Never Too Old to Learn (6/6投稿記事「六十の手習い」の翻訳）
There is a saying that goes “You 're never too old to learn.” After officially retiring at 65, I began to actually focus on translating. Until then, while I did spend a long time living overseas, and even had many opportunities to use English when I returned to Japan, reading and writing essays, doing editing and so forth, I was worried, in the end I still felt like as a translator, I was at an amateur level. However, at the place where I found re-employment [1], there were American checkers permanently stationed and would everyday provide corrections to the translations done by my humble self. Japanese checkers would identify the unnatural parts of any Japanese I dealt with. Furthermore, very kind customers have even pointed out when a translation did not convey the nuance which they desired. These were all precious learning experiences.
Unlike for doctors or lawyers, translators do not have a national qualification. I have taken the Japanese Translation Federation sponsored certification exam many times, and over the course of the last year have earned the top qualification for the field of Scientific Technology in both Japanese to English and English to Japanese. Due to this, I was able to register for the Japanese Registration of Certificated Auditors and Experts (JRCA) Registration Center for Certified Translators (RCCT) as an Advanced Professional Translator (International Translation Standard ISO17100) in Japanese and English as well as English to Japanese for the fields of industry and science technology.
To sum all that up, as a professional translator I was able to earn a satisfactory amount of qualifications. This is all of course due to the help of the customers, the president of the company where I found re-employment, my co-workers and my family. However, there is still a profound depth to foreign languages and even Japanese, which I have yet to even explore the half of. From here on out I will continue to devote myself to my studies.
