Hello, everyone. My name is Bryan Lee and I am a full time translator. (I’ll introduce myself again later if I get the chance.)
I like my work, have an aptitude for it, and in my opinion, am also quite good at it. However, when I first started translation eight or nine years ago, I knew absolutely nothing about the translation business and pretty much had to crash headfirst into the ground. Becoming a translator is a decision I made after much thought, so I was sure of my goal and highly motivated, but if I knew back then what I know now, I think I would have been able to get to where I am now much more easily. Of course, that’s not to say I have any regrets; I was able to gain lots of experience through trial and error, discovery, resolution, decision, strategizing, strategy revision, research, re-revision, etc., and I could only get that experience by crashing headfirst into the ground.
Later on, some people asked me about translation work, and I ended up introducing it to quite a few people. Out of those people, a few have successfully stuck with translation and still thank me for it today. I’ve found that once a conversation about starting translation as a business has begun, it takes at least five hours to get through even if I try to condense it, and afterwards, I still need to continue mentoring over the phone for the next few months before my mentees were able to become somewhat independent. That’s why I thought it would be nice to upload the knowledge and techniques I have acquired over the years onto a blog. Through this blog, I would be able to communicate with others who have been translating for a long time and, in particular, be able to encourage those trying to start their translation career. There are so many things that I want to write about and share with you. I will upload my blog posts one by one with particular categories in mind; I think doing so will also help organize my thoughts. Let’s begin!
