Translation Partners
As a novice, I had plenty of friends who both liked manga and anime and were taking the same courses as I was. That's a really good time to partner up and try to figure out what's going on in the stories. You'll run into a lot of snags -- places where you both have no idea what the characters are saying -- but working together toward the same goal is fun, and nobody has any illusions that their opinion is all that much better than other student's.
But when I turned pro, the dynamic was different. As a pro, you must have confidence that you know enough of the language to be able to figure out any Japanese sentence. So when you come up with one interpretation and a translation partner comes up with a different one, and only one translation is going on the paper, and that creates the potential for a problem.
When I was just breaking in, I was a part of a three-person translation group. Two translators and a rewriter. (We also held all sorts of different jobs too, dividing up by personality and aptitude.) But the problem from a translation standpoint was that my translation partner was at almost exactly the same learning level as I was. We went to the same school; took the same classes, had the same Japanese friends (mostly), and even went on the same year-long exchange program to Japan (although not the same year). We were at exactly the same level.
It's that sameness that was the problem. If there was a dispute over the meaning of a line of dialog, the "confidence" factor comes into play, and we would both stay steadfastly convinced that our own translation was the correct one. Fortunately we had the third member of our group as a tie breaker, but he didn't know Japanese, so all he had to go on was story-telling instinct. The process worked well enough that we never got into fights, and we met all of our deadlines (and many of our budgets), but through it all, I always felt that it wasn't quite right. An experienced translator and an inexperienced translator might make a good combination (I never tried it so I don't actually know), but two translators at the same level is an open invitation to an argument.
After a while of this kind of translating, I started doing more and more projects on my own.
Then I had the crash of confidence I mentioned in The Greatest Translator in the World installment. I became suddenly aware that I wasn't quite up to the professional quality that the job needed, and I needed to improve fast! So I enlisted the aid of a Japanese translation partner.
I have to say, this makes a great partnership for a Journeyman/black belt 3rd degree translator. The kind of translator who wants to improve. My partner was a relatively fluent English speaker although she would make mistakes in writing. My Japanese wasn't quite as good as her English, but I had three years or so of professional translation under my belt at the time and could contribute a lot to the partnership. We'd sit side by side. I'd take a first stab at the translation, and she'd correct me if I made any mistakes with the meaning. She was responsible for the Japanese, and I'd be responsible for the English. (And the fact that we spoke Japanese in the office made it good reinforcement for me as a Japanese speaker.) A perfect partnership that would last forever, right? Not quite.
People learn. And by the third year of our partnership we had both learned an awful lot. Her English was to the point where she could do translations on her own. My Japanese had improved to the point where my first stab was right at least 90% of the time, and she would feel that she wasn't contributing. It was a hard thing for me to give up since someone sitting by your side telling you that you're right is an amazing thing for your ego. Also, we were doing the work of, and getting paid as, a single translator. The pay was not good during the partnership. And it was time.
In the eight years or more since that partnership broke up, I haven't felt the need for a translation partner. Although I still want somebody to sit by my side and tell me how right I am. (I wonder if there's a service for that.)
So here's my take on it. Equal partners from the same background should only be experimented with, probably during apprenticeship. It helps a translator to understand just how much of this business is interpretation. I would also recommend a Japanese native speaker/English native speaker partnership for early in the Journeyman stage of development because both can learn greatly from the other (and it saves your reputation at a time when it could be disastrously ruined). But after you've learned the lessons, stand on your own two feet again!!