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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Contents 1. What you need to know about Japanese to help you with the translation of your document. Special considerations when having something translated into Japanese. For the uninitiated, and especially for those who are monolingual, translating English into/from Japanese is often a much more complex processes than is first imagined. The Japanese and English languages (and the cultures which produced them) arose independently in isolation of one another for countless centuries. Due to these disparate origins the resulting two linguistic forms would be hard pressed to become more different than they already are. Because of their differing etymologies, translations involving Japanese and English are naturally more ambiguous and open to more varying interpretations than a translation between two European languages derived from Latin. A very precise transliteration of words with a strong one to one relationship due to their common ancestral origin is simply not possible. The effect of cultural differences on the interpretation of the written word and its implied meanings can also not be underestimated by the cautious westerner when dealing with Japanese language documents. Often a statement, when translated broadly without concern to the specific context and intended meaning can appear nonsensical or cause a very different reaction in the reader than the writer intended. It is the source of a great deal of humor, tragic misunderstanding, and bad translations. In many cases a major point to consider is the intent of the passage you hope to translate and its underlying social context. You will then better appreciate how it will affect the appropriate final rendering of the passage in the target language. 2. How is the price determined for my project? Translation Translation pricing is set per word, and the number of words in the source document determines the total number of words. The price of an individual word is determined by the type of document. Highly technical documents or documents using predominately specialized language or other types of jargon will cost more per word than more general writings such as a business memo or official document. Jobs that require express services and multiple translation teams may be subject to an additional 30% charge if the deadline is very tight. For the purpose of word counts of Japanese documents 2.5 characters is considered one English word. Other Services and Document Types There is a per character fee for the conversion of a source text into an editable text document format only if it is delivered to the customer. The translation itself may be supplied as an editable text document without incurring any extra charges. There is a flat per hour fee associated for the transcription of audio files which is always done with any work involving them. The transcription used will be provided along with the translation is every case. Work bordering on Desk Top Publishing, such as typesetting and the generation of graphics with specialized fonts, will have an hourly rate or fee charged with them on top of the translation fee. The conversion of an existing document with graphical content such as a PowerPoint presentation or HTML file into Japanese or English will have a formatting fee on top of the translation fee. You will find these fees to be small as the major work is almost always in the translation. 3. A Very Brief Summary of the Japanese Writing System. Modern Japanese consists of a mixture of several different types of scripts. These are as Follows:
Kanji Literally meaning gChinese characterh Kanji is perhaps the most familiar aspect of written Japanese to the west. The Kanji script consists of ideographic Chinese characters introduced to Japan from Han China about 1500 years ago. These have been adapted for use for the Japanese language and are the origin of the modern Japanese writing system. At least 44,000 distinct Kanji are known to exist/have existed, but a small fraction of these (1,945 characters referred to as Jouyou Kanji) are in common use. Each Kanji may have several different greadingsh including its Chinese reading (Sino-Japanese) know as the gonyomih and the Japanese reading called the gkunyomih. Kanji can be combined to form many new words and expressions, and some Kanji were created by the Japanese after the initial introduction of Kanji from China. Due to the large number of characters and their complexity, the Kanji script makes the learning of written Japanese a rather formidable lifelong challenge.
Kana Kana is a phonetic alphabet of characters that were derived from Kanji roughly 1200 years ago. There are currently two different Kana scripts referred to as Hiragana and Katakana. Each script consists of 48 major characters with combinations of characters and/or accent marks making up the rest of the script. Each script has its own designated uses within the language. Small Kana are often placed above lesser known Kanji to indicated its phonetic reading. This useful application of the script is called Furigana or Ruby text.
Romaji The Japanese writing system has assimilated the Roman scripts and Arabic numerals used in western languages (notably English) for its own uses. These are commonly referred to as Romaji. There also exist several systems of Romanization of the Kana which is often used to render Japanese words into a readable text by westerners and more recently for inputting Japanese characters into computers using standard keyboards. Modern Japanese may be written in a traditional vertical top to bottom right to left orientation or a more current horizontal left to right style like many European languages. The style used will often depend on the type of document it is. Sometimes both styles may be found within a single document, but which is used will always be determined by the rules of the current style conventions. 4. Using Japanese characters sets on your computer. Unless you computer system has been configured to display Japanese text in most cases it will not display properly on your computer. On western versions of Windows you will see odd symbols and something that could maybe be describe as computer codes in place of the Japanese text. Until the proper software is loaded or the regional/language settings have been changed, you wonft be able to use or view Japanese documents on your English system. It will appear as seemingly random characters, question marks, or boxes. This is what the Japanese refer to as "Mojibake". If you are using a Microsoft operating system after Windows 2000 Pro this is a very simple process which can be done via the control panel. Windows 2000
Pro Windows XP and
Vista Typing in
Japanese? You need an IME (Input Method Editor). Windows 2000
Pro Windows XP and
Vista OS Environment (Multi-Language User Interface) MUI Packs Windows Vista Ultimate now allows for your entire OS environment to be in Japanese including all menu and system messages within Windows. The Japanese MUI pack is available for download from the Vista Windows Extras site as an optional download. Previous MUI packs for XP and Windows 2000 were notorious for their difficulty to purchase, with Vista it is a simple free download. Japanese PDF files? To work with Japanese PDF documents on a US version of Adobe reader or Acrobat you will need to install the Asian Language support. This option comes automatically with Adobe Acrobat versions after version 5.0. Use your distribution disk to install the necessary support file. This support is also available as a separate installation kit downloadable from Adobe which can be easily applied to Adobe Acrobat Reader as well.. The Asian Font Pack files for Acrobat Reader are available at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrasianfontpack.html. Also you may try www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html. There you can select your product which then links to the page containing the Japanese support kit.
Protection of Customer Information Furthermore we actively use information security techniques to appropriately protect confidential information (files, billing information, phone numbers). Access to customer information is limited to those at Japanese Translation Consultants and any subcontracted workers who have a legitimate business need for that information.
Retention of Customer Information "Personal Information" means any information, recorded in any form, about an identified individual, or an individual whose identity may be inferred from the information. This includes, for example, name, e-mail and mailing address and telephone numbers, billing and account information, and other information incidental to providing products or services.
Assent 6. Do you have a Japanese Language Site? Yes, we do. Please click here
7. I'm a translator (or someone interested in translation). How can I submit my resume? Yes, we are always looking for good translators to assign projects to. Our major requirement is that you be a native speaker of either English or Japanese and you be over 18 years of age. We appreciate people from various backgrounds (such as science majors). You don't need to have a degree in language, and keep in mind that on projects you will always be paired with a native speaker of your non-native tongue. What matters most to us is your work's quality and your professional integrity. Please send your resume plain text or as a PDF by email to us with "I want to work with JTC" in your subject line. Also include any software packages that you currently use for translation, a summary of how you work, any ideas on translation in general, and any relevant experience or activities. We will then send you some brief tests to complete to assess your ability. See our About us/Contact page for our email address. If accepted please click here to sign our NDA agreement. We look forward to hearing from you! 8. What is Translation Memory Software?/What is SDL Trados? Translation Memory applications are programs often employed by large companies to make large translation projects or translation projects over a long period of time more consistent in terminology and style. They do this by creating a Translation Memory (TM) consisting of text segments in a source language and their translations into the target language. They do not segment by words, as this is merely a glossary, but rather by sentence or sometimes paragraphs. Once a TM database becomes large enough to be useful the TM program will take a segment of text and compare it to previous translations in the database and then produce a translation suggestion which will most likely be modified by the translator and then added again to the TM database as new segment data. More advanced programs use what is know as fuzzy matching to make the database less reliant on exact matches and produce partially machine generated translation suggestions based on the TM database in use. The larger your TM database the better your suggested translations will become. Very large companies love TM because the translations made will look consistent over time and a large number of translators using the same TM database will output translations that look more like it was done by a single individual. Perhaps even more important is the fact that the TM database prevents anything from being translated more than once as it is saved within the TM. Repetitions across documents will be automatically translated by the TM software. For many large international companies their very large TM's are a well respected company asset. People looking for translators for the fist time often here about SDL Trados as being a plus but don't know exactly why. SDL Trados is merely the leading application to employ TM's straight thru using Microsoft Word as part of the interface. SDL Trados is the most commonly used TM application in the translation industry today. Do you really need TM for your project? The answer is often No! For smaller projects its easy to see the time spent on keeping a TM is not something that is really needed or desirable. If you have very large number of documents with repetitive segments of text a TM is a very wise investment over time if you plan on translating similar documents again and again over time. Most companies that fall somewhere in the middle should probably maintain some sort of proprietary TM to give to their translators/team when needed. They will find their TM will grow quiet large in a few years.
I repeat this because TM programs do have some negatives associated with them like a large learning curve, poor format support, error propagation, and bad user interfaces/and or incompatibility with currently used translation processes. Most of the TM applications on the market are better suited for Western European languages and have historically been less compatible with Middle Eastern or Asian languages. TM used on repetitive technical documents may help greatly, but TM is known to produce rather poor results for any kind of marketing or creative writing. This can be further magnified by the translator fixing a TM match during translation and not translating from scratch. What seems like a good way to keep a certain writing style will slowly start to produce an unnatural looking and hard to read translation that is technically correct. TM programs are not cheap and often cost close to one thousand dollars for one license. The TM databases also need to be carefully cared for to grow or be effective, much of this care still requires a good deal of expensive manual work and customization by a translation systems expert. So the imagined cost savings can quickly be eroded. We don't want to scare you away from TM, it is very useful, but know your needs well before investing in or requiring TM from your translators. TM exchanges? So how do companies use their TMs with a translator? By using the TM exchange formats accepted by most TM software applications. This is known as the TMX format which stands for Translation Memory Exchange format. The TMX standard improves over time with newer versions from its initial 1.0 release like 1.4b are available. Other important terms in the TM world are TBX which is TermBase Exchange, and SRX which is Segmentation Rules Exchange which are also exchanged. There are quiet a large number of competing applications using TMs with SDL Trados as the clear leader, but others like STAR transit, Wordfast, Deja Vu, and MetaTexis commanding loyal followings among translators. Currently our company supports and uses SDLTrados 2007 where appropriate or requested. 9. Why is your Japanese site different than your English site? The markets and cultures in the Translation Industry are very different, so the two versions of our website are not identical or an exact translation of one to the other. Please provide us with a sample text if you'd like to test our skills. 10. I just want one word translated. Can you help? This kind of service is often hard to ask of a translator. Our company philosophy on this is simple. We can translate a single word for $1 US dollar. A short phrase/sentence fragment is $1.65. This does not include creating a graphic. Any product titles will be translated literally. Rendering a word into a tattoo graphic is done by quote only as it must be carefully discussed. 11. What are the hallmarks of good narration? The staff at Japanese Translation Consultants probably considers the two most important things to start with are the voice talent, and then the sound technician/engineers. Voice talent for narration and voice-over work has gone beyond the days of the single type of "golden voice". Now many types of voices are used and more than the voice's sound in itself, the acting ability and delivery are more important. The narrator has gone from reading copy in a booming voice to acting and often taking the role of a company salesperson. This has opened up the field of voice acting to almost anyone with the dedication and aptitude for voice-over work.. The voice talent must have excellent reading and pronunciation skills, and should have a nice and natural cadence in their native tongue and communicate on an emotional level. The communication on an emotional level can't be underestimated. It makes the delivery compelling enough to cause action in your listeners For those with less experience or professional actors going into voice-over work for the first time a smooth line by line delivery can be coached to a large degree by the experienced Engineer or Sound technician working the mixer and recording equipment. Their ears judge which take to use and which to discard.
Then there is the microphone/recording equipment to consider. The power of the personal computer has made home recording at a professional level a reality. Good microphones cost at least $300 or so. So there is a starting range to work from. Microphones take a good deal of abuse on the road with a musical act, so a dedicated studio microphone is a must. A Condenser microphone should be used, not a "Dynamic" one. Audio Files within a project should then be normalized so their relative volumes match each other among many other processing tasks before the sound files are ready to be applied to the finished product. One term in the narration industry is the "cold voice" which is work done without any background music or effects. We can produce a cold voiceover or, if supplied by you, we can precisely mix the voice into your background music and effects. Common file formats are wav (Microsoft), aiff (Apple), and mp3. 12. What is "Lost in Translation" "Lost in translation" is a word or
phrase referring to puns and popular culture that has lost its
meaning during translation. The more different the cultural
background is, the more these kinds of phrases or words will appear.
Thus the more difficult it will be to handle them. For example, the
term "Wardrobe Malfunction" in America is now highly associated with
Janet Jackson's performance at the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show
in which her breast was unintentionally or otherwise exposed. 13. Basics of Japanese Official Documents Official document translation is necessary when applying for a Visa, or other immigration matters in the United States. According to the USCIS (formerly the INS) "Any foreign language document offered by a party in a proceeding shall be accompanied by an English language translation and a certification signed by the translator..." Japanese Translation Consultants can provide needed translation services in this area, but first let's introduce some of the kinds of official documents commonly used in these matters. Japanese Official documents are a little different than American ones. For example, Japanese don't have simple and clean-cut birth certificates. What is used in place of a "Birth certificate" is what is referred to as a certified copy of their family register (Koseki Tohon) or a much shorter and more common extract taken from the family register (Koseki Shohon). The family register is used to record all persons of Japanese nationality in a registered family, it does contain the birth record of those born into the family. When a Japanese woman marries a Japanese man her family registry will usually change to that of the husband's. It should be made clear that a US birth certificate and a Japanese family register are different kinds of documents which happen to overlap in some areas. If there is a slight difference in the documents, what's required by the USCIS/US Embassy of Japan? According to the US Embassy of Japan, when obtaining a visa a Japanese national must "Submit a certified copy of an extract of the family register ("Koseki") which shows the date and place of birth, as well as parentage." "The family register must be accompanied by an English translation, certified by the translator." Non-Japanese born in Japan who do not have a birth certificate from their parentages nationality must supply a "Certificate of Acceptance of Notification of Birth ("shussei todoke juri shomeisho" or "shussei todoke kisaijiko shomeisho")" which is supplied by the Japanese government when the birth is reported by the parents. What other kinds of documents might I need? The equivalent to Marriage licenses in Japan are referred to in English as a Certificate of Acceptance of Notification of Marriage. This is called "Kon-in Todoke Juri Shomeisho." This means exactly what it says in Japanese, "acceptance of notification." Besides the marrying parties the marriage is witnessed by two individuals of any nationality over the age of 20 who sign the application for a Certificate of Acceptance of Notification of Marriage which is called the "Kon-in Todoke". Only once this application has been approved may you get the proof of acceptance of a marriage notification document. The Mother and Child Health Handbook, known in Japanese as the "Boshi Techo", is a small booklet covering pregnancy health, health of the mother, the birth and fitness of the child, and the immunization record up to and including the age of six.. These are usually acquired when the mother reports her pregnancy to the local municipal office. This booklet can be notarized by the ward office in which one lives in Japan at the time of birth. The Boshi Techo is needed when a Japanese applies for a Japanese passport, and a request for a translated version of the immunization portion will be asked for during the health exam one must take to apply for a visa or permanent residence card in the USA. We can translate these documents for you, and furthermore provide a signed and notarized certification by the translator. |
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