanilla when the markets bounce back. Japanese banks made a smart move with their recent international buyouts and investments, but whether that’s good news for our country is another story.
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