japanese to english translator needed!

[Julie Koo]

thank you everyone for your comments on the wrongful undervaluing of
translators and other cultural workers in this culture. this kind of
discussion is definitely both important and useful. however, as the
originator of the query, however, i would like to correct the mistaken
belief that kaya is a major -- or even minor -- corporate, commercial
interest. my apologies for not having given more background information on
kaya when i asked julie koo (kaya's managing editor) to post that notice
for a translator for our forthcoming takeshi kitano book.

to clarify: kaya is a not-for-profit independent publisher of asian
diasporic literature and culture. it consists of a staff of two -- julie
koo and myself, sunyoung lee; neither of us are being paid any kind of
salary at all. in fact, both of us have to work part time at other jobs in
order for it to be possible for us to do the work that we do at kaya. i
don't mean to imply by this that because we are not getting paid, we don't
have to pay anyone properly. i only mean to say that the kinds of attitudes
that lead to the systematic undervaluation of cultural work affect
independent publishers as well as writers, translators, and the other
cultural workers. we make every effort to scrape up or fundraise the money
that we use to pay the freelancers who work for us. we never ask for people
to work for us for free, although we do not ourselves receive a salary. any
money that is made off of any of our books go directly back into the
company towards keeping books in print, or publishing of new books.

i bring all this up only to point out that there is oftentimes a
presumption that all publishing companies are the same -- they are
emphatically not. the reason why independent publishing companies are
necessary are precisely because most commercial ventures do not see the
worth of going through the effort of something so cost-intensive and
not-obviously-commercial as translations. if there was a choice between not
doing a book because we couldn't afford to pay the "standard rate" for
translators, and asking translators to accept a lower fee so that we can
publish the book, we would go for the second option every time. if we
thought otherwise, kaya would not exist at all -- not only would we not be
publishing books, having convinced ourselves it was unethical to do so, we
wouldn't think of working ourselves for something that wasn't paying us
what we deserve. if the worthiness of doing cultural work was assessed only
on an hourly rate basis, nothing except hollywood films, top-forty music,
and sidney sheldon novels would exist.

that being said, we are in no way forcing people to translate for us.
people can make up their own minds about the kinds of projects they feel
merit their involvement, as well as the kind of compensation that they
require. i agree that translators should acquaint themselves with standard
rates and make informed decisions about the work they choose to do. i fully
respect people's decisions not to respond to the query, and i fully respect
translators who are unwilling to work under the conditions that i've put
forth. in fact, i included the kinds of compensation we could offer and the
time frame that was required by us precisely because i did not want people
who responded to feel as if they had been misled in any way.

thank you to those who did reply to the query, and who have been thoughtful
about trying to find out more about kaya and its work.

sunyoung lee
editor
kaya
sunyoung at kaya.com