A more honest approach that discusses limitations but expresses a willingness to work with the company to improve translation quality will often pay off and allow the translator to reap the benefit of regular work.

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This raises an interesting dilemma. What degree of knowledge qualifies you to count a particular field as a specialization? New Japanese translators will soon find that if they indicate that they can only translate very general topics, the amount of work they will be offered will be correspondingly small.

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After considering it, but never quite doing it for many years, and dipping my toe in the water with free versions, I laid out some hard-earned yen on some voice recognition software.

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In the first part of this article, we looked at issues faced by translators working as freelancers. We noted that, on the flip side of the advantages of avoiding the commute to the office and the freedom to manage your own time, lie the challenges of self-motivation, schedule management and financial management. In this second part, I will look at these challenges in detail.

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In this first part of the article, we have discussed some of the challenges faced when becoming a freelance translator. It is not all doom and gloom, however, and there are many benefits. In the next article, we discuss means of tackling these challenges.

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In addition to being a linguist, a professional translator is essentially a writer, and it is important not only to have a strong understanding of the source language, as the quality of the translator’s work is also judged on how well they communicate the meaning in the target language.

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So, what makes good reference material for an English Japanese translator? The important thing is that it should be focused.

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Of course, not all translation companies have the resources to do this. So, what can a translation company do to assist in the success of a project? The two aspects I would like to focus on here are project control and proactivity.

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The term “maru-nage” in Japanese sums up very nicely in a single phrase the approach of wholesale delegation of a task to another party, without shouldering any responsibility or taking any involvement in the task at hand.

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Many people shy away from the use of this type of punctuation completely. Proper use, however, will add conciseness, clarity and style to your translation and writing – a skill highly valued by Japanese translation companies!

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