How to start in translation?

I've been trying to figure this out for a while now but I can't seem to find a good starting place.
I've been studying Japanese for more than a year now in college and when on break I study on my own and a few classmates. I'm rather proficient a translating from Japanese rather than to Japanese; but I don't know where to start translating.
I guess that going to and finding a translation site online would be the best bet but I feel like I don't know if I would be able to keep up with the needs to translate chapters.
There are questions that I've never had answers to.
What sort of pace do you translate at?
How many projects do translators do at once?
What programs are used?
Do you just need a work program?
How long do you study before you feel as though you know enough or can do enough.
Basic questions like these that I've never found an answer for leave me standing on the outskirts of joining a translation group or seeing what I can do.
Sorry for the wall of text and questions, anything you can help with would be appreciated.

I too have been studying Japanese for quite awhile now, but only to accommodate my love for anime. As long as you understand the basic sentence structure and can comprehend the context of certain words, all you really need is a dictionary for the more complex kanji. I'm still stuck on memorizing Hiragana and Katakana, I have yet to step into Kanji let alone comprehend the basic sentence structure, etc. As for your other questions, I have no idea.

I underwent Japanese classes, albeit for one year.

As far as I got, I only have basic translation capacities.
You'll basically need to know Hiragana and Katakana, and Kanji is another case where you'll be fine as long as you got a list.

Kanji are a bitch because they are so numerous, but they have logical construction, especially in the complex forms.
Most of the more complex Kanji are formed with simpler ones that have a link toward the meaning of the complex kanji itself, making some easier to guess.

What you'll need is also to get a dictionnary with Romaji/english translation, especially when there is a lot of Katakana involved (common in manga aimed at younger people).

Do not expect to be a pro with my level, I can't read manga easily myself. I merely got a better understanding of how it works.

I can definitely understand that the best investment was in a dictionary and another for kanji alone.
I've got those but when I start to think of doing anything with a group I feel so hesitant as I don't know the requirements or even workloads of standard people versus the pros.

You should probably try translating games, ULMF and hongfire are good places to start, most of japanese games are very archaic written so we already have full set of tools to decompile them and a lot of guides and since there's dozen or so games coming out daily there's never enough translators so you coming in and picking one that looks interesting will certainly bring happiness to few people.

I hadn't thought of that. Translating games

A translator discusses the rule of Rubin

I'd suggest reading that article, its very enlightening. At least for me it was.

This varies from person to person, but I translate a bit slower than I my regular reading speed.
I say slower because understanding can be done at reading speed, but coming up with a proper english sentence equivalent sometimes takes time because of japanese's sentence structure.


One at a time? It's like how many stuff do you read at once.


None in particular.
For translating, some people that asks for just the script, a single .TXT is all you need, so you pick w/e editor you want.
If you mean "translating" as in "do everything" then Photoshop or equivalent is definitely required to clean, redraw and typeset.


Nope.


Depends on the person, and especially since for some reason japanese is seen as "hard". I studied for some time but I feel I was always stuck, never able to understand a thing.
Then one day I just decided "I'm going to learn this, for real" and in about a month or so I was translating my first project, released it to the public expecting heavy bashing (and hopefully corrections), but nope. Weird.

I don't know how it is/was for others, but at first I was hesitant, not confident at all. I was trying to double, triple check every sentence, because really, going from "wtf is this" to "I can... UNDERSTAND IT?!" in less than a month felt surreal.
I kept doing this, and after a while sentences started to feel more natural, and whenever I read something that I don't properly understand, then I know I'm going to translate it wrongly so I ask around, better than "guesslating".
There's still the issue of sentences I *think* I know, but I'm actually wrong, but those I can't find out until someone points it to me.

So I think it's not a matter of "how much you need to know", but how much you're willing to do. Like googling japanese expressions (in japanese!) to get their definitions, not being afraid to ask sentences you're unsure, etc


If you just want to translate, notepad is all you need. Also, you can always ask groups what they need and what you're willing to do. The other tasks besides translating are kinda easy to pick up (but not easy to master) so you can also help doing cleaning, typesetting, redrawing, etc on average level if you want to.

From what I've seen, editing work in general is more sought after.
I'm not really good at this and I can translate a 25ish page between 30m~1h, depending on how many unknown words/expressions it has (or just sheer quantity), while editing 25ish pages takes about 4~10 hours (redraws being the most time consuming in my experience).