Qualities of a Good Translator: I have outlined my definition of good translation on the Quality page and the My QC Approach page. To produce good translation, a good translator must possess certain skills, work habits and practices, which I have outlined below. It is also important to bear in mind that these skills are interdependent and mutually complementary.

• Strong Language Skills: A translator must have that quality generally associated with translating, namely the ability to understand the source language, in this case, Japanese. Japanese is a highly contextual language. A given sentence in English is very frequently able to stand on its own and remain intelligible. This is much less often the case in Japanese.

• Strong Background in Fields of Specialization: A translator's good background knowledge enables him to correctly interpret text written in a specialized field such as economics or law and to correctly translate that text into language that a target audience of similar specialists will recognize as easily intelligible, familiar, natural and idiomatic. A translator must always translate with an understanding of the content, which is why background knowledge is so important. However, this also applies to the checker and proofreader as well.

• Excellent English Writing Skills: A translator must also have outstanding writing skills in his own language. For a discussion of my views on good English style, please see the Working with Independent Translators page.)

• Good Judgment of Style and Terminology: A translator must be able to judge the appropriate style and degree of flexibility. He must also judge which among a group of highly similar words is the best in a given context. He must have good research skills and never blindly follow bad precedents.

• Effective Terminology Management System: A translator must have a system to ensure accuracy and consistency in the use of terminology. (For a description of the system I use, please see the Terminology Management page.)

• Professional Attitude: The hallmark of a professional attitude is taking full responsibility for one's work. Thus a translator with a professional attitude goes through his work many times focusing each time on accuracy, tone, terminology and errors of detail such as spelling, dates and proper nouns. He considers his job done only when he can find no mistakes and the job is as perfect as he can make it. This is the attitude of a master craftsman. Such craftsmen tend to specialize in serving clients for whom quality is the most important value. But a master craftsman also knows that quality is impossible without honesty. He knows that he is not infallible and never ignores a problem point that he is unsure about. Thus, he never fails to bring any problem points to the attention of the client and continues working with the client until they are resolved satisfactorily.