Under the forward-looking leadership of Professor Greg Shreve, the Institute is already well known for its MA-level translator training programs in French, German, Russian and Spanish, and for its strong focus on localization and related areas. Because of the Institute's record of success, Kent State University's academic leadership recently designated its translator training program one of the top five academic areas to be targeted for strategic development and investment. This will allow the Institute's translation programs to expand to meet the needs of today's rapidly changing language industry. Strategic development plans call for laboratory expansion, new translation languages, a doctoral program in translation studies and new faculty positions in language engineering.

In fact, the addition of Japanese to the translation program is one of the first initiatives in the development plan to be implemented. Awareness of the demand for more translators of Japanese led to a decision to introduce a new concentration in Japanese-English translation, with classes commencing from the fall semester 2002. Qualified translators of Japanese are in short supply both in Japan and in English-speaking countries, and there is a particular need for translators who are equipped to deal with the increasingly technical aspects of translation, both in terms of text content and the tools used to assist in the translation process.

In this respect the Translation MA at Kent State is perfectly geared to meet the needs of industry and the market, as the Institute is widely recognized as a leader in incorporating training in the technological aspects of the translation profession. In addition to language-specific translation courses (an introductory Translation Practice course followed by Literary and Cultural Translation; Scientific, Technical, Medical Translation; and Commercial, Legal, Diplomatic Translation), all students are required to take core courses involving Documents in Multilingual Contexts, as well as in Terminology and Computer Applications for Translators (essentially computer-assisted human translation), Software Localization, and Project Management in the Language Industry.

Readers of The LISA Newsletter will no doubt be familiar with the work of the Institute's Professor Sue Ellen Wright, a well-known expert in terminology management, who has coordinated activities for several years now for the LISA LEIT initiative. In 1998 Kent State hosted the "Language in Business/Language as Business" conference under the auspices of the LISA Education Initiative Taskforce, with participation from many industry leaders and the support of LISA's Alison Rowles. In March of this year the first meeting of the American Translation Scholars Association was held at the university. The Institute also sponsors the work of Professor Françoise Massardier-Kenney in her capacity as managing editor of the ATA Series. It is these close ties with both the language industry and the research discipline of translation studies that characterize and enhance the Institute's teaching of translation.

With the existing shortage of qualified Japanese-English translators, a Japanese concentration was an obvious candidate for inclusion in the Institute's stable of programs. After teaching Japanese-English translation at the University of Queensland in Australia for the past 15 years, I'm now moving to Kent to set up a new Japanese translation program. What tempted me to make this move was the opportunity to work with the Institute's faculty, who as a team combine know-how in localization and terminology management as well as in translation studies and translation pedagogy. The new Japanese concentration will be grounded on my experience as a professional translator, as a trainer of Japanese-English translators, and as a translation studies researcher, but will benefit greatly by drawing on the broad expertise of faculty teaching the other core courses.

University-level programs in Japanese translation are few and far between, and existing programs usually straddle both translating and interpreting. By contrast, the new Kent State MA will focus particularly on translation, as is the case with the other language tracks, thereby allowing more intensive study of translation and related areas. The Japanese program will start with a small cohort of students in the first year, and numbers will be capped in future years as well, so as to maintain high standards in selecting the best students and provide those admitted with the close individual attention possible in small classes. Given the high demand for translation and localization in Japan, graduates of the program are bound to find positions in industry readily.

Coincidentally, a student I taught four years ago is back in Brisbane for a visit in late July. In 1998 Fatima Tomoum set off to look for work in Tokyo, freshly armed with a Master's degree in Japanese translating and interpreting. She was soon snapped up by Lionbridge Japan and given the position of project manager. The fact that Fatima had no experience in this area at the time was outweighed by her excellent Japanese skills and also, I suspect, by the time management and stress management skills acquired in the process of 'surviving' a rigorous MA program.

Before long she moved up through the ranks of senior project manager, group leader, and business unit manager to take charge eventually of all project managers. Fatima is now being transferred to the company's branch in France, where the bulk of their localization work actually involves Japanese. Her success is indicative of the demand for Japanese-capable localizers and project managers and of how employers prize graduates with such skills or the potential to train in these areas.

At the same time, a student who graduated two years after Fatima dropped in to tell me how she has left her job as an in-house translator at the Japanese telecom giant NTT in Tokyo and is on her way to a new life as a freelance translator in Melbourne, working long-distance for clients and agencies in Japan. The new program at Kent State University is set to boost the number of such well-qualified Japanese-English translators, as well as to equip them with sought-after skills in localization, project management and terminology management. These anecdotal references reflect the ongoing statistics documentable on, for instance, www.dice.com, where job descriptions for Japanese specialists (translators, language engineers, technical communicators, documentation specialists and project managers) continuously outnumber listings for any other language combination. Not only does the market for Japanese specialists look good, even in today's comparatively tough times (see Inger Larsen's article on "Recruiting Professionals for Localization Companies" in June's Multilingual Computing & Technology), Kent State MA graduates are heavily sought after by major players in the GILT industry.

In a way, all of us who work with languages have had to 'localize' ourselves as we learn a new language and become familiar with a different culture. In the process we contribute in our own small way to 'globalization', as those we come into contact with in turn learn a little about our language and way of life. Having already gone through this process in Japan and to a lesser extent in Europe, I am very much looking forward to my next journey of 'self-translation' as I transplant myself to Ohio—a new environment, a new idiom, new colleagues, new students, and above all, new challenges.

Further details about the Kent State Master of Arts Specializing in Translation can be found at http://appling.edu/IAL-Courses.htm. Anyone searching further for training resources can find a wealth of courseware and research information by clicking on the "Resources" link on the Webpage header. I would like to thank Professor Greg Shreve and Professor Sue Ellen Wright for providing some of the factual information in this article.

After studying at the Australian National University and the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Judy Wakabayashi worked in Tokyo as senior translator at the Australian Embassy and subsequently as a freelance translator. After 11 years in Japan she moved back to Australia and completed a Ph.D. on the problems and theoretical implications of Japanese-English translation. She recently resigned from her position teaching translation at the University of Queensland to move to Kent State University as associate professor of Japanese translation. She has published various articles on translation.