Feb 16

Bad economy good for translation?

Advice, Career, Japan Trends, Translating/Interpreting Add Comment (1)

There’s a good discussion on the Honyaku Google Group about why J->E translators seem to be very busy despite the bad economy.  I’ve attempted to summarize some of them below, but you can find the full discussion by signing up for the group at http://groups.google.com/group/honyaku/.  Definitely worth signing up if you work in (or want to work in) the Japanese-English translation field.

Suggested theories for why Japanese-English translation work has increased:

1. Companies are cutting costs by outsourcing work to the market that used to be done in house
2. A variant on the outsourcing theory:  Many jobs were already budgeted and need to get done, but with layoffs there are fewer in-house workers so more is going to the translators.  i.e., It’s a short-terms windfall.
3. A variant on the short-term windfall:  With more layoffs and fewer in-house employees, using a cheaper translator actually becomes more expensive because it requires more work by in-house employees to fix it up.  Therefore, it makes more sense to give the work to higher quality translators who will be more accurate the first time around.  (Note:  I’m paraphrasing but probably could have worded this better.)
4. Patent translation tends to be longer term work and is unaffected
5. If you’re a good translator, you’ll continue to get work regardless
6. As March approaches, departments in Japanese companies need to use up their budgets so that they don’t get shrunk the next time around
7. Spring is just usually the busiest season for translation
8. More translation work from U.S. (and less from Japan) because yen is stronger than the dollar and this makes U.S.-based translators relatively cheap labor
9. Downturn has forced part-time and less-experienced translators out of the business leaving more work for more established translators
10. For finance/investor relations work, there’s a short-term increase because the economic crisis has forced companies to disseminate press releases and other communications to all of their investors/consumers.

Feel free to post more theories and other comments for the benefit of the JET/JET Alum/Friend of JET/JetWit community in the comments section of this post.