Although I am normally not mad about sporting events, I did take notice of the Soccer World Cup held jointly in Japan and Korea during the last couple of months. From all appearances it was a great success, not just thanks to the great games, but also thanks to the language players who worked behind the scenes of this international event. In the last Asia-Pacific issue I mentioned that a number of MobileMT systems had been designed especially with the World Cup in mind. There was also an important effort by the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies which produced a Football Dictionary. The dictionary is in 8 languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish) in addition to Korean and includes 1600 items of soccer-related terminology. This was undertaken as part of the national BK (Brain Korea) 21 Project which provides funds to selected university programs in Korea to promote further research. Korea has some five university graduate schools specialized in translation and interpretation and most top Korean practitioners in the field are said to be from these institutions. This is quite a different situation from Japan as explained in the article In Search of Masters of Translation in Japan.

It is interesting to compare translator education in different countries around Asia Pacific. Not surprizingly it becomes clear that the interest in translation and interpretation often reflects each country's specific needs and circumstances. For example, Australia has known to be a nation of immigration and reflecting such status, the Australian government set up in 1977 the government body NAATI (National Accreditation Authority for Translators & Interpreters Ltd - http://www.naati.com.au). NAATI sets the standards for practicing translators and interpreters and also has an accreditation system for practitioners. With NAATI accreditation, University of Queensland's Master of Arts in Japanese Interpreting and Translation (MAJIT) was set up in 1981. MAJIT was a pioneering program covering Japanese and English which was extremely rare at the time. After teaching MAJIT for the last 15 years, Dr. Judy Wakabayashi is taking her wealth of experience to Kent State University which is starting a new Japanese translation program as she explains in the background in her article.

During the course of researching for this issue with its educational slant, we have come to realize that reliable current statistics on translation markets in Asia are lacking. I may raise the possibility of such a survey with relevant Japanese research organizations so watch this space. In the meantime, if you have any Asia-Pacific issues you would like us to cover in future, please let us know. Your feedback is always welcome!

We announce with sadness the recent passing of Luis Garcia-Barrio, long-time contributor to the GILT industry. We include a brief tribute to him with this issue.