I met with Yoko Ikegami in Yokohama, a translator who dabbles in cat rescue, music, and English teaching. Crystal of the Wellesley Tokyo club was able to connect us, and we met in her “Raku-En Salon,” a space available for rent where English lessons, healing ceremonies, and much more are held. 

 

Career Path

 

Yoko majored in German language in college at Dokkyo University, though she originally planned on majoring in Spanish, having failed her Spanish entrance exams. However, she said that it turned out to be a good thing, since her German professor was very good. His focus was on translation, and he was working on translating works by Bach. 

 

Out of college, she first worked as a salesperson, but then became involved in translation work and found that she liked it. In her early to mid twenties, she worked at an English teaching school for a while, while also doing freelance translation. At 29, she quit and started her own English teaching school. While not her original plan, she was asked by some parents to teach their children, and expanded from there. Her teaching philosophy was distinct from that of the school she had worked at previously. In her teaching method, there is a heavy emphasis on context and real-world applications of language. 

 

Her translation work also expanded when she was asked to take on a large project and needed to recruit more people to work with her. From there, she started her own translation company, consisting of seventy translators.

 

Realizing that there weren’t many facilities to rent for meetings or workshops locally, Yoko helped to create the Raku-En Salon, where we met and talked, a conveniently located room available to book for events like lessons and meetings. Some of the English school’s lessons take place there, while others are online.

 

Current Life and Work

 

Yoko’s current daily life includes translation work, which is online, taking care of the eleven aged rescue cats she fosters, attending appointments with clients, doing accounting work for her translation company, taking university classes in Buddhism studies online, and her hobby of playing the piano with friends in bands. 

 

Her translation company, of which she is the CEO, Ohisama House, does a lot of translations for IT or tech companies, including IBM, as well as translating things like user manuals. They also consult with AI companies to improve AI translations. 

 

She commented that she preferred freelance work over company work, citing that the former lifestyle was much more free and unrestricted, and didn’t come with accounting work. Though, she also mentioned a time in her life when she was freelancing and struggling financially. 

 

Advice and Wisdom

 

Yoko has constantly adapted to new technologies over the course of her career, from the early days of the internet to now, with the rise of AI. When I asked her about her feelings towards AI, she expressed positive feelings and a lack of concern. She expressed that the current capabilities of AI for translating are poor, especially in regards to cultural context and nuance (“reading between the lines”), though she feels that if it improves, AI may become a helpful tool to teach young people. She said that AI might take away many translation jobs, but that that would allow translators to be more able to do creative writing translation work. She commented that modern Japanese young people struggle with formality nuance, which she expressed as a major career block in translation work in Japanese. So, two takeaways of hers were to adapt to new technology, and to understand the importance of nuance in language. 

 

Yoko also mentioned her musical hobby many times, stressing its importance in her life and for her mental health. When she first moved to the area, she only played solo and became depressed. To her, it’s really important to make time to play music with a group of other people. 

 

Her main piece of advice career-wise was to “never say no.” Most of the advancements in her career came from not being afraid to step up to new challenges. For example, one time she was asked to translate an advanced physics paper, something she didn’t understand at all, and bought a physics dictionary for more than the pay of the job. However, she didn’t regret it– she said that it was a good learning experience, and an investment.