The weather will continue bad

"There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of change anywhere". (Henry Miller, Tropic if Cancer). That's what we had for lunch conversation. K. who is a high end professional conference interpreter told us this was the worst ever sudden slump in her career. November was still OK, then everything went crumbling down in a blink. But as I suspect, conference interpreters are gyrating the profession at such high level they don't have the slightest interest, if not any knowledge about the other parts of the galaxy. Community interpreting, over the phone interpreting do not mean anything to her. I told her the first time about my initiative to generate a dynamic of conversation between Japanese-French interpreters here in Tokyo. Everything she told me back I already knew. Japanese people are allergic, or simply non-responsive at grass root associations. I added my personal view on it : the successful initiatve must be a church like vertical hierarchy with a bearded individual on top promising paradise, or better, work, a sect structure, for something to take root here. I should grow a beard maybe. She said interpreters shun at communication among peers; she said that with French, there is a bunch of some ten high end interpreters that monopolize high end job opportunities. Opportunists of all creed and levels are monopolizing what comes way down under. I discovered nothing new that I had not inferred priorly. She blinked at the name of the single veteran interpreter I mentioned who is part of our tiny group of discussion. I pretended not to notice but I know this reaction by heart now. The despise of other interpreters is a strong common theme. I could have told her that I prefer to have a veteran who is not stellar but tells anecdotes and opinions during our monthly meetings than no veteran at all. I learned that simul from scratch without any preparation is virtually impossible or will be impaired enough that the client must be warned beforehand that the quality will suffer from the lack of preparation. It clashes indeed against the claim of those firms offering simul OPI. She talked about the students she teaches. Even the bilinguals don't talk. They stay sited, frigid in the classroom, not talking to each others. Classroom smell like big crowded elevators. No eye contact, no contact. Those future specialists of communication, those bridges don't communicate. After a few courses, tiny groups are generated, pairs or threes, but they don't mingle. There is no melting pot, there is no melting, there is no pot. All these things I have noticed enough at my own courses. Few are humanly competent at diffusing warmness. How they come spending so much learning a tool of communication when they don't qualify at the basics? Sounds like a nightmare. Better think of something else.