Women in Localization, the leading professional organization for women in the localization industry, is pleased to announce the launch of the Women in Localization Japan chapter (WL JP).
The history of localization business in Japan started in mid 1980s, when Microsoft and other major software companies established their Japanese offices in Tokyo. This provided a wonderful opportunity for motivated women armed with strong language abilities to show their potential in documentation localization, QA and project management prior to the enforcement of the Basic Act for Gender-Equal Society in 1999.
“We are very excited to formally launch our first Asian chapter of Women in Localization. We hope this chapter will soon be followed by other Asian chapters, especially in China and India,” says Eva Klaudinyova, co-founder of Women in Localization and Executive Board member in charge of international expansion.
According to Yukako Ueda, Chapter Manager of the Japan chapter: “We plan to offer events throughout the year that will be open to all localization professionals in Japan. We hope that providing a collaborative forum could assist in solving the specific challenges of Japanese localization caused by high quality standards, cultural differences and grammatical difficulties.”
“Because of the nature of Japanese, which is an agglutinative language, localization (or even translation) to and from this language often requires extra effort,” states Yuko Sasaki, Assistant Manager of WL Japan. “Our mission is to increase the understanding of localization related to Japanese and change the industry to a better place to work, especially for women.”
The official launch of Women in Localization Japan will be held at the NetApp Office in Tokyo on March 13, 2015. This will be a get-together to give members a chance to meet and find out more about the plans for the Chapter. All new members are very welcome.
If you are interested in joining the Japan Chapter of Women in Localization, please fill out the Registration Form, and join these two LinkedIn groups: