Ohio Honyaku Group Summer Meeting Report
John Stroman
The Ohio Honyaku Group met on Saturday, July 11 at the Hilliard Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library.
Members presented and discussed a large number of topics from handouts.
Internet articles related to bilingualism and Japan
(1) How bilingual brains navigate between languages
https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/how-do-bilingual-brains-navigate-between-languages-scientists-discover-geometric-neural
(2) Japan moves to enforce language requirements for foreign nationals seeking permanent residency
https://japantoday.com/category/national/japan-moves-to-enforce-language-requirements-for-foreign-nationals-seeking-permanent-residency
(3) Speaking another language could slow aging in the brain
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-language-aging-brain.html
(4) A message exchange with a member who could not be present concerning Mercor, Inc.
Member (1): I had my semi-annual physical with my primary care physician. He knew I was a Japanese-English translator, and he mentioned that he had received a recruiting email on his personal mobile phone from a company called Mercor, Inc. Apparently, Mercor is a startup offering a service to AI providers like Open AI and Anthropic that has human experts correct AI output in many very specific technical fields.
If you Google “Mercor,” go to their homepage, and pull down “Experts” at the top, you arrive at a page entitled “Get paid to work on AI projects.” Although “translator” and “language expert” do not yield search results, if you type in the term “Japanese,” it appears they are hiring “Japanese Evaluator Experts” who can work remotely at a rate of $50/hr, and a link to apply appears by hovering over the title.
Member 2: Actually, I’ve already done some work for Mercor, but that project has already ended. I agree that they are a reputable company and pay reliably. The only issue is that, unless you are in a highly specialized field, there is extremely high competition for their jobs, and they recruit internationally since the positions are all remote. Also, even if the pay is $30-$40/hour, it does not include the time required to watch all their instructional videos, get the directions, and communicate about the schedule, etc. The pay is based on only the time that you are actually doing the work on the screen, and so I think that the actual pay was closer to $20-$25/hour. So, it was OK, and I’ll be open to doing more work in the future, but it’s not great work.
(5) Another member provided a handout on solving technical problems involving certain typographical characters in Japanese such as that are required by the Japan Patent Office for patent applications filed in Japanese but cannot be reproduced properly on the Windows IME application. The full content of the handout is as follows:
Regarding Windows 10 to 11 upgrading, Microsoft will support Win 10 until Oct 2027. This is only for the 64-bit version of Win 10. I think the 32-bit version is no longer supported with no update.
When I tried to upgrade of an old notebook PC, which had originally Win 7 and upgraded to Win10 a few years ago. I had several troubles with this notebook
i) Upgrading the existing Win10 to Win11 did not detect any problem and the upgrading was “successful” as the message was displayed on screen. However, the notebook was unable to boot because the notebook was unable to read the hard drive (HD)!
ii) A colleague of my school suggested to install Win10 to a blank HD, but I had the same problem.
iii) After searching a correct trouble shooting, the HD needs to be a specific partition table GPT (GUID Partition table), which is used for the capacity larger than 2TB. My HD has only 500GB, but even after I changed the partition table from MBR (Master Boot Record) using a free-software (Mini Tool Partition Wizard). I still had the same problem…
iv) After re-searching more troubleshooting, I noticed that boot mode of BIOS needed to be changed from Legacy Bios to UEFI (ref: MBR or GPT for SSD: Differences, Advantages, and How to Convert). Because my notebook PC was rather old, it used the traditional one (Legacy Bios). Luckily, the notebook PC was able to change BIOS to UEFI.
Note: UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a modern firmware interface that replaces the traditional BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) on PCs. It provides several advantages over BIOS, including faster boot times, support for larger hard drives, enhanced security features, and a more user-friendly interface.
v) With the bios changed to UEFI and the blank HD to have GPT, and the reinstall Win 11. This attempt was successful!
vi) However, the booting time and computational speed of the notebook PC became noticeably slow. I suspect this is due to the HD and lack of RAM. May be the CPU (Core i5, 2.7 GHz) is slow. It seems Win 11 needs at least 16 GB of RAM for better performance speed. The first thing I want to try to replace HD to SDD. I will report if it will be successful.
(5) Another member discussed a recent finding that in some companies, replacing human workers with AI has resulted in higher costs and less productivity than using the original human workers. Exemplary articles include:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/ceos-are-being-left-baffled-at-the-high-cost-of-moving-to-ai-shockingly-enough-sacking-human-workers-isnt-resulting-in-huge-savings
and
https://www.axios.com/2026/05/28/ai-spending-roi-enterprise-costs
(6) We also talked about the huge electrical power and water consumption of AI data centers, and how many incorporated villages and small cities in the greater Columbus metropolitan area have passed laws banning the construction of new data centers due to concerns by residents about adverse effects on their local electricity and water supplies, and on increased traffic congestion.
The fall meeting of the Ohio Honyaku Group is scheduled for Saturday, October 10 from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM at the Whetstone Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library (Different location from this year’s meetings, but same location as last year’s meetings).
Prepared by J.S.
Bill Lise
Thank you for that detailed report, John.
It’s interesting and surely a sign of the times that a meeting of translators didn’t result in much discussion of translation.
Regarding the newly proposed language requirements for foreign residence, most of the foreign residents who have reached Japan in the last five or 10 years have been brokered-in from China or, much more often, from Southeast Asia.
It appears that the brokers on the supplying side are giving some Japanese training to at least some of the people they send to Japan. That said, many of these people work on farms and in factories where their Japanese abilities are not 100% required, particularly if they have a gang boss of their own language and culture who can act as an intermediary.
Of course, things like elderly care would collapse in Japan without foreigners.
And with all of that going on, the entitled first-world and 1.5th-world foreigners here seem to be up in arms about a language requirement. This includes but doesn’t is not limited to the Nishi Azabu tribe, but that group sometimes works in foreign companies where they are surrounded by English-speaking Japanese employees who protect them from the Japanese-language world.
People from the disgruntled camp often complain that they shouldn’t have to know Japanese because they know English and know technology. They, of course, ignore the fact that they’re often trying to work in Japanese companies that are made up of…surprise… Japanese people who speak Japanese.
Regarding AI training and AI repair work, it appears that that is just about all that is left. Although I now almost never post on LinkedIn, almost every job I see that the Microsoft algorithm thinks I want to see there because I’m a translator is for AI repair work or AI training. Why would someone who is a translator want to lower their income to 1/3 or 1/4 of what they could’ve made it in a day when translators were actually asked to translate? Well, the answer is that they have mortgages, families to feed, and all sorts of other personal circumstances that prevent them from leaving agencies that are now only interested in AI repair work or companies that only want them to train their AI.
Bill Lise @ hot in Yokohama
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Bill Lise
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Kevin Johnson
So being a freelancer is fine for 3-year visa purposes as long as you have at least one single stable regular Japanese client.
Kevin Johnson
Osaka
Bill Lise
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