A translator in two language pairs (Japanese to English and German to English), Zack is one of our Gengo Wordsmiths who has translated over 500,000 units. Now located in Tokyo, he moved to Japan after college and set himself the challenge of becoming completely fluent in the language.

What languages do you speak and what are your experiences with learning them?

I’ve always been interested in languages but could never say I was bilingual. After graduating college, I wanted to master a language and chose to move to Japan and stay until I could read, write and speak Japanese like it was second nature. I became interested in Japanese because of its reputation as a mysterious and challenging language, and found myself quickly enamored with the language.

Although I studied Japanese before moving to Japan almost six years ago, I had trouble speaking and understanding it during my first year here. However, I was really motivated to learn the language to a high level, and studied for at least four hours per night and set measurable goals.

I eventually reached all my targets, and passed the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). I then got into translation and took a few field-specific translation exams, which have helped improve my Japanese further and refined it in relation to certain niche topics.

Now, I have a Japanese spouse who doesn’t speak English, so Japanese is part of my daily routine and am constantly immersed in it. I still occasionally find myself at a loss for how to express certain ideas or can’t follow certain conversations. Every time I’m stumped, I learn something new that I know I won’t forget.

I’m also qualified as a German to English translator. I first formally studied German in high school and lived with exchange students from Luxembourg while at college. Although their native language wasn’t German (there is actually a language called Luxembourgish!), they spoke fluent German and French, and their English was almost flawless. I was fascinated by the idea of being able to speak multiple languages so seamlessly, and felt a little ashamed that they could speak my language perfectly while I couldn’t even handle a basic conversation in any of theirs.

I applied the same strategies to learning German and now I read most of my news in the language and try to watch at least an hour of talk shows in German every week.

What are your favorite translation tools?

At first, I was a huge fan of free online dictionaries, glossaries, and translation collections such as ALC, Jisho and Linguee. But I found that, once you reach a certain level of fluency, these sites are rarely helpful unless you’re looking for a particular synonym.

After being introduced to Memsource through Gengo, I use it for almost all of my freelance work and have accumulated some sizeable translation memory databases, which I find really help boost my efficiency. Specialized dictionaries, while expensive, are much more accurate and provide greater insight for the serious translator—I often work with finance and economics-related translations and have a 20,000-word terminology glossary published by Nikkei called 経済ビジネス英語 (Economics and Business English) that has paid dividends.

I’m a big fan of Google, too. Google Images is really effective for finding and understanding proper and concrete nouns that you are unfamiliar with, while Google Advanced Search gives you great options like searching for only PDFs or finding exact matches.

Online forums with other translators are also very helpful. Gengo has a great community and forum where its translators can ask for and share advice. Other places include ProZ and Translators Café.

What are your tips to become a Wordsmith?

Make a habit of translating. Even if you do small translations of 100 words or so, you’ll find that the 500,000 mark quickly starts inching closer. I was able to reach this target by carefully planning out the volume of work I had to do each month.

Another thing we can do as translators is to help get the word out about Gengo. I’m lucky to be working in two high-volume language pairs, but it is beneficial to recommend Gengo to acquaintances for their translation needs as many small contributions can lead to big results over time.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, treat each of the clients on Gengo like they are your only customer. It doesn’t matter if they only ordered translation for a small blurb or a large project. If you give your best service every time, I guarantee you will be selected as a Preferred Translator much more frequently, giving you more opportunities to work on more translations and boost your word count.

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