In our new blog series, we aim to recognize all Gengo translators who reach specific milestones in their work.

A translator in three language pairs (Japanese to English, German to English, and French to English), Michael is one of our Gengo Wordsmiths who has translated over 500,000 units. Located in New Hampshire, U.S., he has spent time living all over the States, as well as in Germany and Japan to improve his language skills.

How many languages do you speak, and what are your experiences learning them?

French was a required course in 8th grade, and I remember feeling completely baffled and frustrated at the idea of communicating in a foreign language. It was not until my third year of learning French that I had a teacher who really made language learning come alive for me and convinced me to keep going.

The same teacher also taught me German, which is what led me to pursue the language. I majored in German Language and Literature in college, studying abroad in Munich and doing a two-month internship at the Bundestag in Berlin.

Japanese appealed to me because I was fascinated by writing systems that don’t use Roman letters. I took a few semesters of it in college, but because it was so different from the European languages I was used to, I was barely conversational when I moved to Japan after college for the JET Programme.

I took private Japanese lessons while in Japan and worked my way through the levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I left my job on the JET Programme and started working in a university office, where nearly all my work was in Japanese. In the five years I worked there, my language ability was challenged and steadily grew.

It is easiest to maintain my Japanese proficiency because my husband is from Japan and we communicate in Japanese. After spending 10 years in Japan, I have lots of Japanese friends, too. I am not so lucky with German and French, but I try watch movies or TV shows in those languages and read news articles to keep the languages fresh and current.

What are your favorite translation tools?

I use OmegaT as a CAT tool. For dictionaries, I use ALC and Weblio in Japanese, LEO in German and WordReference in French. I also use Wikipedia when I need lengthier explanations of different concepts.

What are your tips to become a Wordsmith?

For me, the most important thing has been taking breaks. This has been harder than it sounds since I tend to be the type of person who runs headlong into a wall over and over again trying to get through it. If I come across a phrase that I’m having trouble with, in most cases, it works out best for me take a break for a walk, meal, or TV show and then come back to it. Usually I’ll find that my tunnel vision was keeping me from seeing a pretty obvious route around the wall.

One way I keep myself motivated, especially with longer jobs, is to schedule rewards for myself. I’ll tell myself that after a certain number of words or sentences I can have my next cup of coffee, read a chapter of a book or spend time with my goats on my farm. Breaking up jobs like this makes them feel infinitely more manageable and I find that, even though I think it should take longer since I’m interspersing breaks, I actually get the job done faster.

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