Year: 2023

I thought I wouldn’t make a retrospective summary of the year but changed my mind and would like to conclude my 2023 with a Happy New Year light display recorded just now 📹

I’ve been making one Kanji character resolution with colleagues & friends for more than 10 years. My Kanji for 2023 is “貫” (or penetrate) for carrying out my word.

In the recent post, I mentioned my plan of the year 2023 to take over interpreting projects myself and am happy that I’ve made it. This encourages me to make the next leap in the year 2024.

I was pretty overwhelmed with things whether business and private and failed to write about my resignation from the JAT Board upon completion of the term. I served as the JAT Treasurer between 2019/7 and 2021/6 as well as the JAT President and Treasurer between 2021/7 and 2023/6. It had been super hard to put my hands on operation and administration of the association while working as a freelancer but I am relieved that I was able to accomplish the terms without leaving it halfway. I am grateful for supports and understanding from everyone around me.

Only my regret was that I couldn’t manage much time to spend on studying for some certifications. I’ll have to revisit my time management and proactively find time for study in the year 2024.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year ✨
Talk to you soon with a new post in a few days 😂

Photo: lighting display at Hiroshima station 🚉

Do you prefer to paper planners or electronic planners? I’ve been using a paper planner. I once tried managing schedule digitally with several online planner solutions but none of them was what I imagined. For good luck, I always use a planner with gold color cover. 📔 I hope I’ll have lots of plans to write on my 2024 planner 🙏😊

My last interpreting project in the year 2023 took place at a hospital in Kashiwa, Chiba pref.. it was my first visit to the city, though I used to live and work in Chiba (Soga and Kisarazu). I was excited and little nervous at the same time, as it was my first clinical trial related interpreting project, but I had a great experience thanks to very nice clients 😊 I’d willingly bid for the requests on the same field with confidence next time.

Photo: a university library in the vicinity of the working site

The moment you realize you only have less than half a month to the new year! The year 2023 was truly a hectic year for me. In the end of the last year, I thought I’d also try taking over interpreting jobs myself in addition to translations, not just asking colleagues to handle all interpreting requests, amid the recovery of inbound travel and tourism upon the lifting of restrictions. And this year, I started January with an in-person interpreting project, and I am concluding December with another in-person interpreting project. I wouldn’t have been able to make it without support and understanding from my colleagues and clients. Cherishing the bond that we have, I’d proactively expand my work ratio of interpreting in the year 2024 😊

Photo: Christmas lights in Marunouchi, Tokyo.

I attended a business-related Vietnam-Japan program last week, tagging along with my brother.

Sometime ago, it was a hot topic that Vietnam Airlines would be entering into service at Hiroshima Airport but we’ve never heard the progress or start thereafter. It has been postponed a while but the project now resumes. During the three-hour-long event, there were also presentations about businesses in Vietnam by some Japanese companies, an introduction of vocational development programs by a Vietnamese university in Khanh Hoa province, and a ceremony for business memorandum between Hiroshima and Khanh Hoa. Obviously I’m not specialized in any of these fields but I found them pretty interesting.

Hiroshima has received many Vietnamese students and business persons at various organizations and entities: Japanese language schools, universities, corporations, just like other prefectures. You can therefore see many Vietnamese residents who have settled down in Hiroshima. Looking back on my time at a university as an International Student Advisor, I’ve had an impression that they are kind and very eager to learn and work hard.

Accepting Human Resources between Vietnam and Japan has been more proactive and promoted. The mean age of population in Vietnam is relatively young and 33 (while that of Japan is 48 or around). The momentum I felt at the event also indicated that those proactive exchange would definitely be one of clues to empower Japan, where its aging society and labor scarcity are concerned.

Pic: a simultaneous interpretation receiver for Vietnamese and Japanese 🎧

Translation is just a part of project your clients are working on. If you as a translator would like to gain more number of orders of translation, expanding your services in addition to translation can be an effective strategy. We all are linguistic consultants helping clients make their projects successful. This doesn’t mean however that you always have to take care of everything by yourself besides translation. We have peer networks, and we have colleagues we can count on. You receive a linguistic job request that you don’t provide / don’t feel confident? Wait a moment before you just turn it down and think if you know anyone who’s good at it.

Through networking, I’ve met lots of colleagues from a variety of professions & sectors. I proactively collaborate with them in a variety of ways: translation, proofreading, interpreting, linguistic related arrangement, local guide, DTP incl. printouts, subtitling, voiceover etc. I even share workloads with them if a volume is too large and I can’t manage it alone, of course, as long as clients allow me to do so. Eventually, it brings to me more jobs of translation. Here’s a good example: clients who contact me for interpreting need not only an interpreting service but also a translation service at another occasion. If I just decline, they’ll have to go to another service provider and I’ll end up losing subsequent opportunities.

Of course, coordinating a project consumes time, so if you don’t find it worth, that’s okay. There’s yet lots of other ideas you can incorporate. Coordinating is just one of those. I just enjoy such activities as a part of my linguistic services, and it pays to do it. I’ve had an impression that not a small number of translators out of Japan provide not only translation but also interpreting, while especially Japanese translators tend to limit their capability to translation, which is missing wider opportunities. I often make posts in English first followed by Japanese, but I intentionally wrote this post other way around 😉

Pic: a souvenir received from my Singaporean client🇸🇬

It has been super hectic for the last few months: signing a contract for & moving to my new flat, business trips to Osaka and Tokyo, meeting with clients, and translating a variety of documents and arranging interpreting projects in the meantime.

I have stayed in Tokyo for a week to attend a translation industry event as well as an in-person event of my client as a project manager for its interpreting assignment. They were over and I’m on my way back home. The latter gave me a great opportunity and experience to coordinate the project and communicate with a number of stakeholders, including clients, interpreters, and a SI booth setup provider and my colleague who helped me contact the provider. There were many items I went through for the first time in the course of arrangements but now I can manage them with confidence if such projects happen again. I’d like to thank everyone who gave me supports to make the project successful, and I hope to work with them again sometime soon 🙂

Pic: “complimentary” 😂 cake for the successful completion of the project.

Thanks to my colleague, I had a great opportunity to work with a broadcast station for the G7 Hiroshima summit, which was held for 3 days between 19.05 – 21.05. It was not a full-time translation/interpreting but an interesting job yet: logging real-time feeds; translating an open welcome address by PM Kishida; transcribing an interview.

Whereas only a part of recordings would be broadcast to the public after edited, I had a chance to observe the entire proceedings where media agencies were allowed despite only my shifts, and watched from the Media Center this meaningful event held in Hiroshima where I grew up. PM Kishida has his roots in Hiroshima (while he grew up in Tokyo), and his wife, the First Lady Ms Kishida, grew up in Hiroshima, so both of them are attached to the prefecture. I could see how proud they were of the opportunity to hold the summit in Hiroshima, City of Peace, and to welcome the leaders 💐

In Hiroshima city and its vicinity, however, there were largely and flexibly changed traffic controls for the leaders’ schedules and programs (ca. 30,000 police officers assembled from all over Japan👮‍♂️🚘), which received harsh protests and complaints from understandable anxieties (e.g. if those traffic controls would become obstacles for emergent ambulance transport). That we did not hear nor see actual incidents through news programs after all doesn’t mean we didn’t have inconveniences. On the other hand, that many media crews visited Hiroshima from relevant countries and helped air our beautiful Hiroshima city, which was reconstructed after the atomic bombing, should be beneficial.

I love Hiroshima, as a resident who grew up in Hiroshima (while I was born in Yamaguchi pref.). I was honored therefore that I was able to join and help a part of the event. I was glad to hear that media crews, whom I worked with, enjoyed their stays in Hiroshima. Their broadcasts would be a great help to get more people interested in and visit Hiroshima from all over the world (๑>᎑<๑)و ﾖｼｯ!

Photo: a variety of souvenir I received at the Media Center 👜✒️🗒

JR Hiroshima station 🚊 is undergoing renovation and it aims to be complete in early 2025.

The platform looks modern, including its gates. You can find many nice souvenir shops and restaurants in the north side.

The south side awaits renovation completion. We can see the frames of buildings under construction🏗️. It is said that a streetcar platform 🚃 will be connected to JR station directly. I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks like 🙂

In a few years after the completion, I’d like to plan and organize a large-scale translation-interpreting industry event in Hiroshima to show peers over the city and its vicinity. 🌸🏙️

My business trips have returned since the second half of the year 2022 🚄🛫. I had become full-time translator in 2019 and had also planned to undertake onsite/escort interpreting requests, but then the pandemic began. Thankfully, I was quite busy with translation jobs but obviously only a few occasions to do onsite interpreting during the time. I realized that unfortunately I was not capable of remote interpreting, trying it several times. Since the end of summer in 2022, however, I had some chances to take on requests for escort interpreting again, and visited Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo for those requests, or provided the service in Hiroshima. I hope I can continue to receive onsite interpreting requests from time to time in 2023. So far so good.

Picture: Mt. Fuji 🗻 taken on my way to Tokyo for business trip ✈️.