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31st translation contest: "A translator's life" » English to Japanese

Competition in this pair is now closed, and the winning entry has been announced.

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Source text in English

[...] Translators just didn't get recognition, they didn't expect to make much of a living, just get by. Very few people were actually trained as translators, but most had a solid college education and a solid knowledge of languages, at least their own language. I had a friend who fell exactly into that category and my circle of friends expanded to include other translators. I found them to be much more interesting as people, and discovered that we often had similar life experiences. I never had trouble making friends, but I always felt "different" and I'm sure they felt it too. When my friend retired, she recommended me as her replacement. I now entered the realm of Reinsurance, of which I knew nothing. I was also the only translator there, and didn't have much to fall back on. However, it was another notch up....

On my new job, I started looking through the files, asking questions and got the company to enroll me in Insurance courses. The College of Insurance was across the street, and I consulted fire codes, insurance policies and fire extinguisher catalogs in their library. I was learning what I had never had the luxury of being able to do before: research. The first time I had to translate a proposal for purposes of insurance of a nuclear plant, I got a call from the head man in that department, congratulating me on the job I had done. "Compares favorably with what we are used to," he said. What an upper! What happened was that I consulted a document in the files similar to the one I was tackling for guidance, but when I saw that my predecessor had used the word "nucleus" instead of "core", I realized that the files were useless to me. I went across the street to the library and looked up "nuclear plants." I immediately found all the terminology I needed.

It takes a great deal more than that to be a good translator these days, of course. [...]

The winning entry has been announced in this pair.

There were 4 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase. The winning entry was determined based on finals round voting by peers.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (4 total) Expand all entries

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Entry #35789 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Reiko Ando
Reiko Ando
United States
Winner
Voting points1st2nd3rd
5110 x45 x21 x1
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 1 "like" tag
  • 2 users agreed with "likes" (2 total agrees)
+2
1
少なくとも自分の母国語の言語に対しては確かな知識を持っている
Flows well
Akiko Maehama
Entry #36092 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Japan
ayainseattle
ayainseattle
United States
Voting points1st2nd3rd
317 x41 x21 x1
Entry tagging:
  • 2 users entered 2 "like" tags
  • 1 user agreed with "likes" (2 total agrees)
+1
見合う価値
Good term selection
Best trans​lation of ​"to be rec​ognized" i​n my opini​on
Justin Bingham
+1
私は友達を作るのに苦労したことはなかったが、自分はなんだか「違う」という感覚を覚えるのが常で、彼らもそう感じていたに違いない
Flows well
Akiko Maehama
Entry #35494 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Japan
Voting points1st2nd3rd
181 x45 x24 x1
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 1 "like" tag
翻訳者というものは、ただただ評価のされない存在で、大した収入を得る期待もせず、生活できればいいというものだった
Flows well
Akiko Maehama
Entry #36179 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Standard-Japan
Voting points1st2nd3rd
3003 x1
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  • No "like" tags