An AFIJ anytime?

What about an Association of Foreign Interpreters in Japan? We must be sharing a common ground strong enough that it makes sense. Anyone around to start thinking together about it?

Massive training

All Japanese All The Time Dot Com is a vista into the present and future of self-learning. I don't associate to anything cultural and the standards the author and his followers are into. No anime, no manga, and we don't listen to the same tunes. AJAT needs to self-depreciate his own turf, that "other side" of language registry, that "Stuff that you feel guilty about doing because you should be doing “serious things”, to justify his approach. This argument is wearing off and I could flip it the same in reverse. Or I could simply, without accusing that other side of total dumbness (some though) that, "serious things" are seriously exciting, satisfying, mind fulfilling for others, and stating it should not be a declaration of war. I love "serious things", and I love working my Japanese with "serious things". Matter of generations. But once you go through the muck of in your face language and the mix of bragging with humility and humor (amazing how these authors replicate the magazines styles around, or is it the reverse?), once you see what the author could sum up in shorter sentences, you discover that he is right into the same track that you are in : massive, sustained, tenacious training. And we overlap with some content and strategies as well. Isn't it wonderful? It is. I am not a user of spaced repetition software although I did try, but the author is right on track, although not a new one, when stressing again and again that what works is massive training, period. It's new and there is nothing new with it at the same time. The sentence I picked up last time about the training method for US army personal to be landed in Japan 60 years ago was exactly the same, although now, we have tools and sources to make things tremendously powerful. What the author also explicitly points at is the obsolescence of schools and the standard didactic framework. What is also to turn obsolete is the standard language manual, that is, until efforts like AJAT generate the new manuals, be it online or a mix of paper and online. Schools, as locations for reunion, sharing and reciprocal comforting and cheering are now online, although not organized as schools. Learning communities must be designed as the future schools where to find strategies, pals to discuss strategies, and group nurturing opportunities. But we are talking about the same thing albeit the language. So I invite you to peer into AJAT.

Site linked with blog

Not a news CNN will care about but this blog is now connected with my project site Advanced Japanese Language Learning for General Learners and Interpreters.

Z会 Resources

Distance education horsepower Z会 just released two books under the title テーマ別英単語 Academic [上級]. Despite the title, it is not a list of words but a series of texts with vocabulary notes. The content is academic, intellectual English for Japanese university students. It is also an interesting opportunity for reverse usage geared at academic, intellectual Japanese studies. The accompanying audio CDs as usual only contain the English version of the texts covered, but the book is well organized, as Z会 knows how to do it, and the format more legible and easy on the eyes than the books aimed at high schoolers. Volume 1 covers issues around 人文・社会科学, whereas volume 2 is focused on 自然科学. I purchased volume 1. Each subjects are very compactly covered by Japanese introductory texts with English vocab giving a background to better understand the English samples. It makes for efficient study without choking on too long chapters and the vocabulary is deep and rich while "efficient". I am particularly pleased with the subject Economy & Business that has direct practical applications in business interpreting. Now, if the Japanese translations were voiced over, it would be perfect.

Corporate presentation

Corporate presentation is a standard feature of corporate tours, so much that a course could be dedicated on corporate presentation interpretation. There is plenty of material online. Just type "corporate presentation" with format set to .ppt in advanced settings of Google, et voila. The ideal course would be performed by two trainers, one native Japanese and one native B language speaker. Students would receive a copy of the presentation document ahead of time and the trainers would alternate between presentations in A and B with students coming in front of others one at a time to perform interpretation for three slides in a row. The trainers would rehearse and get ready by reading additional info on the corporation in the news and spice up their mock-up presentations with additional facts not referred to in the ppt document. This would be the closest simulation to real life delivery conditions.

Taking note of vocabulary

I am looking for methods to take notes of vocabulary efficiently. The standard paper and pen combination is still valid. I have heard about interpreters keeping lists in Excel. An efficient method to take down notes of vocabulary must fulfill two requisites: it must be fast and, it must be in such format that it enhances actual usage and review of the listed vocabulary. I don't want to end up taking down vocabulary notes and not read them over again. Of course, will is not a matter of technology, but a matter of will. However, it may be that the format and procedure used to take down vocabulary notes may impact the will to later go through the notes at a later time.

I have not found anything ideal but I am currently testing the following setting. While listening to podcast or reading text on the screen, I query words I am curious about in the Eijiro on the web and save the result page using Instapaper. Eijiro comes usually with a variety of vocabulary combinations and some sentences. Instapaper keeps a list of Eijiro query results pages to review at a later time. At least, it is not time consuming even if the Instapaper list of links is not the prettiest sight in town. I am looking for alternative electronic methods to compare with.

Enough that way

A follow up on the previously mentioned book 即戦力がつくビジネス英会話 by Kiyoto Hinata 日向清人. It's a very rich good book for reverse usage, that is a book for learners of English we can use as advanced learners of Japanese. I have been uneasy though with the fact that the dialogues are definitely not Japanese but there is a reason. In the introduction, the author states to his Japanese readers that there is no 以心伝心 when speaking English, and talk must be talked. That is why the dialogue are explicit and chatty. They are, without intention, partially answering the concern I have had over the years about matter of attitudes and to what degree one must do in Rome as the romans do. My standard answer has always been "up to a level". Sounding Japanese is not only a matter of language but of attitudes - in this apply to any language I assume. A gaijin who is overtly behaving with typical Japanese gestures of communication, acting so hard to express restraint that does not fit is going over the board. How to be oneself and yet speak the language and carry on attitudes that are adequate to the act of communicating is an issue I have rarely read about, except when ironically pointing at a gaijin who is "tatamized". This book offers in the setting of business a partial answer, by developing dialogues that are "international", in the sense that English is the international language. They sound relaxed at times where they might not sound that way in "real life". I am especially thinking of scene of self-introduction and the exchange of business cards that goes with it. There is no deep bowing even in formal situation, and it is OK. The dialogue, as far as I can judge, are correctly translated in Japanese - although there are a few mistakes - in the sense that they sound Japanese. And it is enough that way. Students of Japanese should be shown - by competent teachers - where it is enough, and why not overplay.

In an unrelated introductory part the author writes powerfully the following thing about oral repetition :

語学の達人と言われる人たちも、こうした地道な訓練を経ているものです。D. キーン、E.G. サイデンステッカー、E.ライシャワーといった日本語の大家を輩出した、戦時中の米海軍日本語学校がいい例です。１日１４時間、週６日、年５０週で新聞を読め、日常会話をこなせるようになった速習プログラムですが、訓練の柱は口頭による反復練習でした。教官向けマニュアルには余計な説明はするなとまで書いてあったそうです。

英会話 books and the business interpreter training strategy

I purchased 即戦力がつくビジネス英会話 published by DHC in 2007. The book structure is a standard situation based set of dialogues going from the mundane business small talk to presentation, negotiations and the like. It's a very grainy, dense book compared with other volumes I already own. Part of those situations may be exclusively covered by an in-house interpreter whereas a business interpreter accompanying a customer for a presentation or a negotiation session will find those specific sections to be the core of the real life where an external interpreter is brought inside a company to perform. Therefore, the best approach although not economic to juice up such book is to jump right away into these sections and start working, skipping the small talk and internal affairs specifics. The DHC book unfortunately comes with the standard English audio only CD so having someone - native Japanese - recording the translated dialogues is the ultimate approach to make the best of both worlds. I noticed in the bookshop a few entries focusing on business negotiation exclusive of everything else. Presentation and negotiation may be the most essential situations to work on for improving the freelance interpreter competences. I am hoping in he future so see even finer detailed books on thematic presentations like financial results, sales results etc. These would help improve learning and teaching as well.

Training

Providing training to interpreters involved with foreign victims of prostitution in Japan is an interesting move. I wonder if the police receives the same training.

From unwilling to willing facilitator

The interpreter transmits the message as is, thought for thought, meaning for meaning. He is neutral. That's what the story says. The reality, some realities, tell a different story. Hard negotiation, complaints over the phone. Invariably, the customer, overwhelmed by her own emotions, quickly relies on the interpreter to "tell it in a better fashion, you know ...", because the interpreter doesn't much sound emotionally disturbed and on the other side, the silence is interpreted as a sign that they are listening to the interpreter, as if they were more listening to the interpreter than to the client. The interpreter knows better what? Something at the level of interacting with the locals, the communication customs, the ways to make them agree, maybe the way to win the situation. It is not hard to be neutral. It is absolutely impossible, and from the business point of view, unless you work under the cover of an agency, you simply cannot easily remind your customer in blank terms that "sorry, I am just a communication conduit, not you consultant, not you counsellor, nor even your friend and consoler." At brief moments in emotionally charged settings, you are expected intuitively to be bits of this and that. Not to be "a machine". It is for that very reason that when you wake up in the Tokyo morning and read that NEC has incorporated a Japanese English interpreting software in a mobile phone, you feel like starting to laugh, cry and go for a rampage at the same time. You know it's wrong, that the proletarization of the profession should not go beyond translation. Translation memory systems have turned the translator using, or forced to use these devices, into a proletarian, that is someone progressively if not entirely devoid of know-how in terms of creation, doing things. It is not computer aided translation, it is human aided computer translation system. You know it should not, it won't happen with interpretation because on a daily basis (out of the booth), many, no, a gazillion of unexpected thing may happen that will trigger a message reading "System freeze" on the screen, a synonymous expression that means "Call the Human, I am stuck in there."

So there is a work around with that issue of neutrality. It is to advertise your wares as it is in reality : interpreting? yes, facilitating (you want my opinion, suggestions on what's happening here and how to get through the mess? yes). Interpreting in conflictual settings. Not the extreme, a secret prison (the never told story), but in business sessions where and when drama happens.

Voiceless Japan

I had a look today at the DVD that comes with the manual Living Japanese 生きた日本語. The simplicity, the banality of the video interviews come as a welcome surprise. Daily life is the last frontier, knowing the daily life and thoughts and moods of the other is the virgin forest for so many places in the world. It makes for good footage to work on dialogue/interview interpreting and I hope I can make use of it in the classroom. It is not limited to Japan, but this place, unless you don't speak and understand the language (and even if ... ), is incredibly voiceless. I mean by this that what diffuses out of Japan is terribly voiced but devoid of any clearly hammered propaganda. It is as if the USA was limited to Disney, the movies and the music and no one would care or have access to Obama's voice and most US books were not translated into other languages. Ideas of Japan expressed by Japanese are voiced inwardly, not outwardly. What oozes out of this place may make sense in the outside, create a fantasy world in the mind of who doesn't live here, but the noise is totally different when heard from the inside. That's why I believe Japan, as media noisy as any other advanced country, is voiceless, and as what sounds out is devoid of clearly articulated meta-message, the interpretation of it is open up to the fantasy of anyone. I just read a piece of article about a currently famous French standing comedian who says she is victim of the Tokyo syndrome. She's been here a dozen time and is always amazed at things, those many objects that are useless and do not make sense besides generating giggles. Tokyo is the country of giggles, the senselessness with the safety that allows those foreign grownups to come back in the dreamland, the urban fantasy where no one intrudes into their limits, no one engages into a conversation besides banalities. It is a place that doesn't tell, which makes it a blank canvas to paint her own fantasies onto it. That voicelessness is the cause of these video clips one would never see on Youtube to feel so strange by revealing the true banality of life in this place. Many more of these kinds of interviews of nobodies should be made available. They are telling a story untold elsewhere.

Vertov and Zotero

These two make for a powerful web based video and audio files annotation system. We are getting closer to the PC based Computer Aided Interpreting Training environment.

Dialogue interpreting musing

This is an excerpt from the book Introducing Interpreting Studies by Franz Pöchhacker. It specifically refers to issues of the training within dialogue interpreting.The skills required are listed as orientations, more of this, less of that:- more with dynamics of interpersonal interaction- less with content processing- note taking- intercultural communication- management of interactive discourse with particular regard to turn-taking and role performance- role-plays and simulations of interpreting scenarios as the key method for developing interpreting and discourse management skillsStudy of dynamics of interpersonal interaction should be performed using adequate dialogue recordings. There is ideally a need in business interpretation for instance of scenes of discussions around a table and presentations. Are there such resources available somewhere? Are there movies showing scenes of business presentations?Intercultural communication : maybe marginally related but I watched again on the TV the other day reports of : the delay of trains in Japan because of an IT glitch that stranded many travelers on the platforms or trains; a car crash accident that killed part of a family. In both cases, people were briefly interviewed for testimony, and in both cases, they displayed facial features, smiles, voice intonations that in Western countries belong to totally different settings. Facial trait recognition of emotional expressions are, to my knowledge, an untold story that disarms the dialogue interpreter lacking knowledge and experience. And so on. These indications strongly hint at what can be done when designing courses, what is possibly lacking and where to work on in self-training for liaison interpreting.