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.