Need advice.

[NekoGnash]

Say I were to SERIOUSLY consider trying to get a job with a localization/translation team as a full on career job thing.  [Can't believe I'm asking this board for advice *LOL* ONLY JOKING!] 

What would be a good plan of attack?  Any University/College courses in particular?  I mean besides a working knowledge of the Japanese language.

[Cheetah]

Well have the language as your major, plenty of english and writing credits (maybe even a minor in english), and definitely do some semesters abroad in Japan. I'm no expert on the subject but I would think that would be a good start.

[Kogahazan]

This page belongs to a guy who works as a Japanese-to-English translator. It's incomplete but what's there is fairly helpful.

http://tomato.fobby.net/old/jpntranslator1.htm

He's also helping out with the Mother 3 fan translation, as an aside.

[Carnivol]

Well, first of all, what is your desired position?

Do you want to be a translator?
Do you want to be a localization tester?

Translator:
-Should speak target language natively
-Should speak original language fluently.
-Should have a rich vocabulary in target language.
-Should have a good understanding of and knowledge about culture in general, both for target and original language.
-Should have a specialized subject in general that makes him/her the most attractive as a translator for specific jobs. ("So what if this guy translated *Insert AAA title here*. He doesn't know shit about cars, so we can't use him! End of discussion.")
-Should preferably understand a little bit of technical crap like text variables and evt. string IDs.

Localization tester:
-Should be a fast learner.
-Should be patient.
-Should speak target language with a rich vocabulary.
-Should have a good understanding of the rating system.
-Should have good knowledge of culture in the target language.
-Should be "at least" somewhat familiar with the original language and its rich culture.
-Should have a general interest in the genre of the title (or be interested and willing to learn and read up on it).
-Should be interested in games in general and preferably also have knowledge of games in general.
-Shouldn't be technically challenged and thus know when a problem is out of his/her hands and really requires someone else to take care of it.

I mean, these aren't exactly guidelines or anything.
Some of them cross each other... Like if of you're a faster learner, the technical issues wont be a problem 5 minutes after you've had an encounter with them.

I don't think there's like a bible on how to do work with localization, you can try to look at job ads in various companies and see what they require, to then also think; "What else can I contribute with to make the end result better?" (Basically, "Why am I the perfect guy for this job?").


Some might try to streamline the localization process as much as possible and more or less turn the entire localization job into a conveyor belt product and process. If you work for a company like that, don't let something like that get you down, as long as you're able to do your part of it and make an end result you're somewhat happy with or proud of, you've done much more than what's expected from you and chances are that you'll within no time be doing your own thing with more freedom for someone else (or by yourself).

The markets might differ a bit between countries, so I guess the "road to localization" might be a bit different for people around the globe.

I never had any linguistic background in school. Even a person in my class who didn't speak my language is "on paper" better in it than me. (Think that was more or less a product of interest in the subject and me skipping class and homework left'n right.)

I'm an educated advertisement creator and graphical designer. I've got nothing on my papers that indicates that I am prepared to do linguistic work for a living. (But so far that later part has worked out perfectly fine for 3 years, with multiple AAA titles and franchises "touched by me".)