Business emails

[Warren Smith]

ご対応の程宜しくお願い致します。

What are the full implications of this?

Is this saying "please handle this," or is it a meaningless phrase (like "best regards" when you are actually feeling animosity)?

 

I am sure there are (or at least should be) master's thesis on this topic, but what is the take on this that my general translation colleagues have for a patent translator like me?

Thanks,

 

Warren

 

 

[Alan Siegrist]

Warren Smith writes:

ご対応の程宜しくお願い致します。

What are the full implications of this?

Is this saying "please handle this," or is it a meaningless phrase (like "best regards" when you are actually feeling animosity)?

 

I am sure there are (or at least should be) master's thesis on this topic

 

Not exactly, but here is an extensive treatment of this particular phrase which is very common in general business correspondence.

http://nomad-salaryman.com/gotaiou-nohodo-onegai

 

The short answer is that it is mostly simply saying “please handle and take care of this” (naturally very formally) whatever the request might be.

 

Regards,

 

Alan Siegrist

Monterey, CA, USA

[Herman]

On 10/22/21 12:06 PM, Warren Smith wrote:
> ご対応の程宜しくお願い致します。
>
> What are the full implications of this?
>
> Is this saying "please handle this," or is it a meaningless phrase (like
> "best regards" when you are actually feeling animosity)?

It could be saying "please handle this", although the sense of 対応 here
may often be closer to "please accommodate my request", so one could
say, e.g. "Thank you for your cooperation".

Herman Kahn

[Warren Smith]

Thanks.

I think that I generally say "Thank you for your cooperation," but wanted to
check in with my colleagues on this.

By the way -- work was very sparse for a few months, and I was actually
considering leaving the industry. But last month has been crazy busy. Is
anybody else experiencing these cycles?

[Alan Siegrist]

Warren Smith writes:

> I think that I generally say "Thank you for your cooperation," but wanted to
> check in with my colleagues on this.

That is generally fine, but I often use "thank you in advance" because this carries a tone of a request.

> By the way -- work was very sparse for a few months, and I was actually
> considering leaving the industry. But last month has been crazy busy. Is
> anybody else experiencing these cycles?

I have experienced a very similar cycle, although there have been other reasons why I did not make myself as busy as possible.

[Paul Koehler]

> By the way -- work was very sparse for a few months, and I was actually
> considering leaving the industry. But last month has been crazy busy. Is
> anybody else experiencing these cycles?

I have experienced a very similar cycle, although there have been other reasons why I did not make myself as busy as possible.

Regards,

Alan Siegrist
Monterey, CA, USA

The up and down for me has been the worst since I started translating 10 years ago. I have nothing for an extended period of time, then triple my normal workload for a brief period.

I have no idea why, I'm just trying to get some other clients to help balance this out (although many of them went dormant when the pandemic began.)

Paul Koehler

 

[Karen]

I was actually fine during the lockdown period, keeping busy and well-financed with three major projects and just having received payment for a large job. That  payment in March 2020 was originally intended to be my "go to IJET" money but ended up as part of my survival money.

However, I had nothing  in June, July, or August and only little three-figure jobs since then. I accepted an inquiry for a CSR job connected with a media company, but then the agency decided to divide it up among several translators. One of my favorite things to translate is tourism blurbs, and I had great hopes for the Tokyo Olympics, but guess what, no tourists allowed. My other favorite specialties, visual art and performing arts, also took a hit during the pandemic.

At one agency, which I have worked for since 1997, "Hi, I'm still alive" e-mails to coordinators I had worked with in the past bounced, although the company appears to be still in existence. Not being able to make courtesy calls in Japan seems to have had an effect. Fortunately, I have Social Security and can dip into the modest inheritance that my stepfather left, but that cannot continue indefinitely. 

ATA is going to be in Minneapolis next week, and while there is little of interest to J>E translators, I intend to take advantage of being able to attend without paying hotel bills or airfare. We shall see what happens there.

In the meantime, if any of you receive inquiries about jobs in the visual or performing arts, tourism, international relations, ODA, transportation and urban planning, social sciences, or education that you hesitate to handle, please send them on to me.

Thanks in advance, or as they say in Japan, よろしくお願い致します。

Pavement poundingly yours,

Karen Sandness

[Dan Lucas]

Financial work has been OK, a bit slow at times, manic at others. May was my biggest ever month, and demand has remained pretty solid.

I would remind people that even back in the second half of CY2019 the global economy was clearly slowing, and the pandemic is arguably the largest peacetime economic event in history in absolute terms. One would have expected a ton of volatility, particularly in areas that depend on discretionary spending, and indeed that's what we're seeing.

Now global GDP is attempting to go through a recovery-driven expansion, but this has been so unprecedentedly sharp that suppliers simply cannot keep up (see also semiconductor shortages, etc.), and neither can transportation/logistics. So that supply-chain crunch is crimping economic output just when we should be seeing a rebound in activity. In effect, the rebound has become a victim of its own strength.

Naturally that has implications for us translators. For example, if a lack of shipping capacity means you can't deliver a newly launched machine tool to any US customers for another seven months, why do the translation of the user manual now? Why not wait four or five months and see what happens?

It'll work itself out eventually, but these are not normal times and we can't expect normal patterns of demand.

Regards,

Dan Lucas

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[Carl Sullivan]

Team,

We are working very steadily. It helps to have a Korean/Japanese combination--when one Language slows down another goes. We had a bit of a slow down last summer, but aside from that we are and have been at a normal pace. I am trying to help rescue my Afghan interpreters now (was formerly a Navy officer and deployed there-had interpreters assigned to me), and that is cutting into my volume (and greatly into my sleep time), but we are doing well. I do think that expanding your genre and having courage to explore new areas beyond your comfort zone is one key.

Carl

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/honyaku/48358bed-4d36-4382-89e4-a24a91282fca%40www.fastmail.com.

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Masae and Carl Sullivan 

MasaCa Translation Services, LLC 

CDR Carl Sullivan, USN Retired

Disabled Combat Veteran Business Owner

P.O.Box 145

Manti, UT. 84642 

Cell: 801-369-1501 

[John Stroman]

Karen and colleagues,

I've been lucky. My overall workload has remained steady because my primary customer is under legal obligation to publish a large volume of documents every month.

That customer is experiencing internal disruptions, however, so the job packages arrive later in the month than before, but  the monthly submission date remains unchanged. The result for me has been more idle time between job packages, and then working every day for three weeks in a row to meet the prescribed deadline. Obviously, that is much more stressful than before the pandemic, and I am grateful for a tolerant and understanding spouse.

Offers from my secondary customers have all but evaporated. Those jobs too involve translations intended for publication (academic and regulatory), but the submission timelines are not as clearly defined. I expect work from my secondary customers to pick up again once the worldwide economy starts to recover.

John Stroman (chemical and biomedical patent and regulatory documents)

[Warren Smith]

There is a lot of variability in how much work I have. Here is my history (words per month) since Jan 2010. The frequency of "very poor months" (under 50k words) is increasing, and frequency of "very good months" (over 150k words) has gone down from fairly common to nearly non-existent...

 

Combined with a downward pressure on prices, this is not a good trend...

 

 

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