Akatombo Web Log
Friday, December 09, 2005
Japanese blogging and stuff
I’m on the train to Tokyo to meet with a client, give a brief training session on how to operate their new system and hand over the project. We’ve set up their site so that they can easily update most of the content, and there are four pages (two in English and two in Japanese) that are essentially blogs. It will be interesting to see where they take it from here. I’ve found it quite difficult so far to update the Japanese blog on this site—who am I kidding, I find it hard to update the English blog; I find it just about impossible to update the Japanese one.
I think it is very important that I update both blogs. I want Akatombo Media to be the kind of company that is as transparent as possible in what it is doing. I have to get over some of my business school training to accomplish that goal, but I’m working on it. As part of that I’ll need to do something about making sure that both of Akatombo Media’s blogs get updated. I guess the options are as follows:
- Devote a much larger chunk of my day to blogging, and make it a set part of my schedule, not something I try to make time for
- get a member of the staff to write the Japanese blog, and let me focus solely on the English blog
- get a staff member to translate each post as it comes out
- Write for the English and Japanese blogs on alternating days
I’ll think about these options, and try to find some mix of these or whatever else I think of to make sure that things start to be updated more frequently. I’ve been missing quite a few days once again on the English site too, but I’m working on improving that. Limiting my input media, to the extent I’ve been able to keep up with it, has given me more time to think about things, much of which will probably become fodder for future topics.
I hope to write some more a little bit later about the ecommerce functionality we enabled in this project and will likely to that in a later post, but for know the train is about to arrive, so I’d better pack Calculon (my powerbook) away and get ready to go meet the client.
- Posted by Andrew Shuttleworth
I’d pay someone to translate your entries. Other than the cost I can’t see much reason not to do this. You may want to skip translation for entries that are not relevant to a Japanese audience and author in Japanese or not publish the English entries that aren’t relevant to a non-Japanese speaking audience, if any.
This is the route I plan to take at some point with my blogs. I’m optimistic I’ll be able to find a suitably good translator that doesn’t cost the earth, perhaps even exchanges services to keep the cost affordable and quality high.
Off the top of my head I’m thinking about 800 yen/post would be something I’d be willing to pay. My posts are usually only a couple of hundred words or so. Some of yours seem to be a bit technical though.
April 10th, 2006 10:44 PM - Posted by UltraBob
I probably will start having my posts translated before long. Akatombo Media will be growing by one in a couple of months, and the new person will be focussed in large part on translation. You’ve given me an idea in fact… Maybe we could provide a blogging translation package to small foreigner-run businesses in Japan trying to comunicate more effectively with the local audience. Do you think you’d pay a monthly fee for such a service if it was reasonable enough?
April 10th, 2006 11:20 PM - Blog translation packages - brainstorming session
We have been working on ideas for a few new services to offer here at Akatombo Media, and one of the things I'm considering rolling out in the very near future is a service for translating an English blog into Japanese (with the reverse possible should I find a market that demands it). Inspired in part by Andrew's comment on a previous post about Japanese blogging, the idea is still in the formative stages, but a fair idea of how things will work is beginning to emerge. This post is an……Tracked on: Akatombo Media (218.139.14.47)
April 14th, 2006 15:37:30 - Posted by UltraBob
Sorry to anyone who is subscribed to this post who has been receiving the spam comments I’ve been getting. Apparently someone has been manually spamming this post or has been able to circumvent the captchas in some other way. If it happens again I’ll close commenting on this post.
September 16th, 2007 02:53 AM