Accreditation and risk in Japanese-English translation in Australia

June 2, 2014 2:21 AM

Am I correct in assuming that NAATI accreditation is not a legal prerequisite for undertaking translation work? How to mitigate risk as a freelancer?

My mother wants to take up freelance translation work (English-Japanese both ways) in Sydney. She isn't accredited by NAATI (exorbitant and takes very long), but translation and interpreting was part of her job many years ago, and she has transcribed documents more recently as a freelancer in Japan. She is native Japanese with a degree in American lit.

If there is nothing prohibiting her from taking up this kind of work, what can she do to mitigate risk, besides declining jobs involving the translation of legal contracts and affidavits, and medical documents; and asking clients to sign an acknowledgement that she isn't NAATI-accredited?

(Advice not related to risk would also be welcome. She expects finding clients will not be easy.)

posted by sakahane to Work & Money (4 answers total)

I work freelance J->E translation in Japan. My work comes through the internet and I could be paid more or less just as easily if I lived overseas. You're in basically the same time zone, too, which helps with working with Japanese companies. Hiwork.com is probably the easiest to get started with, to be honest.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:55 AM on June 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

(Oh, right. I'm not officially accredited in any meaningful sense other than that I produce high enough quality translation results that the agencies want to work with me again)
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:46 AM on June 2, 2014

Response by poster: Thank you! For the benefit of anyone reading this thread later: I think you meant hiwork.jp.
posted by sakahane at 4:29 PM on June 2, 2014

Oh, right. Also, I actually meant staff.hiwork.jp.
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:24 PM on June 2, 2014