Jordan Levine was born and raised in Shiga-ken, Japan, and grew up speaking Japanese, English, and Spanish. After earning a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering from Santa Clara University, he got his start in translation during the COVID-19 lockdowns. He spent the next four years as a freelance translator mostly working for large language service providers, translating a wide range of documents from restaurant menus to medical journal abstracts. Currently based in California, he is working toward becoming an interpreter and preparing to take the ATA certification exam to better position himself for the growing demand for subject-matter experts.
An overview of our group
Our group is open to anyone who wants to improve their translation skills from Japanese into English, and anyone interested in or planning to take the ATA certification exam for Japanese into English. Each week, we review our respective translations of a passage of our choice and give feedback about grammar, style, meaning transfer, and more.
How we got started
We got started in late 2025 as an offshoot of a more formal study group led by audra lincoln. Personally, after taking an ATA practice exam for the certification exam, I realized I needed to keep practicing if I wanted to take the real exam with confidence. Therefore, I decided to continue meeting with other like-minded translators on a regular basis to continue practicing.
How we conduct our study sessions
During the weekly meeting, we take turns reading each paragraph of the source passage aloud, after which each participant reads their own translation of that paragraph. We then comment on each other’s translations and share feedback. Finally, we assign one person to choose the passage for the following week. We usually pick editorials from established Japanese news outlets, such as Nihon Keizai Shimbun (日本経済新聞) and The Asahi Shimbun (朝日新聞), but we are open to working on a wide range of Japanese texts to make sure that nothing throws us off in the certification exam. We try to wrap up our sessions in under an hour. There are usually three to four participants, including myself, so we have just enough time for each of us to read our translations. That said, we are open to suggestions for different study formats, especially if more people start participating.
My thoughts about the group
When I received my graded practice exam last year, I realized that I still needed a lot of practice before I could take the exam. The practice exam highlighted how habitual reliance on tools such as SDL Trados, DeepL, and ChatGPT had affected my ability to translate fully independently. Since these tools are not permitted in the certification exam, I needed to dedicate time to translating under the exam conditions. The colleagues I practice translating with each week are very enthusiastic about language, which encourages me to be consistent. Regularly translating text under exam conditions has also improved my writing in English. I started noticing mistakes such as typos and incorrect grammar that I wouldn’t have noticed while using autocorrect, etc. I hope we get more participants, since we always benefit from having a range of translation styles.
Author: Jordan Levine
Editors: Tomoko Herbert, audra lincoln
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