04:02 Jun 19, 2008 

Hi again, as for your Q about using Kudoz, you can find everything you ever wanted to know and more at http://www.proz.com/?sp=about/kudoz, particularly #50 about grading multiple answerers (you can only award points to 1 answer, btw).

03:54 Jun 19, 2008 

Thanks for the tip. I am in Japan over the next few weeks so will head to kinkuniya and try and pick it up. Please let me know if there are any other dictionaries you recommend.

01:22 Jun 19, 2008 

Hi all, thanks again for all of your useful information and replies. I added some KudoZ points to Jean as I particularly like the translation "reshape", "transform". What is the general protocol for awarding KudoZ? Do people generally award it to all answerers in a ranked order or just the best answer or am I overanalysing this? :) Still getting used to this forum, so would appreciate some advice.

I appreciate all your help.

Mark

19:06 Jun 17, 2008 

Hi Mark,
Thanks for starting an excellent thread and taking a healthy look at what it takes to translate. You may also find HONYAKU forum interesting.
http://groups.google.com/group/honyaku

09:19 Jun 17, 2008 

Thanks for all of your replies. I'm not 100% not sure how to reply to them all individually as i'm still getting used to the website so will post general comments here.

Thanks for all the suggested translations. I'm glad to see i'm not the only one who thought innovate was strange in this context. You are correct. The checker is not a native English speaker. I deliberately left that out as didn't want that to influence your answer and I wanted to see if anyone would pick up on it.

I have a few other parts in the text that slightly concern me..... such as "but also the way that e-Business is provided". <-- This is how I translated it. Note that there is no 's' on 'way'. (above I accidently copied that part of the checker's text twice when I posted it so it shows as 'ways'). The checker added an 's' to 'way' and commented: 「方法」は1つとは限りません。よって複数形の方が良いでしょう。 I can see his point although I think that 'way' could mean either singular or plural depending on the reader (as there isn't much context here), so no need to make it plural. To my knowledge it's not necessary to specify and sounds unnatural... thoughts?

I'm relatively confident about my Japanese ability(although I know I still have much to learn), It's more my English that concerns me! I basically did this course to get some feedback and build a little confidence and eventually build a career in translation. The course cost me 30,000 yen and for that they only check 200 words or so of translated text for 2 課題　so I feel slightly ripped off. It also makes me dread the days I do have non-native English checkers (I'm not judging here - I know that not there are very good non-native English checkers) check my English and actually make it worse. Have any of you had that experience?

I do a lot of translation on my own. I buy a lot of 対訳 books and practise translating with them and also enter competitions. If anyone has any suggestions on how I can get further experience before I start taking trials, please let me know.

Again, many thanks for all of your help.

Mark

06:34 Jun 17, 2008 

I'm interested also as to whether the checker is a native speaker of English or not. It doesn't sound like it.

06:23 Jun 17, 2008 

Hi Mark - the course (online? off-campus?) sounds interesting. Just curious as to whether your checker was a native speaker of EN or JP - do you happen to know?

05:06 Jun 17, 2008 

Further, I don't really see much of a difference between "innovate" and "revolutionize". I think they are nearly the same, and most English speakers would consider them very similar and probably interchangeable in this context.

05:05 Jun 17, 2008 

As a native English speaker, I must agree that to me, "innovate" is not a natural choice for this sentence. To me, "revolutionize" can certainly mean 革新する, etc. I definitely feel that "innovate" is an unnatural verb in this sentence.