You know, that thought had crossed my mind in the past, but maybe tutoring would be a good fit. A big part of why I want to work in an office is because freelancing had lost the element of human interaction for me. When I started in the late 1980s, there were phone calls to arrange my schedule, visits to the office to drop documents off, etc., but after moving to the U.S. and with the advent of e-mail, I could go for years without actually talking to any of my clients in Japan. (There was no need to chat or schmooze or anything, because they kept sending all the work I could handle as it was.)
Tutoring would have that element of human interaction.
Man, if life were based on tests, I’d be on easy street. I searched for “personnel commission” and my local school district (in Illinois), and everything that came up was in California. (I see you’re in Texas.) So the terminology might be different here, but I’ll look into this. Thanks.
Yeah, I get that, but what is really behind my situation is a desire to rejoin the human race (slight exaggeration). I was freelancing and investing for the past 25 years, doing both out of my home with minimal human contact.
I am still in a position where I don’t HAVE to freelance for survival…but that won’t always be the case. If my situation was desperate, I’d be freelancing for sure.
This is a well-debunked myth and I wish people would stop repeating it. The percentage of working Americans who are self-employed has actually decreased over the past 20 years. The types of jobs available have certainly changed a bit, but full-time employment is still very much a thing.
Yeah, I think there is a place for a non-native in helping people who are just getting started, but I could be wrong on how the student would perceive that issue.
My accent is not bad (my wife is Japanese and we speak Japanese exclusively, and I have a decent ear), but I do have an accent.
Good for your daughter. Is she with Disney in the U.S., or in Japan? If she is learning Japanese in the U.S., my hat is off to her. I had to go live in Japan for a few years before I got to that level, and I doubt I could have done it without going the “immersion” route.
I got JLPT 1 in 2003, but that was because I hadn’t heard of it before then, and my then wife said I should take it just for the sake of having the certification. (I had been translating for about 15 years by then with all of the work I could handle, so I didn’t see the point.) When I went to take the test, people were cramming for the test in the hallway whereas I was just winging it, and I started to get nervous (“maybe I should have studied…”) but I passed. Didn’t ace it or anything, but I passed.
Thanks for the tip on Language Line. I’ll look at that.
Hmm, interesting. I added the “AFAIK” at the end of my post so as not to give the impression that it is something I have looked at in any depth. It is a pretty common meme - I hear it often on NPR (which is not a source I consider authoritative). Not to derail the thread, but where is the media getting this idea from? What data are they bludgeoning to reach these conclusions?
As you said, it is repeated very often; so often I was beginning to think it was a generally agreed upon thing.
The skill set you are bringing to the table allows for jobs in poorly paid, physically demanding service work or leveraging the skills you have in translation. If you are an introvert who has trouble in face to face interactions your technical translation skills would seem to be the leg you are going to have to stand on unless you have other desirable skills you have not discussed.
I’ll add another testimonial for Toastmasters: my father (like me) was very introverted, and got a lot of good out of Toastmasters. It didn’t turn him into an extrovert, but it did give him some tools to use; by the end of his working life he had a secure, well-paying job. Admittedly it was in accounting (where introverts tend to do well), but he was able to handle the constant meetings, etc., that are part of business life.
If you’re willing to learn about some of the hot technologies in biology today, there are about 10,000 Japanese biotech companies trying to put together English-language FDA filings, websites, grant applications, and papers for publication. It would probably have to start out freelance, but some of the larger companies would probably be willing to take you on full time pretty soon.
I know this guy who speaks Russian. He started his own translation company online from his home and companies pay him very good money to translate Russian to English documents of some sort. It’s nothing for him to earn a few thousand a week.
I read the whole thread. And I saw that I wasn’t the only person that thought, “Teach or tutor Japanese!”
I’ve taken classes in it myself (years ago, but with the BFF that ended up teaching English in Japan).
The best teacher was a professor at UT who was Japanese (he was into linguistics–that was probably what he was there for and the language thing was extra) so he was able to teach us about where the sounds come from and help us get the l/r thing right.
But I’ve also taken conversational Japanese at a community college (North Harris/North Harvard/ Now Lonestar). I think her qualifications were she was Japanese and spoke English. She was great, but not a teacher.
These were all years (maybe decades? ago) but fluency in more than one language in the US is an awesome skill.
