Making the Jump
I've mentioned in a few places on this site that you really can't afford to quit your day job when you're starting your translation career. I've tried. Really. There was a point going into the mid 1990s when, living in Tucson, I managed to pay rent and utilities and eat for a year or two. But I had no healthcare, and I saved absolutely nothing. My apartment was made up of college-student furniture, and the most expensive thing I owned was my Toyota Tercel. Then, hoping to get better translation jobs, I moved to Los Angeles, and with month after month of not getting better translation work, I broke down again and got myself a day job.
About a year or so later, one of my friends at Viz mentioned that there was an opening in their editorial department. I went up to San Francisco to interview.
Honestly, starting work at one of the manga/anime companies means that you will have to give up translation. You will (most likely) become an editor, and that skill set is completely different than the one you learn while translating. And if you get the job, you'll have to learn it quick. I needed to learn how to spell above the 4th grade level; needed lots of crisis management skills; needed to coordinate creative people (no mean feat, let me tell you); and whole hoard of other skills. But they are learnable -- I just had to apply myself (which means study like a demon).
Aside from being able to have regular paychecks and suddenly having healthcare again, it also gave me the benefit of finding out what really goes on in a manga/anime company. When I started asking for work from the outside again, this information was invaluable. I was also able to make large amounts of contacts within the industry, and I finally was able to pay off the enormous debts I racked up from months of living in Los Angeles without a day job.
Somehow I was able to do translations while I did my editing, but by the end, that was just not possible. It wasn't just that I was Editor-in-Chief, after 2002 the industry changed and there was just too much work to spend any of it on things that could be done just as well by freelancers. Everyone in the department was even more overworked than they were before. But the people working there were some of the best people I've ever worked with. Creative, funny, sometimes sarcastic, mostly upbeat, and if anyone didn't love manga when they started, they learned how to love it pretty quickly. Aside from the slave-like hours, crushing pressure, and massive workloads, it was a dream job.
But there was a point where it became clear to me that if I ever wanted to translate again, I had to step out of my position. So I did.
I doubt I would have been able to do translation as a full-time job without spending my time as an editor at Viz. I know that some people can make the jump to full time without having the inside view of how an editorial department works and having made friends in the industry, but I'm just glad I didn't have to be one of them.