Greetings from the IJET-33 Organizing Committee! We're hard at work preparing an awesome Fukuoka experience for you over the weekend of May 9–11, 2025. To help kick things off here on the official site, we'd like to introduce ourselves and our roles in the upcoming conference.
Ben Tompkins – Chair
Ben Tompkins lives in beautiful Fukuoka, Japan, where he began translating professionally in 1994. Ben specializes in pharmaceutical and biomedical translation. He owns Tompkins Biomedical Communications, a provider of translation and other language services to pharmaceutical companies, research organizations, and universities. Ben served as President of the Japan Association of Translators (JAT) from June 2016 to June 2017 and has helped organize three IJET conferences in and outside Japan.
Takeshi Miyahara – Treasurer
宮原健（みやはらたけし）。Sprachgetriebe Consulting代表。Sony EMCSや三菱重工業などの企業で社内通翻訳者の経験を積む。そして母校の広島経済大学で留学生アドバイザーとしての専門知識を培った後、2019年に独立。以前同僚だった通翻訳者や同業者交流イベント等で知り合った通翻訳者とチームを組み、太陽光発電、精密機器、広告、人材、観光、会計、入管など多岐にわたる分野で英独⇄日の翻訳通訳コンサルサービスを提供している。目下の関心事は地元企業のサポート。元JAT理事(2019/7-2023/6)。多言語翻訳分科会（JATOTH）委員長。
Satoko Shibata – PR Coordinator
SATOKO lives in Fukuoka and is in charge of PR for IJET-33. She is a voiceover artist, emcee and E/J audiovisual translator. She offers a comprehensive localization service, from translating scripts to voice recording. At IJET-31 in Tokyo, she presented a session titled "The Role and Awareness of Post-Production for Dubbing Translators," where she highlighted the appeal of audiovisual translation through live voiceover demonstrations. Satoko enjoys watching sports and weight training at the gym.
Haru Tamura – PR Coordinator
Haru Tamura was born in Kansas City, USA and raised in Fukuoka, Japan. He recently started translating full-time, mainly focusing on English to Japanese localization of video games. IJET-33 will be his first time serving on an organizing committee, but he's excited to play a part in delivering an exciting and memorable conference.
Takayuki Yamamoto – Program Coordinator
山本隆之（やまもとたかゆき）。IJET-33実行委員として、プログラム・コーディネーターを担当。大学卒業後、自動車部品メーカーや電機メーカーで営業・マーケティングに従事する一方、通信講座で医薬分野の翻訳の勉強を開始。2019年より医薬分野のフリーランス翻訳者として主に英訳を行っている（ポストエディットも含む）。IJET-32トロントでは実行委員としてPR資料の和訳と、「ChatGPTの翻訳への活用（翻訳者に役立つプロンプト）」で登壇。趣味は料理と掃除。
George Bourdaniotis – Registrar
George Bourdaniotis majored in Japanese at university in Australia and arrived in Japan for a year (don’t we all) in 1990. He first entered translation by mistake in 1993 and has translated and interpreted in the marketing, tourism, video script and subtitle fields. For more than a decade, he has also been working as a script advisor, translator, writer, and narrator for NHK World. He is a screener for the JAT Translation Contest, has organised events in Kansai as part of the KAT committee, and has been involved in the organisation of five IJET and PROJECT conferences in and outside Japan.
Jim Rion – Volunteer Coordinator
Jim Rion is an American translator and writer living in Yamaguchi Prefecture. He is the author of Discovering Yamaguchi Sake (Stone Bridge Press) and the translator of The Devil's Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizu (Pushkin Vertigo), both released in 2023. His translation of Strange Pictures by Uketsu is scheduled for publication by Pushkin Vertigo in January 2025. He is the English translation head at TJ翻訳合同会社. Co-host of the monthly Sake Deep Dive podcast with sake brewer Andrew Russell.
Stephen Christenson – Webmaster
Stephen Christenson is a Japanese-to-English translator specializing in marketing, academia, and entertainment media. On the technical side, he enjoys tinkering with homelab projects in his free time and might have once taken an "Intro to HTML" course in the late nineties. Fukuoka will be his third IJET as an attendee and first as a volunteer, and he's excited to spread the word about this wonderful city.