[MMM]

That's interesting Nyororin...

I started out at a small translation company. There are many Japanese companies with offices around Portland, Oregon, so there was fairly steady work. Only a lot of it wasn't very interesting to me, personally. Lots of factory equipment manuals and things like that. The more interesting stuff was promotional material, a dating service website, some advertising text for toys and cosmetics, but those didn't come in so often.

At the same time, I started writing a monthly article in a local Japanese/English newspaper. The column is on Japanese media available in English. This got me talking to publishers, and eventually, asking about translation work.

I got to get to know the folks at a major manga publisher that happens to be HQ'ed close to my house. Once they got to know me and knew my work, they asked me to do a job for them, and it has led to pretty steady work. At the same time I work with a "pool" of translators that share work and so I get some work that way, but it isn't very steady (but a lot of the clients are in Tokyo, so pays well).

I did major in Japanese in college.

Contracts are a tricky thing... I am probably not good with that. For soft documents (jobs that are in a computer file) I usually as for a per/character scale. (it averages to about 2 Japanese characters to 1 English word). That way I know the rate before I begin, and there's no fear of me padding the translation to increase the pay.

I have no special certification, but experience is the best in. That means you may need to do some volunteer work to get practice.