Working as a Japanese translator for 3 months
It's been 3 months since I started working as a Japanese translator.
First 2 months were quite difficult. My Japanese level was already between N1-N2 level but I still struggled getting used to context. There were/are dozens of technical words that I don't even know them in my mother language.
For the first 2 months, I just observed the meetings translated by my other translator coworkers and I noted down every word I heard (the ones I don't know). The first month, I didn't even try to undertand the context in the meetings. I was just hunting unknown words/vocabs both in Japanese and in my mother language.
I made a vocab database myself and transferred them to the anki. The funny part is that I've never used that anki deck as I probably learned the vocabs while inputting them to anki by hand. lol
Now that April is about to end, I can see that I'm quite better than myself 3 months ago. I actually stopped taking notes everytime countering an unknown word since I got used to context. Of course, I still ask the meaning of unknown words during meetings when I feel those unknown words are the key words.
I also got better at crisis management. At first, when there were lots of unknown words coming up and my brain was freezing because as a translator you don't really have much time for looking up a dictionary and you can't ask every word as it's quite time consuming. But now, my brain is not freezing. The unknown words are not that much and when they come up, I just ask what the word means without panic.
So if there are any translators reading this, just don't worry for first months. Once you get used to context, it is getting better in time. As a translator, not only your target language improves but your mother language improves as well.