The following are not merely translation specialties, but represent areas of interest and skills that I take a personal interest in expanding and keeping up-to-date:

• Trainer-level expertise in Internet engineering and software development.
• Broad college-level reading in most "hard" sciences.
• Book-study and on-the-job experience with US and Japanese corporate law.
• Firm general business / corporate finance / US real-estate background (license-holder).
• Scattered grad-school level reading in most technical fields (exception: chemistry).
• PhD-level reading knowledge of English and Japanese.
• Expanding biotechnology and medical background (oncology in particular).
• Writing/editing skills: College-level (Japanese); Publishable-as-is (English)
• Experience teaching and leading teams of translators and SW & WWW localizers.
• Excellent technical consecutive interpretation skills, and will seek certification for legal.

I am very serious about translation quality (both Quality of Service (QoS) in my business dealings, and fidelity of work-product as a deliverable), as reflected in my current position as Chair of the American Translators Association's Quality Standards Committee (the TCD Best Practices Committee).

I am scrupulous in making sure that I (and my colleagues, when we work in teams) understand everything in the source text from which I am translating.

I have learned the hard way that many practitioners do not bother to do this, and do not bother to tell you so, either! If you are translating a market analysis report including reference to a company that makes heavy machinery and rolling stock, and you do not want "rolling stock" (meaning railway carriages) to be translated as "rotating equity-certificates," then it makes sense for you to interview your linguist in person. (This example was actually encountered in a "live" job, and is typical in the Jap <=> Eng market, even when dealing with translators who have years of experience).

Even a few questions will generally suffice (to make sure they do not simply cut-and-paste answers from the web, ask them an informally-phrased follow-up question or an opinion question). If you have a software-related job, ask them for an opinion on OOP versus traditional procedural and structured programming. If you're doing biotech, ask them a bit about protein structure or introns.

I am a linguist by vocation, and a software developer by avocation, and have had two parallel careers, the first as a Japanese translator and the second as an Internet engineering manager. I am also entertaining going to law school starting in either the Spring or Fall 2004 semester, based on an enjoyment of a variety of law-related work and study I have done in the past, especially while consulting with companies registering business entities in Japan.
I try to give a maximum of value back to the market by providing top-level translation and interpretation services at a variety of rates (i.e. not exclusively high ones) and working both for agencies (with whom I do not compete) and for direct clients.


I try to give a maximum of value back to the market by providing top-level translation and interpretation services at a variety of rates (i.e. not exclusively high ones) and working both for agencies (with whom I do not compete) and for direct clients.

Rates and Terms:
I try to keep my rates at least 20% lower than the average for this level of fidelity, so I need to be conservative about assurances of payment. First-time clients are requested to pay 1/3 at project initiation for large jobs that would require my refusal of other work. The remaining amount is split 50/50 between date of delivery and 30 days thereafter. Dun and Bradstreet rated clients and those with excellent payment references in all on-line reputation-checking fora are given "trusted client" terms even for a first job. Interpretation and consultation fees are to be paid "net 30" from job completion, or from end-of month invoicing cycle, unless otherwise arranged.
For future jobs, standard payment terms may be agreed upon in advance (generally "net 30" to "net 45" Discounts are given for early payment (generally 10% for pay-upon-delivery), and penalties are charged for delinquency.

TRANSLATION RATES:
1st 15 hrs. each week* 12.5 cents/word
next 10 hrs (hrs. 16-25)* 17 cents/word
next 10 hrs (hrs. 26-35) 23.5 cents/word
next 10 hrs (hrs. 36-45) 33.5 cents/word
next 10 hrs (hrs. 46+) 50 cents/word
*whenever possible, I book new clients and steady-volume (continuous, low-urgency) work first in these lower-rate slots.
(For most connected-prose text, my raw translation throughput averages 400-550 words per hour before checking. Checking time varies depending on format, proper-noun content, etc.)