John Fry

I've been working full-time as a professional Japanese-English translator since 2009. I translate mainly technical and business documents, including websites, reports, presentations, press releases, technical manuals, and scientific papers, from Japanese into English. My long experience allows me to translate Japanese documents into natural, idiomatic English, while retaining the precision, nuance, and persuasiveness of the original. I typically work through language service providers (translation agencies), but I'm sometimes available for individual projects for direct clients, or I can recommend other translators for these projects.

I am a member of the American Translators Association (ATA) and the Japan Association of Translators (JAT). 

Background

I earned a BA in Linguistics and Computer Science from UCLA, followed by a Ph.D. in Linguistics, with a minor in Computer Science, from Stanford University. After earning my Ph.D., I worked as a computational linguist (at PARC, SRI, and elsewhere) and taught courses in linguistics and language technology at San Jose State University and Boise State University. I also spent several years living in Japan, working at Koei (in Tokyo) and NAIST (in Tsukuba). Although I enjoyed my time in the corporate, academic, and research arenas, I'm happiest being a self-employed translator because the work is challenging and fascinating, I can choose my own hours and workplace, and there are no meetings!

Testimonials

• What I wanted to say was understood properly. The quality of English sentences was also very good.
  
• Excellent translation. Keep up the great work!
  
• Provides high quality work with quick turnaround times.
  
• As always your quality levels are excellent; the changes made by the client are all minor and are well within our SLA thresholds, so I’m a happy Quality Manager :-)
  
• とてもわかりにくい和文を、すっきりとした英文にしてくださりありがとうござ いました。
  日本人ですが、和文よりもFryさんの英訳の方が、はるかに読みやすかったです。
  
• Fryさんにいい翻訳を上げてもらい助かりました。
  
• ジョン様の英訳は大変質が高く、本当に助かっております。
  

情報セキュリティ対策

• 翻訳データと成果物データの送受信後に、適切な保管を行っている
• PCをパスワードで保護している
• 該当フォルダーやHDDをパスワードで保護している
• 自分以外の人とPCや文書フォルダの共有設定をしていない
• 翻訳終了後に該当データを破棄している
• PCや資料の盗難、火災等に対する予防措置を行っている

Document Security Policies

My clients include international law firms and some of Japan's largest multinational corporations. I am committed to protecting their documents and files through security best practices, including:

• Strictly obeying the terms of signed NDAs.
  
• Never storing client files on portable USB storage devices.
  
• Never posting to blogs or social media.
  
• Never outsourcing translation work to other translators.
  
• Backing up daily to a secure, private remote server (not "the cloud").
  
• Destroying all materials (source, target, reference, and backup) upon completion of a project.
  
• Keeping computers free of malware and file-sharing programs.
  
• Using high-strength encryption, MAC and port filtering, and email over SSL/TLS.