Zach LeNarz, founder of the JETAA Law Group (now on Facebook) posted a link on the group’s wall to the powerpoint slides (in PDF format) used in a presenation at the 2008 Yokohama returner’s conference. The presentation was given by an Australian woman then working for the law firm of Herbert Smith in Tokyo and provide a good way of thinking through any JET’s decision to study law and the various career options.
http://www.jetprogramme.org/documents/conference/crj/2008_crj/Law_ppp.pdf
Via the Society for Writers Editors and Translators (SWET) e-mail list. Several workshops/discussions/presentations that seem to be very useful for writers and translators in Japan:
SWET News, April 8, 2009
For details on the following upcoming events, see below:
1) April 21 (Tues)–SWET OPEN FORUM: Wordsmithing in Japan (Tokyo)
2) May 16 (Sat)– WRITING MULTICULTURAL FAMILIES (Tokyo)
3) May 17 (Sun)–SWET KANSAI: THREE POETS IN JAPAN (Kyoto)
4) June 23 (Tues)–WRITING NEWS ON JAPAN with Elaine Lies (Tokyo)
5) July 18 (Sat)–SWET (Kanto) Summer Party – details pending. Read More
Joel Dechant (CIR Fukuoka-ken, 2001-04), freelance translator based in Fukuoka, has been exploring the “co-working” trend. If interested in discussing with him, click on his name to contact him via LinkedIn or post a comment below to share your thoughts or perspectives.
After 3 years on JET I worked at a private Japanese university as a translator for 3 years. It was essentially a JET-type job: translate, interpret, assist foreign students and/or plan programs for 3 years and then you’re out. After their stints were up, some of my other colleagues went home or elsewhere in Japan to work in universities, government agencies or in the private sector, but I-on the other hand-decided to stay.
“What about my contract?” you ask. Well, my employer and I struck a deal. They needed someone who knew the university and who could translate and interpret well, and I wanted to stay in the area. By virtue of being placed in the position that bore the biggest share of translation and interpreting work, I was able to hone my skills well enough to confidently say, “Hey, I can do this!” So we wrote a new contract in which they would outsource their work to me. With the stroke of a pen, I was self-employed.
It was like a dream come true. How many times had I Read More
***************
Another good post from my brother Greg on TheDigitalists.com, this one on Kindle and the future of book publishing. Definitely worth a read by JET alums authors and those working in publishing, especially on the heels of the JET Alumni Author Showcase.
Much of the chatter surrounding Mark Bowden’s Vanity Fair piece on the New York Times has focused on the anonymous quotes slagging publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. But what I found the most fascinating was the passage dissecting Sulzberger’s invocation of the phrase “platform agnostic”:
When the motion-picture camera was invented, many early filmmakers simply recorded stage plays, as if the camera’s value was just to preserve the theatrical performance and enlarge its audience. To be sure, this alone was a significant change. But the true pioneers realized that the camera was more revolutionary than that. It freed them from the confines of a theater. Audiences could be transported anywhere. To tell stories with pictures, and then with sound, directors developed a whole new language, using lighting and camera angles, close-ups and panoramas, to heighten drama and suspense. They could make an audience laugh by speeding up the action, or make it cry or quake by slowing it down. In short, the motion-picture camera was an entirely new tool for storytelling. To be platform agnostic is the equivalent of recording stage plays.
I had a similar thought last week when, after months of reading about it and stealing envious glances at it on the subway, I had a chance to play around with the Amazon Kindle. It’s a pretty cool product, though it’s clearly still early in the product life cycle; I’d guess it’s roughly analogous to where the iPod was six or seven years ago. But I also realized that in terms of societal impact, we’re even earlier in the process. So far, the Kindle has made the tiniest dent in terms of how books are distributed. In the coming years, it will change how they’re promoted. And one day in the not-too-distant future, it will begin to transform our entire notion of what a book is.
Read the rest of this entry »
A JET alum translator e-mailed with the below questions. Feel free to share your response in the comments section of this post, or e-mail to jetwit at jetwit dot com if you’d prefer your comment to remain anonymous.
1) At the moment, the Japanese economy is doing just terribly. Has anyone seen declines or reductions in the amount of work they are receiving?
2) In the longer term, as well, the economy doesn’t look like it is going to improve much, either. How do they feel about the prospects for making a business out of translating, are they feeling pessimistic for the future?
Enterprise 2.0 technologies in Japanese companies?
Advice, Japan Trends 
Comments Off on Enterprise 2.0 technologies in Japanese companies?
An interesting question was posed on a LinkedIn group called Japan Intercultural Consulting, started by Pernille Rudlin. Feel free to comment below or, on the JIC group page or directly to Pernille if you have insights to share.
Enterprise 2.0 technologies in Japanese companies
Does anyone know of a Japanese (or if not, other multinational) company that is successfully using Enterprise 2.0 technologies for internal communications – in other words Web 2.0 technology such as social networking, blogs, wikis, used inside corporations? I’m particularly interested in any usage going across national boundaries.
For the sake of this post, assume that these pigeons have all passed the nikkyu.
While many JET alums strive to find jobs and careers related to Japan, many JET alums also reach a point where they’d like to redefine themselves as something beyond a “Japan person.”
I’d like to ask JetWit readers who have some perspective or experience with redefining their careers to share their own experience or advice regarding getting out of the “Japan pigeonhole.”
Submit comments to this post, or feel free to also email them to jetwit at jetwit dot com.
*********************
Another post from my brother Greg on TheDigitalists.com about innovations amongst the unemployed that may offer helpful perspective to JET alums seeking work.
In this post he compares two efforts to deal with unemployment: Runway Project and Laid-Off Camp.
The positive spin on this development is that the advent of social media has made it easier for like-minded individuals to organize effectively. The more pessimistic view is that, unlike at the beginning of this decade, when a lot of young people experienced temporary career setbacks after spending the previous few years outpacing their qualifications, this downturn is likely to be far more lasting and transformative, and if people are going to reinvent themselves professionally, they better get started immediately; they don’t have time to “just hang out.”
Click here to read the full post.
JETAA DC Grad School Night Panel Discussion and Networking Event – March 31
Advice, Events, Graduate School, JETAA Chapters Comments Off on JETAA DC Grad School Night Panel Discussion and Networking Event – March 31
********************
“2009 JETAADC Grad School Night Panel Discussion and Networking Event” on Tuesday, March 31 at 6:30pm.
Event: 2009 JETAADC Grad School Night Panel Discussion and Networking Event
“Come to eat, drink, and discuss opportunities with various graduate school programs. ”
Time: Tuesday, March 31 at 6:30pm
Where: Old Ambassador’s Residence, adjacent to the Japanese Embassy.
To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=61450641385&mid=289272G1faf3ed5G1cb332bG7
Grad school? Journalism? Time to question assumptions says TheDigitalists.com
Advice, Blogs, Graduate School, Writers Comments Off on Grad school? Journalism? Time to question assumptions says TheDigitalists.com
My brother Greg, an online marketing/media expert, has another thoughtful post on TheDigitalists.com, this one offering some perspectives on graduate school and journalism, two topics of interest to many a JET alum. (Note as well the hint of sibling rivalry.)
Grad Schools and the Shifting Job Landscape
Lots of people go to grad school for the wrong reasons. My brother, who has a JD but no longer practices, has made it his mission in life to dissuade as many aspiring law-school applicants as he can. And rightly so. Far too many liberal-arts grads assume law school is the only answer to the question, “What do you do with a BA in English?”
Meanwhile, New York magazine is reporting on journalism schools, specifically Columbia, experiencing yet another “existential crisis.” (For those keeping score, this is the 54,978th such crisis in the last 30 years.) And, of course, business schools are grappling with the fact that the main industry to which they have funneled most of their graduates has suddenly imploded.
I think the fundamental problem these programs are facing is that, as professional schools, they were set up to train graduates in a profession. Lawyer. Journalist. Banker. Marketer. The problem is, the definitions of those jobs are not only changing, they’re blurring together.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE POST
Update: As if on cue, there’s an article in Sunday’s NY Times titled “Is It Time to Retrain B-Schools?“
Here’s a JET-related tax question I received from a recent returnee. Feel free to help this JET alum (and likely many others) by posting to the comment section of this post or emailing to jetwit at jetwit dot com.
“I didnt file taxes for 2007 while I was in Japan, and I was wondering if I should file now for 2008…and if so, should I back file 2007’s as well?? Or should I just forget about it and not file at all. (That has actually been the advice from a couple of accountants, but I dont know if they full understood what I was talking about.)“
What do people suggest?
A JET alum recently asked if anyone is aware of any scholarships for Americans to study in Japan, particularly in connection with TESOL or applied linguistics.
Any suggestions? Please post in the comments section of this post for the benefit of others, or feel free to e-mail jetwit at jetwit dot com.
Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.
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:
- Companies are cutting costs by outsourcing work to the market that used to be done in house
- 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.
- 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.)
- Patent translation tends to be longer term work and is unaffected
- If you’re a good translator, you’ll continue to get work regardless
- As March approaches, departments in Japanese companies need to use up their budgets so that they don’t get shrunk the next time around
- Spring is just usually the busiest season for translation
- 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
- Downturn has forced part-time and less-experienced translators out of the business leaving more work for more established translators
- 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.
The question has been raised by a JET alum translator/interpreter:
“Does anybody have an idea what the going rate for telephone interpretation (E<>J) is?”
Please post any responses in the comment section.
Pension refund check in yen – Advice?
Advice Comments Off on Pension refund check in yen – Advice?
The below question was posted to the JETAA DC email list:
I just returned in August of ’08 and filed for a pension refund around October. Today I got a check in the mail from the social insurance department of Japan! Except the check is in yen.
Have other people been confronted with this situation? Is the best course of action to cash the check into dollars and then deposit it? Should I deposit it via my bank and allow them to take out commission and give me a crappy exchange rate? Should I bring it to American Express and get it transferred to traveler’s or cashier’s checks? Any other advice?
What would you do? Please post your comments, suggestions and advice below.
