Welcome Letter

Welcome to the JLD Times, the Japanese Language Division’s newsletter & blog.

With the summer 2010 relaunch of the JLD Times in its new blog format, the JLD Editorial Committee would like to give our members an overview of why we have chosen this format for the website, the vision for filling it with content in the future, and some guidelines for member contribution and participation.

First, we are using this new blog format in lieu of a periodically published JLD newsletter. This approach was discussed during JLD Annual Meetings at the ATA conferences of the past couple of years and ultimately selected by the Editorial Committee. Our goal with this blog format is to post content as it becomes available. This would include not only announcements of upcoming events, but also and especially articles that may be of interest and use to the JLD membership and Japanese translation community at large.

In the past, the biggest challenge with putting out a JLD newsletter was generating and maintaining a stream of articles of interest. This was due to the reality of our industry and community: often those with the most interesting, useful, or motivating things to say are quite busy, successful professionals themselves – including translators and interpreters as well as subject matter experts in areas like patents, pharmaceuticals, finance, media, and the like.

Waiting for article contributions from busy people has not been a proven model. For this reason, we have formed an Editorial Committee responsible for reaching out to the translation/interpreter community and approaching subject matter experts to actively encourage and generate a regular stream of articles and contributions. The charter members of the JLD Editorial Committee are Hiroki Fukuyama, Gregor Hartmann, Courtney MacNab, Rika Mitrik, Richard Mott, Connie Prener and Carl Sullivan.

In addition to articles, the JLD blog will have a comment section. It is the intent to have this section be semi-moderated, where the moderator will only intervene if commentary goes “out of bounds.” Out of bounds would include discussion of rates*, personal attacks, misleading information, spam or advertising content, or other comment postings not considered by the moderator to be consistent with ATA policy and/or in the interests of the JLD membership.

This initial phase of the JLD newsletter is an experiment in format, editorial approach, and content style. We will likely make mid-course corrections as we gain experience and receive feedback. We hope we can look forward to the active participation of the JLD membership as article contributors, insightful blog posters, and even as future Editorial Committee members (Contact Courtney MacNab, courtney.macnab@gmail.com).

Lastly, the JLD website is back up and running. We would like to offer many thanks to Yoshiko Guy for designing and implementing the website. Yoshiko persevered through a number of setbacks to make this happen. It looks great, and we want to thank her again on behalf of the JLD for getting this website up and running.

The JLD Editorial Committee

*As specified in ATA's Policy Statement of March 25, 1990 (see http://www.atanet.org/aboutus/governance_policystatement.php)