Tokyo translation office

[Mrjones]

My girlfriend had to translate her moving notice from city office. We live in same appartment. The one piece of paper they had to translate consisted under 100 words. The translation cost about 10 000 yen. The quality of translation was absolutely horrible(many writing mistakes including mistakes on place names). Now I can understand that sometimes city names and such can be hard to translate becouse of Kanji. What i do not understand is how they can translate place names which are located in tokyo.. and place them to gunma regarding the paper they had to translate.

 

[ricecake]

Do you mean bad English translation or possibly mis-communication ?


Oh,you're here ranting

 

[Mrjones]

yups.. I rant when sometimes

 

[Thunderthief]

Most Japanese are not very good at English, I don't understand why they don't let you do the translations yourself.

Most Japanese English teachers ive ran into have worse grammar than me and all I have is a GED.

 

[DoctorP]

Most Japanese are not very good at English, I don't understand why they don't let you do the translations yourself.

Because most foreigners Japanese is not that good! Kind of a trade off isn't it!

Even if your Japanese is good, usually ones vocabulary will not be good enough for translation of documents.

 

[Mrjones]

"Because most foreigners Japanese is not that good! Kind of a trade off isn't it!

Even if your Japanese is good, usually ones vocabulary will not be good enough for translation of documents."


My girlfriend is Japanese so reason is not really there. the reason is of course that self translation gives opportunity for cheating.

 

[DoctorP]

If your girlfriend is Japanese, then it is doubtful that her English is good enough for translation.

Now to answer your next statment (that is likely following)...the two of you would not be able to do this together unless your level of communication is supurb!

 

[Mrjones]

No of course she is not that good in English, but she is still pretty much translates most of my university papers for me.

 

[DoctorP]

That is understandable, and I am not saying that she can not get the point across. All that I am saying is that it is unlikely that she has the vocabulary to translate the necessary documents. 2nd, she can not translate legally as she has no authority to do so.

What truly sucks is that most translation offices use very poor English and even with the income that they are able to generate, they refuse to keep a native English speaker on the rolls to ensure proper translation happens.

Again, if they did have a native English speaker it could cause other problems...such as British English and American English do not always translate the same.

 

[Ewok85]

such as British English and American English do not always translate the same.

'scuse me, but as a person who does translations daily, whats that supposed to mean? In any legal or technical document there is no difference between British and American English that would change the meaning of anything.

10,000en for a 100word document is an insanely good rate (for the translator). That should have cost you no more than 2000en. Nice ripoff

 

[Mike Cash]

If the translation contained such huge errors as relocating sections of Tokyo to Gunma, you really ought to ask for your money back.

You won't get it, but you ought to ask for it anyway.

Next time you'll know to give it a quick check before you hand over the money.

 

[DoctorP]

'scuse me, but as a person who does translations daily, whats that supposed to mean?

It means just what it says...nothing more, nothing less.