Missed reading

A must read I had totally missed so far, published in 2003 under the title "The importance of Liaison Interpreting in the theoretical Development of Translation Studies", by Elaine Hsieh. It wonderfully wraps up - in the beginning and later pages, what the profession is all about in terms of challenges of delivery and the dimmed image of the profession under the shadow of simultaneous as the king of delivery mode. Hurtingly true is the fact that "Liaison interpreters are often untrained bilinguals who see "interpreting as a temporary occupation, practiced while awaiting an opportunity to start a 'real' job". " The despise of simultaneous interpreters at liaison interpreters - an endemic feature - is paralleled with the liaison interpreter's low profile and uneasiness at her incompetence at simultaneous, felt as a sign of inherent failure. This reading is important to practitioners of liaison interpreting as it helps get a grasp at the inner issues seldom articulated that impair the profession reaching a true, unbiased professional status. You know what? A little dose of pride is a requisite here.

Systematized teaching method to come

It may read like one among many other messages from the Japan Association of Interpreting Studies, but I was intrigued by this announcement of a project for trainers about using a common script for English to Japanese consecutive with the purpose to gather a statistical set of comments and evaluations based on common multifactors.

現在日本では、短大、大学、大学院、通訳スクールなど、

さまざまな教育機関で異なる教材を用いて、それぞれの教員が指導

を続けているのが現状です。そのため、本分科会においても指導

するレベルや対象が異なり、通訳教育に関する議論を行っても、

話が噛み合わない例が多々ありました。

そこで今回は、共通のスクリプトを利用して逐次通訳を指導し、

その指導方法や結果にどのような違いがあるのか、比較検討を試みる

ことにしました。本プロジェクトを通じて、通訳指導（特に英日の逐次）

における共通の問題を認識し、その上で、それぞれの指導現場にとって

適切な指導方法を見いだす契機にできればと思い実施します。

Of much interest are the objectives of the study:

主な目的：

　・逐次通訳指導に於ける問題点の指摘

・指導における習熟度別の問題点の指摘

・各レベルに応じた教授法のモデルの提案

Point 3 is of importance to me. I bet that in 5 years time or less, there will be a systematized teaching methodology that will be developed here. And why here only is a question never asked. But we do need methodologies anyway. What we also need that JAIS will certainly never cover is self-training methodologies.

Getting wet in PV - part 1

Now let say you are an interpreter considering getting wet into some technical domain you are not familiar with but you want to bet there will be a growing demand for your competences - consecutive - once you get some, how do you prepare? The domain is photovoltaic but it could be anything else. I have been starting working in parallel to PV with fuel cells and neutraceutical. I may add mechatronics to that list but it may be too heavy for a single lunch, so let's focus on PV as an example.
The standard suggestion you can read about on the net comes down to : "read a lot on the subject". In the less appealing cases, suggestions come down to the art of making queries using search engines. I have been looking for something different that tells a story about getting the big picture on any subject - not simply get the URL to Wikipedia - and how to strategically gets deeper once wet, in the perspective of delivering interpretation services. My assumption is that the path must be different if you are a journalist getting wet to start covering a subject you are not familiar with, and an interpreter looking to invest into new markets.

So it started with some money shelled over Amazon. I bought my books on PV in three languages and have started reading some. But with time on my hands, a luxury, I wanted to experiment an alternative approach to getting used with a new domain from the interpreter perspective and try and draw some lessons for preparation strategies. Reading has been rather dull and unsatisfactory. I pondered the reasons why and finally found some. Preparation should be more systemic, more consciously thought than a routine, what with the wealth, nay, the maelstrom of resources online where you risk drowning under at anytime. Interpreters in 10 years time, those raised on Japanese manga, won't prepare the old fashion way, and are already laughing at such tips found here or there.

In the following untidy articles, I will try and formulate what I am finding as to what should be a systemic approach to preparation, and what to tell your students beyond the mundane and unsatisfactory : "Read a lot and build your own glossary."

... to be continued ...

Interview interpreting

This is a must read, the chapter "The interpreted interview" from the book "Interviewing Clients across Cultures". Most of the chapter is accessible from Google Books but I ordered a copy because the whole book seemingly provides rare vistas from your client in liaison interpreting where interviewing or more broadly dialogue interpretation is standard. Many interpretation agencies provide minimalist, conformist short descriptions of what interpretation is all about, sometimes with a dash of suggestions to the customers. Perfectly useless as it is, it provides a little content to fill up the agencies web site not already crammed with stock pictures of racy smily guys and gals always ravishingly fighting on the business battle field with protuding perfect white teeth. This chapter - and the book - is a different story, that of the rare client who is knowledgeable and demanding in details about the interpreter's service delivery content and quality. Whereas text about what interpretation quality and requisite is written by veteran interpreters, this one is written by a veteran client and is unique in that sense. It points in very specific terms at rendering issues, various roles of the interpreter and the risks of approximation, deletion or adaptation on the verge of fabrication of a speech that was not. It's a guideline for practice and training and a tool of dialogue at briefing level to better frame what the client expects and how to better meet the requisite. It is also valuable to be inspired by it in an interpretation course in order to help the novice better understand what the profession ideally asks for.

Happily ever after

Talk about managing emotion. What about this one? A short noticed assignment at 11 pm somewhere in the middle of nowhere West of Tokyo. When I arrive earlier at the location, the wind is blowing hard, omen for the rain to come. The air is a little warm. A curved street. Large corporation buildings and in a nook close by the suspended highway a triangular block of small buildings. The atmosphere is gloomy. I can't notice the cafe for a while, then I discover a board on a wall. A crime scene for the future. I have my doubts. I climb the staircases. They lead at the upper floor to a bar with a different name. I ask for that other bar. I am told it has been closed for a year at least! Sounds fishy. Definitely. I wait longer outside though. Then a phone call. I am asked about my location. I tell the client I am not far but that the bar is closed. He will be late coming by car. I suggest we meet in front of the small police box where I asked for the bar location first hand. Later, another call. I am suggested to wait in the lobby of the hotel close by the police box. I still spend time outside watching the cars and taxis coming and leaving. Everything is suspect, imagination rules. After a while, I retreat in the hotel lobby. It is close to midnight. I know I will probably miss the last train to go back home. At long last they arrive. Hard hand shaking. Then, the following takes probably 10 minutes, not more. He must be somewhere around 25 or 30. On the other side is an elderly Japanese very affable and listening. I could go into the details of the conversation but this would go against privacy. To keep it short, he asks for the elderly man daughter's hand. The elderly man smiles and agrees. It's over. This was the shortest assignment bar the waiting so far. I board the last train back to central Tokyo and will have to fetch a taxi further East because the train will stop before my destination. I listen in the carriage past midnight tired and elated to music on the iPod : Try a little tenderness, I want you back, Somebody to love, not to forget Never Alone.

Managing emotional involvement in liaison interpreting

To come to the conclusion right away, managing emotional involvement in liaison interpreting starts with being aware of the issues of emotion, and acknowledging that there will be issues of emotion control in any case. As many liaison interpreters turn interpreters by just starting doing it, many things are learned through accumulation of experiences and blunders. But awareness may come way much later after fumbling on human bond issues time and again without being able to set back and contemplate under the coolness of detachment what has been recurrently happening. If there is anything written around these lines by academics, I would love to get a pointer to the resource. Here are bits and remark en vrac, to tidy up sometimes in the future.

Settings are redundant. In business interpreting, meeting in the hotel lobby, first physical contact, maybe some time for a briefing until meeting with the other side.

In the taxi when running to the client's client office, bonding develops. Socializing circles around standard questions, how long here, what started the interest for the language/country, etc. With Western clients at least, this socializing tends to be an exchange of questions and answers back and forth. There are bits of reciprocal revelations flying around. Issues of origins can warm up things. Recently, with a US customer, I had a brief exchange on family origins. Family is a warm factor. These is a standard feature. He told me about is grandfather French origins. I immediately pondered aloud about the era involved here, guessing sometimes around first WW. Bingo. His grandfather actually survived the war fields. This played a lot in nurturing instant social empathy. Socialization with your customer, not his, comes first. I do not agree that interpretation is neutral, in business. You work for one side. You don't build a bridge starting from the middle.

Showing interest is not only tactical, but can also help later on and right away to better frame who you are working for within what context.
As the setting is about business asking about current circumstances, how one or the industry at large is faring under the crisis is common sense and should nurture the better framing of the setting.

Out of pure communication strategy, ask small questions to better frame the setting, what is to come when your real job starts. Framing to compensate for the ever missing bits of background is essential. It is also a tangible way to show your professionalism.

... to be continued

Testing course

I had a great opportunity for the last session of the introductory course to test a formula that aims to recreate in the classroom the standard business presentation setting. I played the presenter using a ppt document found online. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, there are plenty of corporate and product presentation ppt documents to grab for free. I had the students come in front of others, one at a time to interpret my presentation one slide at a time. My speech was mostly improvised and we stopped after each slide rendering to discuss about specific issues. I felt the student were enjoying this course. A few remarks for next time when there will be a next time.

- Ideally, the course would be done in tandem with a native teacher so that we can spend the first our with document in B to A, then the following hour with a document from A to B.
- In order to give opportunities to practice A to B, I enrolled the listening students to improvise and ask questions to the presenter. It certainly added a dose of reality in the overall setting

How to make it better:

- I, the presenter, should less rely on improvisation and prepare the presentation in deep
- My presentation should be recorded on the spot to allow and discuss the student's rendering based on my speech relistening. This should be technically easy to perform, however it might impair the flow of the course
- More explanations prior to the exercise should be given to the students, in particular stressing that they will be asked to contribute by asking questions

It was a first trial already pretty much satisfying. I hope we can do and develop this further.

Triple literacy

I am back into science and technology, that is mostly applied science because in the context of liaison interpreting, it's less about fundamentals and more about business around technological matters, although at times and all of a sudden, deep scientific and technical considerations do pop up sandwiched between matters of price and time to delivery. Preparation is dual, no, triple : it means gaining an overview of the matter and grabbing vocabulary in B language of course, but more than often in A language as well. Time is limited, expectations to be requested again and again to deliver within the same subject boundaries makes the decision to delve over the long term into the subject, going deeper, a difficult issue. Especially with OPI where preparation time is not paid for and a session rarely goes beyond an hour.There are so many things to do. There is no secret and confidentiality about the following : I am skimming the surface of photovoltaic cells, fuel cells and neutraceuticals at the same time. It is a Pascalian bet into the future, that is now, based on discussions I had with "people who should know". I am trying to get more feedback from these people then decide whether it is a good idea to wrap up the periscope and start cruising under the surface. In any case, it is not and it will not be waisted time. For B language advanced learners even not aiming at interpretation, I can tell the value of reading aloud. I am about to finish reading aloud - and fast - a Japanese book on solar energy business. It is a valuable experience but I can't exactly point at the reasons why.

What are the strategies to gain fast overall literacy in a technical subject you don't have much clues about? I know it sounds like a stupid question. Young man, go to Wikipedia. But that's not a strategy. What I have come down to is this right now:

Systematize, starting with registering to lots of resources, then filter over time to keep what works best.

- Register keywords with Google News in all your languages, and read only the titles
- Look for the key professional magazines and register when available to newsfeeds and podcasts
- By recent books on the subject in all your languages. Start with the popular science type books, that is anything under $30 on average. Sometimes, nothing for the layman may be available. Don't buy right away the thick introductory book at +$100, unless you can find a second hand cheap copy. Don't buy an old version of that book, that is more than 5 to 10 years old.
- If any industrial fair around, go visit.
- If any conference you can get a foot in, or if anything recorded online, go for it
- Forget Wikipedia. It's valuable for short burst, needs on the spot, but it's confusing when needing to deploy the effort over time.

Keep reading and listening to all this daily. That's my current level of involvement. I will see how it works.

Trendy Japanese

until it lasts ... I won't jump buying this one when it is released, just flip through it in the bookshops, but 研究社 is to deliver いまどきのニホン語 和英辞典. As far as I am aware of, it may be the first bilingual dictionary that takes Japanese as the starting point for rendering colloquial, trendy and slang expressions into English. I saw the reverse approach, from dirty English to (dirty?) Japanese in several books some years ago. I am curious about how sex related slang is dealt with or watered down as there is no Japanese-Japanese slang dictionary I know of. Ask your average Japanese and you'll get a puzzled look with an answer like "there is no slang in Japan". As far as business and tech interpreters are concerned, the book won't be a priority.

Good news : less is more

"As Japan has become more prosperous, fewer people are taking the trouble to learn foreign languages". You always have to take this type of article with a grain of unwashed salt, but only people cruising in the gaishikei corp districts of Tokyo believe the place is globalized (= westernized). Less learners of foreign langauge is more job potential for interpreters.

Rehashing the preparation issue

Reports on the growing needs for over the phone interpretation as one can read over Global WatchTower for instance are strategically avoiding to delve onto the service delivery from the standpoint of the interpreter. In a recent article, one learn that such service provider is paying a hefty $10 per hour for medical interpretation. You get a little more flipping patties at McDonalds in Tokyo these days. Nobody is laughing aloud. The slave-interpreters have no time to blog on the appalling conditions of the profession. I am lucky to be paid more, but pressures to ever more "systematize" the delivery for less quality are heavily felt these days. On the other side, that is, the interaction between the clients and me, they don't have a clue about what interpretation is. It's not in my case that there is no preparation time, it is that in most cases, there are not enough clues to fathom about what to prepare for and about. The most recent OPI session I did was 2 hours ago. I was notified yesterday. The subject was the name of a company. Period. Interpreters doing OPI are scorned by the raved in-the-booth interpreters for whom the books say that time and plenty of documentation are a requisite to deliver. Even a few of my friends who are the stealth pilots of the booth frown at me when I start talking about OPI, suggesting that only the fool and the B class interpreters do this. I am a B class interpreter, intrepid or call it fool at that, and I do OPI with a revenge. But for all their laughty manners and condescendence, they reckon with pride that they would never do it, or they tried sometime ago and "the sound was awful my dear!". Yeah, you bet! And I have been endlessly in the market for a dual headset phone. The OPI interpreter as I see it is the pilot getting ready for a flight with mostly no map, smeared windshield through which you can hardly spot the side lights of the track, altimeter broken and the smell of crude oil in the cabin. At times, it's raiders of the lost ark without the screen. I think your average OPI interpreters wants to deliver quality service, that goes against the pledge of "we put you in touch with a professional interpreter in 15 seconds". Heaven can wait. I am doing what should be called technical, industrial, specialized OPI. Nothing mundane, always specific, hardly the stuff you "naturally" know. On top of that, the subjects are but very seldom the same. One day it's about fish, the next day it's about meat. The common denominator indeed is food. But beyond that, go figures. And despite the fact that no preparation time is paid for, you have to prepare unless you are a D interpreter. Which comes down again to the matters of strategy, approaches at the most efficient ways if any to spend the least of time into a new subject in oder to scoop the most sensible, tangible and measurable big picture of a subject. The risk is that the talk will be about a fraction of it, and a deep one at that. It has happened more than once. OK, it's not that there is no map. One is common sense, but you have to wax that one daily in order to make it shine in stress circumstances. They don't teach you that I bet at interpretation schools. I refer to the issue at least once in the course I am teaching in Tokyo. I do a quick check of my student's competence at using the internet to do research. By far and large, they are mostly incompetent.

I show them to start with skimming wikipedia, then the news with Google News (98% they didn't know). I ask them what else they can dip into beyond text. No one knows. Then I tell them about video, Youtube or whatever. I didn't tell them about podcast but at times, but you are glad to find something audio on the subject you are researching (I was not confident pronouncing "neutraceutical", now I am). I didn't tell them about looking for glossaries. There are many these days, but the management of these is tricky. Preparation is a whole issue seemingly poorly covered in the literature.

Pre-assignment Preparation and Research question

Exactly what I want to read about now. Found in the program of the ATA 48th Annual Conference.

"That Crucial First Step: Pre-assignment Preparation and Research
Kelly A. Gomes
Saturday, 8:00-9:30am - All Levels

While some interpreters have been known to bemoan the need to prepare before an assignment, others are sometimes at a loss as to how to proceed. We will examine why pre-assignment research and preparation is so important to ensuring quality interpreting (particularly with regard to mental processing capacity). Tips and strategies for each component of preparation will then be discussed. Areas of focus will include creating and maintaining glossaries, optimizing online research, practicing with extemporaneous speeches, and "morning of" warm-up exercises. The session will also include a short discussion on longer-term terminology and background knowledge research."

Something to read here as well.

Are there systematized approaches to preparation in the age of Wikipedia? Is glossary building the ultimate neck?

Investing

Investing in specific, technical domains is a bet I have hard time deciding upon. I had conversations the past day with people who in their own domains have a kin perception on where the needs may be for interpretation work. It's highly specialized stuff like neutraceutical. Embedded systems told another one. I went back home and put an order on the first subject for books in English, French and Japanese. However, the decision to work hard on any very focused subject with the dim prospect that there might be a continuously growing stream of demand is tricky and always has been so. What about photovoltaic devices, fuel cells? I indulged in many other books on these as well and will consult with other people "who know". It's not that investing in specific domains is a loss of time but a few past experiences have shown the limit of betting into the future of this over that. In the meantime, I looked for hints, not a miracle cure, at how other people proceed when trying and learn fast about a new subject. Nothing revolutionary of course and a split between the "read as much as possible even if you don't get it right away but don't go back", to the "read and reread until you get a clearer picture." The two tribes seem not to agree with each others.

The magic phrase

"I found you on google searching for japanese translators." This is the magic phrase and the single axis of strategy to find assignments I am confident about. It all comes down to this phrase. I was thrilled this morning reading this sentence, crossing fingers. It is a rare proof these days that the strategy is tangible. The bet has always been that a growing number of corporations, mostly SMEs doing business with Japan remote, will source interpreters locally searching. They don't care about nationality. The pace at which the magic phrase was appearing on the screen the past years has been on the increase. It never was a tsunami, but on the increase it was, definitely. Sometimes around the last months of last year, nothing blinked on the green radar screen. There was no need to read the Wall Street Journal to understand that something nasty was brewing. Getting the magic phrase is one thing, getting the assignment is another challenge. Fees, readiness and how you are perceived based on your web site and the style of answer you deliver. It's never cooked in advance but this morning at least, the magic phrase popped up on the screen and it has been a while. It's a tiny signal that the strategy makes sense and will grow making sense I hope.

Anathema

I went to Sanseido book store this afternoon and stopped by several other bookshops on the way. Something came to my mind that will sound as anathema but here it goes : when the Kindle2 is released in Japan, I will read more, granted it displays furigana. Difficulties to read kanji is a major drawback for many - including a growing number of natives. Unless you are equipped with the adequate memory, imperfect knowledge of kanji reading is a major hindrance that inhibits reading habit, when you were not schooled here. Even Japan schooled Prime Ministers stumble too these days. It may sound weird for an interpreter to display his shortcomings in his B language, but I have referred time and again in this blog that many liaison interpreters face both issues of turning a better interpreter (consecutive) and upgrading their B language competence. We are not talking ESIT here, we are out of the booth, and there is a different world out of the booth that is still called the market for interpretation services. How do you turn not mastering a few thousands kanji while living in Japan? Well, that's life man, just life. I am not advocating scrapping kanji as such trials took place through history. I am advocating that reading a lot is a key to better reading kanji, more than working on kanji when you have reached a beyond advanced level in Japanese. I can hear the world cringe here. How can you boast a beyond advanced level in Japanese and suggest you don't read fluently anything around. Because it is reality, the reality of applied language. I don't need to work more on kanji the traditional way, that is reading list of commented kanji and writing those down. I need to read more, I need volume reading and flip less in dictionaries, because more than often, I can guess more or less precisely the meaning of the kanji I don't know the reading of. Kanji reading imperfections should not impair the will to read, so the point is not to replace kanji with more hiragana, but help reading kanji within the reading process. Because the more you read with a helper function, the more you can read without. That's exactly what Rikaichan allows with web based content, but most books I want to read are not in electronic version but on paper. That is why I want a Japanese Kindle2 with furigana display function because I want to read a lot more, and a lot less on the computer screen. I don't expect the Kindle2 to come anytime soon to Japan though. The publication industry here needs a bigger earthquake to be shaken out of conservative traditionalism. It won't happen anytime soon. Ironically, there has been several domestic trials at ebook readers diffusion but they all failed because of the publishing industry. The future winner will have a hard time but there will be a future reader. In the meantime, there are signs that reading is cracking at spots the majority do not want to look at. The Yomiuri national daily is now printed with way much bigger fonts than it used to be. Because of the growing aging population some say. Other dailies will follow the trail. The next step will be more furigana in grown-ups newspapers. Mind my words. It is actually already taking place in some category of books, too many grown-ups will not reckon on the fact.

But back in the bookshop, at Sanseido, I purchased the 2009 version of the famous 現代用語の基礎家式　学習版.
It's a way much thinner book than the annual door stopper crammed with news vocabulary and contemporary facts. It is geared at "grown-ups, and kids as well". That's the marketing blurb intended to cajole the grown-ups into buying a book where mostly all kanji come with furigana reading. The interesting thing for advanced non-native learners and beyond, and for interpreters - you know, the kind that never sat at an interpretation course - is that the content is not childish at all but compact enough to run through, scooping a hefty dose of contemporary vocabulary that pops up everywhere in the news, without putting the car idle on the sideline to check for the reading of this or that kanji. Holders of the holy canons of kanji learning will choke on that, but for fast integration of newsly vocabulary and facts as expressed in Japanese, I won't refrain from praising this book. And I wish there were more of that kind for more specific themes, like science. Actually, I spotted in the Blueback collection a two small volumes covering physics and chemistry as taught at junior highschools but geared at grown-ups only this time, The pages were quite small and would make for an uncomfortable reading experience but many kanji in that grown-up book were adorned with furigana, and it is a good things. Enough of anathema today.

Home made self-training content

Alessio Iacovoni on his blog ushers in a simultaneous self-training environment demo apparently built upon an open source educational content development platform. Nimble trainers will weave up a collection of training material they will not even carry to the classroom because it will all be located somewhere on a server. What is required from now on is to devise standard training exercises patterns that reflect the needs of trainees based on their level: beginners, intermediate, advanced. Consecutive should not be forgotten too. And the fact that - at least here in Japan - introduction to interpretation courses are a didactic way to beef up B (and A!) language competence of trainees not especially aiming at the profession, but wanting to reach a higher level of language capacity, the introductory self-training segment supported by serious "how to" content should be kept in view of the back mirror from day one.

Adventures in liaison interpreting

My vision to nurture an association kind of gathering of interpreters working between Japanese and French has bumped onto the wall of reality. Who is an interpreter? Professionals working in the booths are. They don't have to explain and justify. The mostly untrained active interpreter that built up a career trail out of luck, failures and mishaps, hard work and opportunism in the loosely charted territory of out-of-the-booth interpretation realm, this individual takes many shapes and faces. In the tiny world of Japanese-French here in Japan, I pretend to have chartered it plenty enough. I know how it works and how and why it doesn't work for me. I know why the market largely managed by agencies keeps the rare non-Japanese performer out of its loop of assignment. I know the cultural and racial factors that are at the core of this dynamism. I don't even wish to discuss with, cajole, convince anyone who thinks my interpretation of the situation is flawed. It took too long a time to reach the awareness of how things work in that domain. Probably, no, certainly, wanting to try and build an association like gathering was doomed to fail from day one. By sheer lack of members, and by the very fact that out-of-the-booth interpreters come indeed in various shapes and faces. And the more they are "professionalized", the more they have adopted the shut-clam attitude with is endemic in the profession. For what I have seen, the JP-English scene, interpreters there too are nothing less of a bunch of sealed oysters. That's why an association would mostly bring together amateurs, interpreters cum translators cum graphic artists cum dish washers, cum anything you like. Among the 17 or so members, there are 6 who are identifiable and among those 6, 4 who are self-defined as interpreters or interpreters-liaison agents. I have no clue about who are the shut-clam others. They just registered and cannot be referred to by names. Other interpreters never showed up of showed up and never came back after the first meeting. The story goes that they don't want to rub elbows with less mavericks than themselves. They mostly don't want to rub elbows with anyone.

Also, whereas professional in-the-booth interpreters are self-justified to write, glow and ponder about the profession, out-of-the-booth interpreters may seldom carry any interest in their profession that touches on academic, conceptual and other airy aspect of the trade. They make money and a living, or they try to. It's a down to earth job, one day with the client, delivering, getting the dough and sayonara. Lonely wolves we are.

Who would care to discuss about training technics, improvement strategies, computer aided future schemes and the likes? Do butchers care about knives kinetics or angle factors and the trimming of sirloin steaks? My assumption was wrong. Those who came, most of them,were looking in a sense for the opportunity to have a "free hour of conversation with a French national". Not all of them, but as they are starving to converse in French, anything will do.

Iraqi interpreters do not read the Interpreting Journal. Besides the lethal factor, why would the company booths interpreter at yesterday's fair in Tokyo would read or even know, and care about Liaison Interpreting - A Handbook? Mostly nobody. One day sitting at a booth in an international trade fair, the next guiding a group of tourists in Tokyo, doing translations to meet ends, bridging the gap at a business meeting. Who would care about theory when it's about paying the rent? Same goes with drawing a map of the market, current and future map that is. Who cares when you are on the receiving side, waiting for the agency to bestow you a chunk of assignment. Just say "thank you" and bow. Past tentative to start a discussion on the dynamic factors of the market was massively met with blinking question marks in the eyes of the attendant. What I see - too late - as crucial : understanding the scope and span and texture of the professional pool where you are swimming - or drowning - should be a priority. I was wrong on this too. They don't see the point.

Yet, the Internet, the blog, give voice to people out of the academic territories the freedom - except in some corners of the world - to ponder aloud about professional and academic things at will. The academics do not know them, or even if they happen to bump into their tiny realm, they probably scoff at what they peruse. But it doesn't matter. That's why there are still so rare examples like Boothando or Alessio Iacovoni's Weblog. Out-of-the-booth activity gets visible when you read about Iraqi interpreters slaughters or how they try and struggle to find an escape and a safer life in Europe or the USA. The only expression allowed may be to write about one's "adventures in liaison interpreting", which comes head to head with confidentiality rules. Professional gathering was a dream afar.

Spanish anyone?

P. asks me an opinion about an interpreter job he is considering applying to. 6 days, consecutive, 8 hours a day (they wrote 7.5 hours, but that's one among the many bullshit lip service wording the recruiting blurb is larded with). They want a SPANISH <=> JAPANESE interpreter Interpreting between Spanish speaking craftsman visiting Japanese store and Japanese staff/ customers. The interpreter must be fluent in Spanish to which they add : "Interpretation experience preferred". So the middlemen want an interpreter who preferably has interpretation experience. The hourly pay is about twice what they pay at McDonalds in Tokyo. A freshly landed manga geek from Europe may secure a better per hour language course. P. is not an interpreter but times are hard and he needs money.

Translating the circumvolutions

Yesterday's OPI assignment was less difficult than envisaged and yet a challenge because the speaker spoke very slowly - with some sudden and unexpected rushes that generated much stress. But during the slow, thoughtful utterances, I had time to check within 1.25 hour about 3 or 4 words online. The handheld dictionary is proving fastidious and of bad ergonomy in such situations. There is a typical loop in the discourse of Japanese people who are knowledgeable on the subject at stake, well structured with their speech, but yet displaying a heavy amount of cautiousness when the question they are asked is perceived as delicate or tricky. I have noticed this pattern time and again. Taking notes is not a problem. You can at times almost transcribe the whole speech although that's not what notes are for in interpretation. What does make rendering difficult is the circumvolution, the loop pattern. Here I am as always missing some suggestions from peers. A circumvoluted pattern once straightened up makes for a shorter, clearer speech than the original. I tend to follow the curves but I am not satisfied with this approach. Should I summarize, wipe out the voluntary erring of the speaker to come down with a simpler string of sentences and save time, or simply follow the curves with a risk to end adding more curves to the landscape than in the original?

Professionalization of amateurishness

There is a phenomenon I shall call professionalization of amateurishness. On Viadeo, a LinkedIn clone, I found in a professional forum a young French lad profile claiming to be an interpreter of Japanese. To prove his claim he has set a link to a video showing him in action. I have no doubt he is sincere. There is not the slightest humor or tentative to fake. He is genuine, that is, a genuine amateur. The veteran interpreter would scorn at such display of "pretentious amateurishness", but she would be wrong. After all, he is shown in action interpreting for an interview, meaning that he has a client. There are clients that are perfectly satisfied with amateurishness. And yes, it may be the proof that such clients are amateurs themselves. But that's how the world has turned into. A wish is now displayed as a capacity : yes I can do interpretation because I want to, and here the proof on Youtube. You can't beat that. With the youth category in Western countries being now understood as spanning up to 30 years old, amateurishness is feeding the needs of professionals who understand each other. They don't understand me. They don't understand the veteran interpreter, granted they had an opportunity to meet. But both ignore each other, one with scorn, the other as a result of genuine lack of knowledge that there is much better on the service market but that it comes at a different cost. Young people crushed under social scorn at youth - in Europe especially - are genuinely wanting to prove the competences and experiences they are lacking, so much that one Japanese learner in France lamented that he had been investing more than 10 years of his life in this. As he is 23, you can calculate when his investment started. It's not funny though. It's pathetically funny. They are cornered in despair. I was probably pretty bad and amateurish at 23. There was no way to demonstrate it, and no public to genuinely clap at the amateur' s performance. Now there is.

Blip on the radar?

In extreme low tide as now, a single blip on the assignment radar wants to be perceived as a sign of chance. It is very difficult to avoid the rush to interpret signs as more meaningful than they are. There have been two blip on the radar since this month started. Unfortunately, the first one related to adult entertainment. I declined the offer but the mail exchange was very courteous. as for the second one. Well, it is too fresh to conclude anything.

Centers of excellence

Just like Japan interpreting schools are said to provide for half of the students a solution to the need for intensive advanced practice of the B language, it may be that the universities outside Japan - those in the US, UK and Australia - with curriculum in interpretation may also deal with students who need parallel training in technics as well as higher language acquisition. This is perfectly normal and should point to the need of very short scale centers of excellence for language training with or without interpretation in mind.

Probing factors

There are many factors that may explain the rarity of Japanese - Western language interpreters who are non-native Japanese. The standard perception nurtured over a few centuries of reciprocal exoticism is the measurement of language difficulty, with Japanese scoring high in the mind of non-practioneer. I won't delve into that territory. Let's simply remark that Russian to take an example among others looks daunting from a Japanese point of view.

Two more serious factors are to be taken into account. In many countries, the highest level of Japanese education offered may simply be too low and cripples the will to consider targeting interpretation. A second factor is that the helping hand that is a budding interpreter in many non-specialized liaison type of settings will quickly want to go elsewhere professionally. Lacking mentorship, the example of elder interpreters, being turned out by condescending professionals in the market will not entice beginners to want and pursue further into interpretation. Things won't change anytime soon, but the question that may be raised is, does it matter? Yes and no. In early days prior to Pearl Harbor, the US was not aware that mostly no American were fluent Japanese language speakers. When the time came to urgently decipher the secret messages of the enemy, reality struck hard, but the answer to that reality was strong as well. We are no longer in war. I know the tune. Economic exchanges are goodwill relationships, innocent ballet of kind humans blowing kisses to each other. Economy is no longer a war but an harmonious play of tennis the way it was practice in the very early days of that pastime.

I found a rare and well researched page describing the translation and interpretation market in Japan over Macquarie University. It doesn't take into account nationality factors that influence access to the market for non-Japanese professionals or aspiring professionals. In the rare occasion I have been able to expose the fact that it is not simply a matter of competence but that nationality does play a role, interpreters I talked have shown total mistrust. I think they are sincere while sharing the ingrained belief that "by nature, only Japanese national can do it. The pervasive, invisible traces of this "a priori" is deeply ingrained but there are new dynamic factors that are yet changing the landscape, not in favor of interpretation as a career for non-native of Japanese. The shift of interest from Japanese to Chinese is one such factor. There are signs that the level of Japanese education is dipping further in some countries - France being an example. This is the result of over-democratization of Japanese language teaching and collateral result of the craze for some aspect of Japanese pop culture. One consequence though is that the number of Japanese speakers is growing, whatever the level and registries concerned. The over dominance of English is also a mega-factor that is too easy to forget. In fact, as needs reside mostly with English (and certainly Chinese), the hardcore non-native wanting to pursue into the profession might be well advised to focus on the JP-Eng combi with her own native language on top of it, and look for the adequate schools available in the English speaking world. There will be always some room even if tiny for rarer languages in the liaison domain where formal training will be less of a factor and a motivator.

In Italian too

I flipped through a book I was suggested to read by Kumiko Tamaru. The title is 目からハム.
Kumiko Tamaru is a veteran interpreter of Italian. I don't read much records of interpreters because whenever I do, I feel even more discouraged than now. They all seem to write in the same fashion, swooning and joking about how it used to be, the mistakes they did, and how it is now so hard with all the competition but "thanks god, I'll be soon out of this business". There is also a chapter on the quality of Japanese speaking by Italians. It is a sure sell to make your readers laugh on how tricky Japanese can be, just like any other language. Yes competition is terrible, I could fathom it by myself. Yes, the Olympics and any international hooplas recruiting "volonteer" interpreters are a kill to the profession. I wrote about it in this blog some years ago. It is not that I am brighter than anyone else in this profession including the veteran and super hyper competent I do not belong to. It is simply that going to such conclusions, getting insights into the profession (a plural is requested here) is accessible to anyone interpreter starting to think about the job, reading articles (do you catch articles with the keywords interpreting, interpreter, interpretation using Google News? I do) and making sense out of a quite limited scope of coverage. Blogging about it is a powerful way to tie up the bits and others than me are trying and do the job of exposing the many faces of the profession(s). You don't need to be a 35 years veteran although a 35 years veteran do deserve respect. Only, you can hardly hear and read them online and their testimonies do not usually come with suggestions for the future. I heard that 50% of Japanese language learners in French universities call it quit within a year or two. Some academics are lamenting the draining away. I think a drop out rate of 90% would be much better. Ms. Tamaru would never dare nor think about spelling things frankly as these. But she will soon quit the job, so who cares about the future?

Computer aided interpreting training

It's costing too much money at a time of recession to try and read papers that are not available for nil. I already shelled out the price of a thick book to read a single academic article on interpreting. At some $30 a pop, it is by no means very expensive. I would like to flip through this article "Free or Affordable Software in Translation and Interpreting Training" released in 2006, and published in The Interpreter and Translator Trainer (ITT): Volume 1, Number 2, 2007
The Impact of Information and Communication Technology on Interpreter Training, published by St.Jerome, but the cost is not that worth. Not that I am a genius having discovered the Earth is spherical, but I have not been awed away by what I have bought and read so far. Academics have the superiority of access to testing environment, discussion with peers and time and resources to systemize their thoughts and research activities. Everything that is lacking outside thy realm. But thinking comes free and compensate to some extend what they can do I can't. I wish the cost of purchase of a single article be halved.

Inner escape

This is a little bit off track but I like Peter Barakan nonchalant manner although I don't know much about him. I also like his approach to living in Japan. There is a recent article about him in the Japan Times. You can read it at different levels, as an innocuous piece of journalism you'll forget next minute, or as a standard piece of cliché on the relationship between foreigners - of Western extraction in priority - and the Japanese language. The writer - a Japanese journalist - introduces Barakan as a "a long-time Tokyoite fluent in Japanese, husband to a Japanese woman". I dare say that being the husband of a "Japanese woman" is the central identification feature, the pedigree of the foreigner who is and always will be a never-to-be-perfect Japanese speaker. Language competence and wife's nationality are melted into sameness. The first live comment of Barakan is followed by yet another standard stereotype in the expression "he said speaking in near-native Japanese". And the issue at point is not "near-nativeness", nor the pavlovian awe of the journalist at the achievement, but that the very topic of Barakan fluency - which is near as in near-miss - is worth a comment. Barakan has been living in Japan for 35 years. I would have interviewed him about music, not about his near-missed Japaneseness - that unreachable star. Closeness to Japaneseness as a near-miss event will follow him in the grave just like me although he is closer to near-missness than I am. As the expanding universe, local expectations for the foreigner to be superlatively competent at Japanese and anything Japanese even more than the Japanese who are superlatively Japanese by genetic + having been born and raised here always goes further away. You always miss something.

But it should not be important. Unfortunately, it is superlatively important and nagging on a daily basis. What makes life at times totally boring here is that your near-missing state tends to be the central explicit or implicit subject of the dialogue with others. In a thematic group at some online professional community network where the dictatorship of blind positivism is self-infliged as in fashion magazines copy style, some members have been swooning on Barakan's "humility", his lack of affection and the sincere downgrading of the self when he reckons that he cannot follow TV news unless he really concentrates, nor can he fluently read newspapers. I think everybody is missing the irony when that same journalist goes on with a "but doesn't blame it on a lack of ability". "Japanese newspapers are difficult to read because the way it is written is too formal, whereas English papers are written in a more conversational form," he said. "Similarly, I cannot follow TV news unless I really concentrate. The NHK news, especially, is too formal. The way they talk suggests only salary men are interested in news."

I don't much follow him on the meaning of "salary men" for that instance, but what Barakan is probably suggesting - and the journalist is out of tune on the implicit side of this - is that your average Japanese may be in the very same position as a 35 years resident of Japan. It definitely requires concentration to follow the news in any language, including your native lingua franca. Japanese newspaper regularly lament - as in any other country - at the growing incompetence of the locals at their own language, which doesn't make a foreign any more clever. You proportionally loose competence together with the average sliding down of the majority's competence because you are at the margin, clinging with one finger to the Japanese mothership (tongue in cheek).

Fuming about "these Japanese" always pointing at the competence of the foreigner in the mysteries of Japaneseness is a standard subject and source of malaise of life in Japan as a foreigner. Dipping further into it, you start understanding as with the swooning crowd I mentioned that foreigners in their way to cope with the fact tend to do nothing but amplify the local mantra of us versus them. A 27 years resident takes a bow to state that "I found this quote quite encouraging, actually. I have lived in Japan for 27 years now, but still need to concentrate well to understand the news. I always attributed it to an insufficient knowledge of Japanese. My Japanese friends also tell me that they find the news difficult to follow, but I figured they were just humble and wanted me to feel better. Reading that Peter Barakan still needs to concentrate after 35 years in Japan is therefore very encouraging. It is like a reality check informing me that there is nothing wrong with my brains, and it makes me want to sit down and study again. " Another lachrymal individual mopping his eyes lets go with a "I really liked his humbleness. 35 years on and Mr. Barakan refuses to acknowledge that he is bilingual."

Here in full swing is your extreme knee-jerking and throwing bows all over the place type of utterance that makes me feel like calling it quit altogether and escape to Australia. I still have another three years to reach that gentleman's knee-jerking competence and reckon that I will never be native. The next step for mental healthiness is to be able to say and believe that "I don't care".

Because, what if Peter Barakan's "humility" was a wrongful appreciation of an "easy-going" attitude nurtured over time to cope with that small neurosis imposed and self-imposed by the cultural milieu and über-fantasy, dream and onirism surrounding Japan?

Inner escape. I think it has something to do with inner escapism and I see something similar between Barakan and let's say Donald Ritchie when it comes to the public attitude toward the stupid questioning of stupid journalists focusing on your ever missing competence at this and that, checking your knee-jerkyness competence instead, and in the end being totally oblivious to what and who you are. Peter Barakan is a passeur of non-Japanese music to Japan first of all, or at least that's the way I perceive his activity when listening to his extremely good radio show on NHK FM. His focus on foreign music is probably a major self-applied pharmakon to sustain his competence at living in Japan. It's a way to escape while being there. Donald Ritchie too is an escapist but with the within, be it Japanese cinema or local sex life. You need something to escape which helps cope with the stupidity, lameness of journalists when they want to gear the conversation after being here for 35 years or more on your imperfect competence, a reassuring subject to readers from all shores.