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Subject:Re: Asian English From:Karen Kay <karenk -at- NETCOM -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 8 Sep 1994 22:34:09 -0700
Richard Mateosian said:
> Perhaps things have changed, but when I was working for Hitachi America
> about five years ago, we could never get timely design documents and plans
> in english from our japanese counterparts.
I phoned a tech pubs manager at Hitachi a couple of months ago and was
immediately brushed off to a woman who is in charge of translation.
The translation test she sent me two months later consisted largely of
labels on drawings and short sentences.
I keep trying to make this point, that what I do is not merely
translation, it's *writing*. I can turn a Japanese document into a
document suitable for American readers. It's not just translating
terms or shorts sentences, I CAN DO THE WHOLE THING. The response is
usually "Uh-huh. Technical translator." Grrrrrrr....
I'd been trying to sell myself as a technical writer who knows
Japanese, but realized that I'm much better off just selling myself as
a technical writer... and then someone I met found me the job I've had
for the past two months, turning Japanese documents into American
documents! So jobs like this exist, but they are rare. And this one is
over Monday.
