Whether you live in a rural area or are raising a family,
translation is a career that connects you to the world

— During her university years, she traveled across Asia and Latin America with a backpack, picking up Spanish along the way. In Mexico, she worked as a locally hired interpreter, handling meetings and document translation across all three languages.

“With the local staff, I spoke Spanish. With the president, English. With my supervisor, Japanese. We had discussions in all three languages. Sometimes I even had to interpret heated arguments—I was truly a jack of all trades.”

— Working across three languages took considerable effort, she recalls. Even today, she makes time to read, building her vocabulary and range of expression. She particularly loves mystery and horror, and reads authors such as Anthony Horowitz, Dan Brown, and Stephen King in English. While paying close attention to suspenseful phrasing and descriptive passages, she often writes notes in the margins, underlines passages, and compares them with their Japanese translations. While industrial translation differs from literature, she says that reading is invaluable for understanding the impression words make on a reader. She sometimes reads Spanish originals alongside their English or Japanese translations as well.

“Bringing my English, Spanish, and Japanese to the same level is something I’m still working on, so every day is a continuous process of learning.”

“Early on, I didn’t really know my way around PhraseTMS and pulled an all-nighter to get a project done. I was hallucinating by the end, but I pushed through. (laughs) It makes for a good story now.”

— For her, the goal isn’t a flawless translation into beautifully literary Japanese or English—it’s understanding exactly what quality level the client needs and delivering an accurate, fit-for-purpose translation on time.

“The proofreaders and checkers after me are counting on me, and so is the client waiting at the end of the line. Deadlines always come first.”