I would also echo the advice of getting your start by working in house for a while. That's the path I took myself. Also, even if your long-term goal is to live and work in some country other than Japan, you might consider working in Japan for several years as a translator. I would argue that when you are getting started in the profession, the enriched language environment that comes from living in Japan will make for more rapid progress. Also, many references you will want to use will be cheaper to buy here.
        Translation is a subtle art. I started full of confidence and quickly realized how little I knew about Japanese (and English!). That's when you really start to learn. My wan-pointo advice: Learn to recognize when you don't know something. The thought, "That's probably right," is usually wrong.
        Dan Kanagy
        ________________________________________
        I think this assessment is pretty good:
        > It's beginning to look like one of those "need a job
        > to get experience, but can't get a job without
        > experience" Catch-22's that everyone hates...
        To a large degree, translation success depends more on "jitsuryoku" than on qualifications on paper. However, to get a chance to show off your "jitsuryoku", you need some kind of qualifications on paper. Two years of college Japanese certainly doesn't impress anybody that knows anything about either language learning or translation.
        Several people have suggested the option of looking for an in-house translation job. I think this is probably a good idea. Depending on what your career goals are, another way to do it is to find a non-translation-related job and work on finding translation jobs on the side. This is the path I took. If your main goal is to be a full-time translator, it might not be the best path, but it has the advantages of providing a stable income to support you while you get started in translation, as well as providing (potentially) a solid background and depth of experience in some field (which may then be leveraged for your translation work).
        As far as finding translation work, if you have decent skills, you should be able to leverage the "kone" you have already developed. You should have a decent relationship with your college instructors, which should already know (and hopefully be impressed with) your skill level and potential. You said you spent a year in Japan -- you should have people you know from that experience who are similarly impressed with you. My first non-coursework translation came as part of a different job (summer internships and part-time work developing Japanese language instruction software), and my first freelance work came from people I already knew -- instructors I had taught for, companies I had interviewed with, friends from school that now run their own Japan-related businesses, etc.
        This mailing list is another good resource. If you are participating in the list, showing the translators here that you have good skills and something to contribute, you may be able to get some work through them.
        This is a relatively slow way to get into translation, and will probably only be possible if you have some other means of support (like a day job). You need to have some way to survive while you're building up enough translation customers to support you. 
        It also is a difficult path, in some ways. While it takes away the pressure of having to find enough work to pay the rent, it also means that your time is very limited, since you already owe 8+ hours a day to your "real" job. In the feast-or-famine world of translation, that means that you'll have to turn down some of the feast that you could otherwise be profiting from. If you're doing mostly agency work, too, that can really hamper things, since it probably doesn't take to many times turning down jobs before they take you off their list. If you find an agency that's small enough that they get to know you personally, and if they like your work, they'll be more forgiving.
        > In any case, I do have a couple of specific questions. First,
        > do you recommend sending samples of my Japanese
        > writings with my resume?
        Only if they're good. :) I never have, but then I haven't done much "cold calling", that is, calling potential clients without an introduction or specific lead, either.

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