Japanese / English Technical Writer

Job Description

Japanese/English Technical Writer (Contract)

Bilingual (Japanese/English) Technical Writer (Contract)

San Francisco, CA

Are you a bilingual (Japanese and English) English tech writer who loves when instructions are clear and concise? Do you enjoy working closely with people from many different positions and backgrounds? Have you always dreamed of working on a team that feels like family?

If so, we want to meet you.

We're seeking a Contract Technical Writer/Translator to join our diverse and close-knit group of communicators. We're passionate about crafting helpful, engaging, and inclusive content to bridge the gap between our products and our committed consumers – and we hope you will be, too. We're also just a great group of people who care about each other, who know how to have fun, and who value a healthy work-life balance.

Principal Responsibilities:
• Translate copy from Japanese to English for media, including product manuals and packaging
• Translate a variety of content from Japanese into English, including external and internal-facing content such as product instructions and internal communications.
• Develop translations in the PlayStation voice, adhering to established style and other in-house standards.
• Evaluate existing and new content against industry standards and common practices.
• Author consumer-facing instructional content (in English) for PlayStation hardware and software products
• Work closely with the document development team in Japan and other relevant teams to plan, coordinate, author, trans-create, and execute instruction manuals and packaging copy for hardware as well as software products.
• Interview product engineers and other partners, mainly in the US and Japan. Attend meetings that may be held in Japanese.
• Research product specifications and other information using various tools and software.
• Process draft content through specialist reviews and deliver finalized content to appropriate groups.
• Participate in documentation improvement initiatives such as conducting user testing, analyzing customer feedback and user access data.
• Manage subject-matter expert reviews of product manuals and packaging copy
• Circulate document files with specific instructions for scope of review.
• Aggregate feedback from global partners. Negotiate revisions as needed.
• Communicate with partners and stakeholders in Japanese when required.
• Collaborate with a distributed team of partners, including product development, marketing, legal, and product safety to understand their requirements.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

Qualifications:
• Native English speaker and fluent in Japanese (comprehension and basic writing skills such as for writing emails/communicating on Slack, and verbal). JLPT certification a plus.
• Translation skills with acute attention to detail. Must be culturally sensitive.
• Experience working in a fast-paced environment while multi-tasking, meeting targets, and being flexible to meet departmental needs.
• Excellent people skills for effective communication and collaboration with different levels of the organization. Cross-cultural exposure in a business setting; knack for communicating tactfully in multicultural environments.
• Ability to elicit meaningful feedback from partners and manage reviews according to schedule.
• Accommodate variable working hours, including attending global meetings.

Experience/Education:
• BA or BS degree in Technical Communications, English, Japanese, linguistics, or similar field.
• Two to three years of proven experience writing product documentation for consumer electronics or writing for the video game industry.

Experience with the following is a Plus:
• Managing technical reviews with subject-matter specialists
• Using CAT tools for translations and crafting/maintaining translation memory
• DITA / structured authoring
• JLPT N1 certification
• Bonus points if you love video games!

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-roeyn1-3-145-130-31-42 in your application.