E>J Certification Lunchtime Workshop [ATA58]

The English into Japanese Certification graders would like to offer an informal and focused workshop for attendees interested in taking the ATA's Certification Exam (English into Japanese only). If you would like to attend, please translate the passage below and send it to miyako@maojapanese.com prior to the workshop. The attendees will present their translations and the graders will critique them using the actual grading tools.

The Certification Workshop is a chance to dissect a translated passage to learn the hows and whys of the ATA Certification Exam; it is not a translation workshop.

We will e-mail you the location before Friday. This will be a lunch-hour session, so bring your own lunch. Please contact miyako@maojapanese.com for any questions.

Passage to Translate (No need to translate the instructions)

English into Japanese

Instructions: The following passage was taken from an American weekly magazine for educated general readers. The translated version will be published in a Japanese weekly magazine of a similar nature. Translate the following text for the specified purpose.

It’s hard to find much wrong with a drug that can battle fatigue and improve creativity and could even help prevent Parkinson’s disease and diabetes. It’s also hard to find much right with a drug that elevates blood pressure, aggravates stress, causes insomnia and leads to addiction. When both drugs are the same thing, it’s hard to know what to think.

One thing is for certain: we sure love the stuff. There are 167 million coffee drinkers in the U.S., and they consumed nearly 6.3 billion gallons last year alone. The average drinker admits to 3.4 cups a day, although the National Coffee Association is studiously vague about what constitutes a cup – deliberately, perhaps, in an era in which a large Starbucks sloshes in at a whopping 20 ounces. On top of our coffee, we poured down 2.4 billion gallons of tea in 2003, not all of which was gentle herbals. Biggest of all are carbonated soft drinks, 70% of which are caffeinated. Americans consumed a stunning 15.3 billion gallons in 2003, or 574 cans for every man, woman and child.

The good news is that not only does all that caffeine not necessarily hurt but in some ways it may help. Java’s famous energy jolt is no illusion, improving performance on tasks and helping people stay alert. That, however, requires drinking caffeine the right way, and most people don’t, loading up first thing in the morning and then crashing by the afternoon, when the chemical – with a half-life of up to six hours – is leaving the system.