Meet our Japanese translator, Yumiko Pelletier!
Tell us a little bit about yourself - where are you from? What languages do you speak? How long have you been translating?
I was born and raised in Japan but went to college in the U.S. and have been living in the United States for almost 30 years. I speak English and Japanese and have been translating since 1999.
Have you worked on other healthcare translation projects? If yes, how did that background help with the Know Your Lemons project? If not, what were the challenges you came across with healthcare translations during this project?
Yes, I have, and it helped me to be mindful in choosing expressions that would convey accurate information while being sensitive and considerate to patients' feelings and emotions.
We’re obviously highly visual when it comes to communicating about breast health, so I’m curious what piece of our work did you find most interesting to translate? Why?
I found it challenging and interesting to make the target language sound natural and make it visually appealing at the same time on graphic content since English and Japanese have very different sentence structures and use different characters.
Were there sections that were more difficult to translate into your native language? Why?
It was tricky to make the Japanese texts fit in the same length as the English texts since word counts for Japanese and English for the same words/expressions could be very different.
Breast health hasn’t been on a lot of people’s radars, but that’s really starting to change with the work that Know Your Lemons has been doing globally. Were you thinking about breast health before taking on this project? What are your thoughts now?
Yes... some of my friends had breast cancer in the past - and I also had thyroid cancer years ago. As I get older, I am making sure I go for mammogram exams every year.
Anything else you’d like to add?
I love working for Know Your Lemons! It is such a wonderful organization helping and uplifting women worldwide. Everyone who works there is talented and dedicated. I am happy that I had a chance to be part of such an incredible group of women :)
The 12 signs of breast cancer in Japanese
