Given ever-expanding access to the culture of Japan, people worldwide have many different reasons for studying the Japanese language these days. But I don’t know if job opportunities for non-Japanese have expanded as rapidly. Many folks probably fall back on the same set of options as always: eigo kyōshi (英語教師, English teacher), torihiki-gyōsha (取引業者, trader) and honyakusha (翻訳者, translator).

Yes, there are others, but these are supposedly the easy options, and of them translation has the most street cred — if you’re translating, surely you’re almost an artist, nothing constrains you!

Of the different types of translation, literary translation is clearly the most prestigious, but video-game translation may be the most coveted. It’s the kind of job that brings a smile (or perhaps a smirk?) to people’s faces when you mention it.

I can say from experience that translating terebi gēmu (テレビゲーム, video games) is not nearly as cool as it sounds.

First, it’s important to realize that you might not even be translating game content. If a company sends you a document that contains the word kyōtai(筐体, cabinet), then you might be handling the kind of games that are still popular in Japan at gēmu sentā (ゲームセンター, arcades) and require a massive cabinet to store the innards — yes, an old-school arcade game. The translation will probably be for the hoshu manyuaru (保守マニュアル, service manual). You’ll likely be translating the instructions into English for a guy in Taiwan who will be fixing the games when they break (and referring to the manual as he rummages around inside the kyōtai). More.

See: The Japan Times

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