In this blog I am going to discuss aspects of my job as a Japanese to English technical translator. I've been working for about a year now as a translator, but I used to do translation occassionally for my previous job as well.
Once I started translating full time I noticed that my eyes were getting very tired at the end of each day. It wasn't that I wasn't used to reading in Japanese, as I'd been reading novels rather frequently for many years, but rather that translation is just harder on the eyes than ordinary reading. For most of the day my eyes have to dart back and forth between my two computer screens as I search for the best possible way to express some Japanese term or concept in English. At first this was a daily problem, and I was worried about possible long-term effects, but now my eyes are fine even at the end of a very long day. One reason is simply that my eyes have become stronger, but I also owe much of my newfound comfort to these simple steps that I took to take some of the burden off of my eyes:
1. Make text bigger. I regularly set the text size in word processors and PDFs high enough so that the text I want to read just barely fits into the screen, or sometimes even larger than that. Bigger text = happier eyes.
2. Close your eyes when thinking. When I used to stumble across a difficult to translate passage, I would keep reading it until I thought of a good translation. Now I read a passage until I understand it, then I close my eyes so that they don't keep wandering over the passage as I'm thinking about how to best render it in English.
3. Use search features as much as possible. Skimming through a document to find a particular word or passage puts lots of strain on your eyes. It's always better to just let the computer do the searching for you. You can also save time by remembering search keyboard shortcuts and making new shortcuts of your own.
4. Excercise. I find that getting up and moving around for even just a few minutes works wonders for my eyes. I suppose that the increased circulation helps to reduce muscle fatigue.
Once I started translating full time I noticed that my eyes were getting very tired at the end of each day. It wasn't that I wasn't used to reading in Japanese, as I'd been reading novels rather frequently for many years, but rather that translation is just harder on the eyes than ordinary reading. For most of the day my eyes have to dart back and forth between my two computer screens as I search for the best possible way to express some Japanese term or concept in English. At first this was a daily problem, and I was worried about possible long-term effects, but now my eyes are fine even at the end of a very long day. One reason is simply that my eyes have become stronger, but I also owe much of my newfound comfort to these simple steps that I took to take some of the burden off of my eyes:
1. Make text bigger. I regularly set the text size in word processors and PDFs high enough so that the text I want to read just barely fits into the screen, or sometimes even larger than that. Bigger text = happier eyes.
2. Close your eyes when thinking. When I used to stumble across a difficult to translate passage, I would keep reading it until I thought of a good translation. Now I read a passage until I understand it, then I close my eyes so that they don't keep wandering over the passage as I'm thinking about how to best render it in English.
3. Use search features as much as possible. Skimming through a document to find a particular word or passage puts lots of strain on your eyes. It's always better to just let the computer do the searching for you. You can also save time by remembering search keyboard shortcuts and making new shortcuts of your own.
4. Excercise. I find that getting up and moving around for even just a few minutes works wonders for my eyes. I suppose that the increased circulation helps to reduce muscle fatigue.
Thank you for working so hard!
I agree that working in front of a computer
all day can really wear out your eyes.
I found some articles on how to relieve
eye strain. Hope this helps.
http://www.wikihow.com/Relieve-Eye-Strain
http://www.wikihow.com/Exercise-Your-Eyes