I want to become a Japanese-English translator in Japan, and I want to attend University for it?(Study abroad)?

The language is a little hard but easy to learn. They write in Kanji (Hard), Hiragana (Native/Easy), and Katakana (Foreign/Easy). They mostly speak in Japanese but they also know English so don't worry too much. The pronunciation of their language (A=A, E=like your saying huh in a E tone, O=O, I=E, U=OO) the letters with a line above it is pronunce as is. To make it easyer on you, listen to the way they talk (CD's, DVD's, Conversation) and you'll learn how to pronounce better. Helpful book: Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary Includes Romanization and Japanese Characters. By: Seigo Nakao. U.S. $12.95, Can. $19.95. I've learned around 400-600 Japanese sense I've got the book. I learn more than I do keeping track. (haha)

Translation career can be pain in the butt, and not necessarily paid well. Read about translation as a career (there are many English books on this) and check the honyaku Google group (a group for translators in Japan). The requirement to be a translator is Japan is not much other then experience and being capable to do it. So if you want a job, try to get experience (e.g. volunteering or freelancing in translation), and recommend you to get a professional degree (bizness, law, engineering, antyhing). Why? Because translators specialized in certain technical field have better pay and job security. Degree in translation is generally not required (and not known) in Japan. So focus on your language studies (both English and Japanese), and try to talk with agencies in Japan as well as freelancers. Both you can find in google and sites like mixi.

1. You need to gain complete or near-complete fluency in the language. Don't try to teach yourself, you will learn incorrect information and it will become much harder for you to learn the right stuff later on. Find classes at a local community college, or with a tutor, or if your state has a Japan Society see if they offer any. 2. Student visas do not permit most students from working. However, no one is going to hire you as a translator if you are not near-fluent. Knowing the basics isn't going to help you. 3. Yes, many universities both in the USA and in Japan offer study-abroad scholarships, as do many outside programs. 4. Translators overall don't make very much. It's a rather competitive field and highly dependent on making the right connections. You can make a living off of it eventually, but in the beginning it's generally a very tough time for most people. Whether or not a scholarship can be applied to study abroad depends on the stipulations of that specific scholarship. You cannot study abroad as a student and also have a career as a translator because of student visa working prohibitions. It is very hard to accurately determine language prowess, but in order to have any competency as a translator/interpretor you should have at LEAST a passing score at the JLPT 2 kyuu level. The JLPT is a Japanese proficiency exam (which is going through some changes now) where 1 is supposed to indicate someone who is fluent and 2 someone who is near-fluent. I can't imagine a company hiring someone (especially someone who has no reputation in the translation world) with scores other than those. HOWEVER, you might be interested to know that there is (well, was... Japan is currently kicking many out) a large Brazilian population in Japan and so if you study Portuguese as well as Japanese in college you can greatly increase your chances of being hired. There are also populations of others from Latin American countries, some of which I'm sure speak Spanish, and so you could use that as an asset so that even if you can't land anything translating between English and Japanese you may be able to find something between Spanish and Japanese or Spanish and English or Portuguese and Japanese/English. Of course, you will need fluency in all of these languages.