Swet Columns
August 28, 2023
Navigating Gendered Language and Inclusivity in 2023
The SWET Talk Shop held as a Zoom session on May 13, 2023 focused on how linguistic practices in Japanese and English have evolved to become more gender inclusive. Linguistics professor Claire Maree of Melbourne, trans rights activist and neuroscience researcher Tanomi in Okinawa, and moderator Emily Balistrieri in Osaka, discussed the sobering real-life implications of not using inclusive language.... more
July 6, 2023
EVENT REPORT: A Nostalgic and Productive 31st IJET
Marian Kinoshita
On June 24 and 25, the Japan Association of Translators (JAT) hosted its first International Japanese-English Translation Conference (IJET) since 2019. The event was held at Tokyo Big Sight and welcomed some 230 translators and interpreters from all over the world. With nearly all sessions focused on the conference theme, “On Stage or Backstage—翻訳通訳の可視性,” participants discovered myriad ways to... more
May 9, 2022 *Members-only Content
Steering Committee Meeting, May 1, 2022
Eleven members of the SWET Steering Committee met online to discuss pending issues and consider plans for 2022. The main topic was the proposal led by Winnie Bird for a SWET mentorship project, organized to facilitate know-how sharing among members and help us enhance our skills. SC supports this initiative and three members agreed to join Winnie as... more
May 11, 2021
EVENT REPORT: SWET Zoom Workshops Experiment 2020
By Richard Medhurst
Talking to other translators and wordsmiths at events and workshops inspires new discoveries and ways of thinking about what we do, as well as providing the chance to get to know people in the business. We used to do this in person until the pandemic made real-world meetings impossible, and led us to reconsider online spaces. One benefit of... more
June 27, 2019
EVENT REPORT: Brainstorming for SWET’s 40th Anniversary
On the evening of Wednesday, June 19, six SWET members gathered in Jinbōchō, Tokyo, for a brainstorming session about plans for celebrating SWET’s upcoming 40th anniversary. To start off with, we discussed the proposed date: SWET’s inaugural meeting was held on November 15, 1980, and in 2020, the 15th falls on Sunday. We agreed that mid-November 2020 sounded optimal,... more
May 5, 2019
EVENT REPORT: Press Trips and Language Tips for Travel Media
By Rob Goss
On March 20, 2019, twelve people, including five first-timers, attended the latest SWET Travel Writing Meetup in Tokyo at Book House Cafe, Jinbocho, for a presentation by photographer Phil Ono about the handling of style issues in place-name signage used around the country and a presentation by travel writer Rob Goss about press trips for travel writers and... more