Translator Reviews ( Japanese → English )

Japanese

CEOの清水は、名刺管理アプリEightのプロダクトマネージャをつとめ、ユーザ数を20万人に達成するまでにマーケティングも任されていました。エンジニアの宮本は、楽天の創業間もない頃から、サーバサイドの構築を任され、その後のサービスの拡大、チーフエンジニアとしてのマネジメントまでも任されていました。

English

Shimizu, CEO, has been the product manager for Eight, a business card management application, and had been responsible for marketing until we achieved 200 thousand users. Miyamoto, engineer, was in charge of the server-side architecture and later took on the task of expanding the service as well as of management as chief engineer.

Reviews ( 1 )

[deleted user] rated this translation result as ★★★★ 29 Mar 2014 at 18:40

original
Shimizu, CEO, has been the product manager for Eight, a business card management application, and had been responsible for marketing until we achieved 200 thousand users. Miyamoto, engineer, was in charge of the server-side architecture and later took on the task of expanding the service as well as of management as chief engineer.

corrected
Shimizu, CEO, has been the product manager for Eight, a business card management application, and was responsible for marketing until we reached 200 thousand users. Miyamoto, engineer, was in charge of the server-side architecture and was later entrusted the task of expanding the service as well as of the management as chief engineer.

[mshimokawa-129]

Thanks for your review. A few comments:
- The past perfect tense, which I employed here, is quite acceptable in this case and conveys the timeline of things described in the original better than the simple past tense.
- Both "achieve ~ users" and "take on the task of" are fairly common phrases and I believe they were used appropriately in the translation.
- The argument structure of the verb "entrust" is [NP _ NP PP], which means you would have had to write "entrusted TO the task..."
- "the task of the management" would be an unnecessary repetition of the definite article.

[[deleted user]]

• The first correction I made was wrong, my apologies
• "Achieve" sounds a bit unnatural to my ears here, so I picked "reach", but it this is subjective
• There's nothing wrong with "take on the task of", but the original uses to passive form of "to entrust with", so I translated it accordingly.
• The preposition that goes with "to entrust" is "with", not "to". Either way, my correction ought to have been "entrusted with the task of"
• The thing about the last sentence though is that it is a bit confusing, and actually missing a part. How about... => The engineer, Miyamoto, was entrusted with the service-side architecture, and afterwards, as chief engineer, even with the service's expansion and management.

楽天の創業間もない頃から is still missing though, but maybe it is best you translate this yourself.

[[deleted user]]

the passive form*

[mshimokawa-129]

With the achieving 20-thousand users thing, I'm now thinking that the subject of that sentence should have been "the app", not "we". "Achieve" and "reach" are both acceptable, I think.
"entrust" can take both "with" and "to" actually, or at least that's what my dictionary says. Both sound familiar to me.
I'm not objecting your suggesting "entrust", though. That would be a more direct translation. In my mind, "entrust" was kind of too big a word, and at a company, you would not usually "take on a task" unless you are "entrusted" with it. Hence my word choice. But now that you've corrected my sentence that way, "entrust" sounds quite fine to me.
I totally missed the "楽天の創業間もない頃から" part, and I added it in a comment immediately after I posted the translation.
I approve of your correction to the last sentence.

[mshimokawa-129]

But "entrusted with" is more appropriate, now that I think of it, with jobs or tasks.

[[deleted user]]

• "To entrust" takes on both prepositions, but they don't have the same meaning.

=> A person is entrusted with an issue. The issue is entrusted to a person.
=> "To entrust a person with a task" OR "to entrust a task to someone"

• I understand what you mean about the "take on a task" thing, and I agree in this case it could mean the same thing. You should, however, be cautious of translating things that aren't speficially mentioned. In this case "take on a task" could mean he was entrusted with it, but it could also mean he did it on his own iniative. It is like you said, usually you would have to be entrusted with a task before you can take it on, but it doesn't have to be that way always.

With regards,

ckrit

[mshimokawa-129]

True that.