Whenever people ask me how I learned Japanese or got good enough to translate it professionally, I'll say offhandedly that I "read a bunch of manga" or "listened to a bunch of J-pop" or "watched a bunch of anime"...but I have to acknowledge how significant that is. 1/?

I've read over 20 novels, read over 2000 volumes of manga, watched 800 episodes of anime *just* from watching Sailor Moon 4x through...total # of anime episodes has to be in the 1000's. Watched at least 900 hours of Japanese TV... 2/?

Listened to thousands of songs in Japanese, memorized at least 500 of these songs, poured over these songs for hundreds of hours with dictionaries and kanji dictionaries, figuring out what they all meant, learning to recognize what sounds cliche and what doesn't... 3/?

I also spent 9 months speaking and listening to Japanese almost exclusively. What would the classroom equivalent to all of that be? It's really difficult to measure. The point is, I wasn't actively "studying." I wasn't clocking my hours. I was just having fun. 4/?

Meanwhile, I spent most of my life also reading a ton of books in English, writing a bunch of English on my own. Hundreds (later thousands) of pages of creative writing. Again, I wasn't "studying" English or how to be a good writer. I was just doing what I loved. 5/?

Point is, if you love something and obsessively do it for years and years and years, degrees and certifications matter less. Ultimately, my clients care that I can translate their content accurately into English that sounds good. 6/?

They don't care how many years I studied or where I studied or which textbooks I used or which tests I took. Initially, they might care a little on the first pass with my resume, but ultimately, my translations speak for themselves. 7/?

I'm not writing this to dis college or textbooks. Just pointing out that when you're a translator of entertainment, you're also a creative writer. That's a skill that can't be easily quantified with "years of study." So there is no clear answer for "how long it takes." 8/?

Some people just plain don't have the talent for translating entertainment, either. Just like some people aren't meant to be singers or painters or writers. And that's okay. Get introspective. 9/?

I thought I was going to add more to this thread, but I guess I'm done. Anyway, this was your semi-cheesy "go-for-your-dreams-but-also-be-realistic-about-your-true-talents" message of the day. 10/10