Part-time job

I have been looking for a part-time job as English-Japanese translator/interpreter for the last two months. I had a few chances to contact with recruiting agent over the phone (I applied for several jobs but got less responses than that) and only one SNS-related company set up an interview for testing my English proficiency.

One problem is that I am not certain to continue to work after I go back to school in January. Actually, I will not return but transfer to other university and start new student life there from the first month of 2012. Because I have already earned enough credits to move in the new school during first semester I do not need to enroll anymore this year. So I have a plenty of free time till then. Why not work, make money and help with my brighter future? Yes, I am trying hard as I will explain later.

But timing seems to be not on my side. Plus my Japanese and English still have room to improve. Only hope is that I received a phone call yesterday and it left a message on my phone. It said "Our client is interested in your resume. Could you come to register your information at our office?" I wondered for a while because it was from an agent that previously sent me "Oinori mail" meaning a praying email (the most common phrase that hardcore job hunting 4th year univ/college student often finds in bottom of message when recruiters genuinely inform by email that s/he is dropped off the race) If it is not a mistake my job application for part-time sales promoter at electronic store has passed into consideration.

There is another hope yet less likely coming true since I somewhat mismanaged due to lack of preparation. Two weeks ago, my English profile was caught an eye of SNS operating company and I successfully managed to a meeting later. I knew it before that my English fluency was going to be tested but I had no idea what comes for the examination paper until that day. Although I was quite good at English-to-Japanese translation it became clear to me that Japanese-to-English translation especially business/formal ones were different at all. I spent most of time for Question 2 (Japanese > English) and probably it would reward lowest. What matters when translating Japanese business document or email is not your ability of English but how mature your Japanese is. I was not used to that type of document and phrases common among business persons so no substituting English vocabularies/idioms came up in mind at that time.

Positive side of job hunting is that I can challenge and measure myself with almost free and specifically designed examination for each job. I hope that the translation exam result would be higher than I expect and I could start working as a translator at the forefront company of Japanese IT industry.