Ohio Honyaku Group Fall Meeting Report (cross-posted to JAT chat forum)
John Stroman
Starting with the provenance of a box of letters he had received from the local township historical society in Ohio, Cliff's adventure involved a trip down the rabbit hole relating to internment camps during WWII, including those in Japan. Cliff explained the issues he encountered in interpreting katakana letters written by Nisei children in the US with minimal education in Japanese. The letters were mostly to and from inhabitants of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming that forcibly confined over 10,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast starting in August 1942.
We also had a short discussion concerning the value of bachelor's degrees in the liberal arts. Many potential employers now demand that applicants must hold a STEM degree to be interviewed. Moreover, as they struggle financially due to the sharp and unexpected drop in the number of international students, many colleges and universities are discontinuing majors in fields such as the social sciences, foreign languages, philosophy, music, and other liberal arts.
We also discussed the current state of the translation/interpretation business. John S distributed a handout of an article that had appeared in Slator.com on the role of translators/interpreters as "gluers of tasks," which he had previously posted on the Honyaku mailing list. We then discussed the response posted by Geoffrey Trousselot and his conclusion:
"In the short term, corporate customers want to feel assured, rather than dealing with the stress of doing it themselves, they want to be guided through the process. They want to know the subtle impressions made on the reader, and advice from native language specialists who fully understand the Japanese and English terms and expressions."
John predicted that although the business model in the translation industry has traditionally involved translation agencies with stables of freelance translators, it will likely transition into "agencies" comprising a few very large players that have rebranded themselves with titles such as Language Service Provider, etc., and offer wide-ranging services based on MT and AI with a human (an expert-in-the-loop) performing post-editing tasks.
John believes, however, that MT and AI cannot provide the necessary confidentiality for intercorporate negotiations and written R&D results (including patent applications), and they cannot capture cultural nuances implied in the source language in fields such as literature (including manga) and spoken communication (including speeches). Humans can still play an invaluable role in providing accurate communication, possibly by working with direct clients who require such confidentiality and trust.
In new business, we decided to shift our quarterly meetings forward one month to avoid scheduling conflicts with year-end holiday events normally held each December. The meeting room at the Whetstone Branch will be unavailable in the future on Saturday afternoons. Therefore, we have booked the meeting room from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM on January 10, 2026 at the Hilliard Branch of Columbus Metropolitan Library.
Report compiled by John S.
