Speed

I quit learning Chinese the day I started thinking about it. Now I am starting not learning, unlearning, delearning, whatever. The books came at the same time, funny coincidence.The most startling thing is the Japanese book 入門からのシャドウイング 中国語短文会話360と基本文法. I synched the CDs with the iPod and flipped in the meantime the introduction pages. There is a reference about learning as sport where speed, rhythm and nuances are what must be placated onto the body 身に付ける.

Oh!Boy! I laughed while listening to the CD. I am still laughing! Normal speed it is, that is full speed, spink spank, pig pong like explosion of interactive short bursts of dialogs, in Japanese AB, AB, AB, then in Chinese, all of this at light speed. It's Nike that comes to language learning, that is, just do it, which is the main message. Just do it, starting from shadowing from the first line, including the Japanese. That is, you shadow Japanese (not what is intended by the authors) then Chinese if you want to practice both. The readers are invited to speed up in Japanese and burst into Chinese with equal velocity as a way to smash oral procastination. It's a brilliant idea. The authors are priests of shadowing. Incredible. I am hooked.

Off the record : not learning Chinese

I started learning Mandarin Chinese with no objective beyond learning it through audio-aural based methods first. I don't have high level aims, I am not in a hurry but to taste how it feels to try and learn a language that way. In a way, I am not learning Chinese, I am testing an approach. Pimsleur in the ears to start with. Today, I bumped into this book in Jimbocho in a Chinese bookstore : 初級からのシャドウイング 中国語短文会話600—シャドウイング中国語シリーズ初級編 (シャドウイング中国語シリーズ 初級編) (シャドウイング中国語シリーズ 初級編) . Shadowing was the hook I got caught with. The introduction was especially well done, a clear explanation of purposes and methods. Actually, clearer than I have ever read about. I had already noticed the various books on Chinese by the same author who claims to put shadowing as the centerpiece of the self-study method. This very book is not a pure beginner one but as there was a reference to a previous book 入門からのシャドウイング 中国語短文会話360と基本文法 geared at real beginners, I inquired about it but the clerk could not find it. I looked around in two or three other bookstores to no avail even dropping by Maruzen at Tokyo station. I finally ordered over Amazon. The balance between the lowest and highest grades from customer reviews was a major decisive factor.

Best review:

最初はスピードの速さにびっくり。
しかし、よくよく考えると、これが普通のスピードなのだろうから、
初級のうちから、これくらいの速さについていけるようにしておいたほうが、
あとで落ちこぼれないと思って練習しております。
なれるにつれて、なんかホットした気持ちになれます。

Worst review:

中国語学習の入門用としてはかなり難度が高いです。
シャドウイングが核となる本書ですが、
CDはテンポも読むスピードも非常に速く、
中国語の発音に不慣れな方には、
ピンインや声調を正確に聞き取ることはかなり難しいと思われます。

Indeed.

Beefing up listening competence

To state things clear, my current students rate high at the weekly transcription homework they are assigned. But transcription at home is different from real life. You listen once or more. If you are computer savvy, you can even cheat and use a slowdowning function in some audio software. But in the classroom, they have a very hard time deciphering on the spot the content we are working on for which they are not prepared, on purpose. Which raises the following question : listening/understanding is key to interpretation. How do you work on listening in the classroom? Is a "listening classroom" effective? I exhort them each week to listen and listen and listen, to read aloud, to do their bouts of shadowing outside the classroom, but inside, what is efficient?

Aparté : alternatative, self language learning is dead serious

There is one thing that the tenants of traditional methods to learn (and teach) languages can't scoff at when thinking about the crowd of people learning and writing about their endeavors at self-teaching languages : that they are dead serious, and dead dedicated. Only maroons claim for a 10 minutes fix to learn Chinese. Not the self-learners recording in public their efforts - and failures. They all spend time and do not cheat, as there is no work around, because alternative approaches is not about doing less but doing more focused. And also treading on the bizarre, what others would call the uselessness. I received my book and audiobook from Italy yesterday. It is the first time I ever ordered something from Italy, first of all a country of the mind. Which explains why it was a somewhat emotional delivery. I am pleased by the color of the book and the CD package. Beautiful blue, which was one of the minor reasons to buy it. Thinking about it, there was no major reasons but the wish to try something in the range of the bizarre : listening and reading (shadowing) a language mostly foreign to me. It's a beautiful experience. The book is short enough that the reading is less than 3 hours. I can listen while in the train (so noisy by the way) in Tokyo. I can listen and think about something else and it does not intervene in the thinking like music does. Something weird by the way. It's evocative as I can pick up a few words here and there. I know it's about Venice and that's enough to fill content. I stated trying and follow the text while listening but I quit and I am now listening only. I will read while listening a second time, then start doing some shadowing. Later on, I will be up on purpose some words calling to be understood. I don't intend to learn Italian, but to have Italian language teach me something, the musicality of language, or maybe something totally different.

When clients expect you be on their side

"As with all professional interpreters, sign language interpreters strive to achieve the proper protocol of complete objectivity and accuracy in their translation without influencing the interaction in any way. "

I bumped on this commentary about the book Sign Language Interpreting - Deconstructing the Myth of Neutrality, and my first reaction was : "I am a professional liaison interpreter. But too often, achieving "the proper protocol of complete objectivity and accuracy in their translation without influencing the interaction in any way" simply does not fit, both realities and my clients' expectations." And I say MY client, some of whom, not implicitly, but explicitly want me to act as their local agent/consultant for the time of the session. Sometimes, they ask for more, not for less, that is, acting not only as a linguistic agent. Am I to answer: "Sorry but I will interpret what you say and what the other side says, but don't expect me to clarify the messages or tell you that when the answer is "It will be difficult", it simply means "No"? I m not talking about the booth here, not even talking about liaison interpreting as described in the books, but a variation of that one where sticking to the description of the interpreter as language agent simply does not fulfill clients' expectations. Some clients, or situation, pushes the interaction acting toward strict language intermediation, and the attitude of the interpreter is decisive to some extend. But in many situations I know, on-the-spot comments are frequently welcome and appreciated. There are more than one reasons the interpreter is allowed to cross over the sanctity of neutrality, but with awareness and caution. Here is one in a nutshell.

I want to impress my clients for the next time if any. My linguistic competences - of which I know the limits - won't impress them more than my agency at helping them reach their objectives. Of course, I start as a linguistic agent (and cultural when it comes to get the shoes of before the tatami mat ...), but I adapt to the situation and expectations of my client, whenever they ask for it, in implicit or explicit manner. If they don't want it, I retreat back to the linguistic agent den. But as a matter of fact, once they have had a taste of "beyond linguistic interpretation", they usually want more. Am I willing to tell them, no Sir, I am only a language agent? No. Period.

The fallacy of the The Interpreter as Cultural Mediator

In the context described in the previously linked document The Interpreter as Cultural Mediator, the author stresses how the liaison interpreter in a business situation is called forward more than often for inputs that go beyond the mere transition of meaning back and forth. There are situations where the interpreter is deemed by the client to go beyond and almost behave like a partner. I have experienced such situations time and again. Of course, in more formal business situations, where the interpreter is expected to just do interpretation, "cultural mediatorship" is not even expected. Call it pure interpretation. Not pure interpretation, the format blasphemous enough to go beyond the sanctity of neutrality, is endemic with bad, chatty, born yesterday interpreters. But even when you dare call yourself a seasoned one, there are times and situations where the client will start giving you free reigns as she now feels that you better understand what she is trying to convene to the other side, what she is trying to achieve. And at that moment, whether this is good or bad judgement, the interpreter who grasps the situation, the purpose and the expectation (and the product or service discussed) , turns into a collaborator who happens to speak the language of the other side. Of course, it happens because a wordless bonding between the interpreter and the client, made of perceived (could be wrong) feeling on the client's side that the interpreter got it, understand the intention, and may be brighter than the client to now push things forward. I always ask my clients before the show starts what they are expecting to achieve. It can be selling, understanding better what is needed, therefore currently lacking, for the business relationship to further on. That is why I do not buy into that expression "cultural mediator", because "cultural" doesn't sell. You know, the client wants to make a deal, not understand the meaning of bowing according to the back's angle. That's why I don't even buy into "Mediator", because the interpreter through mediation is hopefully an agent of change, an agent of "go ahead". She allows, through extra beyond what it is said service, things to go forward. That is why happy clients would tell the interpreter after the show is over "thank you, you helped us move forward". When do you start not being "simply" an interpreter? When do you start being an interpreter on the verge of being "part of the team"? When you feel inside that your business card reading "Interpreter" does not tell the real service you may provide to the client. Liaison interpreter and Business Agent, or something similar, may convey a better understanding of where you want to be positioned - at the risk one day of dropping the term "interpreter" altogether. Interpreter is - in liaison context - too heavily charged with linguistics and culture, while what you may bring into the discussion is the decisive factor that helps stuck situations to move forward. In a recent such assignment, the word "audit" printed on documents and spelled aloud in the discussion was seemingly a strong inhibiting factor on the Japanese side, so much that I looked at my clients and told them that "audit" was bad. We rephrased it, told that it was not convening the proper intention and that "workshop" was a better naming for the situation. All of a sudden, the Japanese side felt relieved, and things went further on. The interpreter was at that moment an agent of change.

Liaison interpreting and more

I have been asked for more, that is perform business liaison after providing "simply" liaison interpreting to clients. This side of the business where the interpreter veers toward local agent and consultant is not covered by the literature (is it?). Why?

The later part of this paper does.

Off-time : enjoy simply the sound of the poet

I love the invitation ushered in by Poetry International web newsletter to "enjoy simply" the sound of a language - namely Dutch - one may not know.

"Although the CDs are meant specifically for the Dutch market, we want our international readers to hear at least some of the voices from the last forty years of Poetry International Festival Rotterdam. We are therefore publishing a selection of recordings on our website. Normally, we would offer English translations alongside the original audio or text poems. For this occasion, however, we invite you to enjoy simply the sound of the poet."

The coincidence is perfect. I am waiting for the mailman to deliver hopefully any time soon a package from Italy that will contain a paper book, an essay on Venice, with the corresponding audio book. Besides being able to pinpoint at similarities between French and Italian, the latest is to me a foreign language, just as Dutch can be.

I will not only listen to the audio books while following the written words, but I intend to do shadowing while lacking part or most of the meaning. Some watch TV or hunt birds songs. This will be a totally useless sidetrack just as walking for no purpose besides walking and thinking can be. In a sense, it will be an Italian luxury.

Preparation for telephone interpreting when it doesn't pay

The telephone interpreting industry discourse, the one you can read online or in books, doesn't must delve if at all on financial conditions offered to the end-users service providers, that is, the interpreters. The promise of being ushered to an interpreter in a matter of seconds after request comes with an intended silence on the subject of readiness and competence for the interpreter to deal with a subject out of the blue, that is, out of a context that is not explained ahead of time. The service providers know how to squeeze money out of clients, and how to starve the individual service providers trying and make a living out of a job that does not permit to make a living. The phone interpreter has to swallow the fact that she will not be paid for preparation time, granted there is time to prepare. Paid in worse cases like the flipping man at McDonald's, the telephone interpreter is expected to deliver a service that is way much delicate and requires a high level of adaptation that doesn't compare with a stepped up task of grilling a patty of dubious meat following a methodology where thinking out of the manual is not allowed.

There will always be someone else to do the job so you have better abide or call it quit. Customers are all stupid who believe that their story makes sense to anyone, including the interpreter pushed on a scene for which she is lacking visual cues, among other contextual elements that are crucial to understand what's happening here, and be able to deliver a better, meaningful transmission of meanings between two languages. Of course, all service providers are not created equal but as there are (I am not aware of) mostly nothing in the public arena to read about the real conditions of telephone interpretation as seen from the seat of the individual practitioner, I can only speak for myself without treading onto confidentiality limits. Not everything is confidential. You can easily assume that there are cases that require the interpreter to deliver on the spot services for a subject she discovers the moment she is called for action. It is the worse antithesis, immoral, but yet unavoidable situation where the interpreter must interpret a situation and a speech at the same time. The best scenario is similar to standard face to face delivery with the interpreter being briefed ahead of time, time to used for preparation. I am now somewhat used to deliver in hazed situations where I am informed of the subject ahead of time, let say "Photovoltaic new trends in Japan", but left totally in the dark about what will be specific questions and subject that will be raised during the conversation. The next time may not be about photovoltaic but maybe clam chowder processing or the game industry. Clam chowder would be actually more welcome than such a huge subject like the game industry. The problem is that you don't get paid for preparation. You naturally breathe about photovoltaic clam and solar games. You know everything without spending time to know things. You are god paid at a rate an angel would have quit. Actually, quitting is an option. The pay in my case is not bad on a per hour basis, but the opportunity cost is a delicate issue, although I usually deliver at times that are not in the middle of the day. I would not read about the game industry without having to be somewhat knowledgeable about an industry I am not found of. A cup of clam chowder would fit better. i will certainly quit if, when the rates are pushed down the ladder, which will happen someday. The only positive side of this business minor to me is that it forces you to think in terms of managing the unexpected in a more tangible way than anything else. How to prepare for anything without getting paid for the service? and trying spending the least time on it therefore.

Selecting books that do not fit

I thought I was bright and brilliant enough to select books geared at Japanese learners of English that can be alternatively exploited for Japanese. Few are and I have spent too much on many books that do not qualify. I had the impression that 国際学会のための科学英語　was a candidate and bought it. Too bad, and expansive at that. It's a good book, maybe, but for Japanese only. Actually, few of the 英会話 steady stream of books easily fit the reverse engineering for learning more Japanese.

Market

Introducing consecutive interpretation in a classroom geared both at aspiring interpreters, but mostly students looking to improve their B language competence through interpreting training is an interesting challenge and vista into many issues.

One of these is the knowledge or command, and the lack of it, of one's own A language. There is a world of A language faintly understood in passive mode but hardly ready for active usage when summoned. Yesterday, a student offered the perfect example - you have to manage the blushing student and tell her as I do that it is OK to be wrong as we learn through it. We were working on a short, no note, slow interpretation of short sentences. In one of these laid the word "marché" in French. Unfortunately, I did not take note of what she came with in her native Japanese, but it was not 市場 and neither マーケット.

市場 - market - was not part of her active language although she must have picked it up daily in the news. She could not reach the word fleeting but too far away in the distance of her memory. She could not retrieve it. Reading aloud is one of the down to earth practical exercise I always recommend to students, but I do not dare suggest to university schooled grown-ups to read aloud in their native language. And yet, they, not all of them, should practice A reading aloud and shadowing as a mean to bring forward onto the table a richer set of vocabulary reading to be summoned when needed.

Teaching exposure

This comes before interpretation, at the never ending stage of language acquisition. I am flabbergasted by a note I read in relation with the school where I am teaching a single weekly course in Tokyo. Thanks God, I don't teach French. I teach them to think and act about interpretation between Japanese and French. It goes beyond interpretation because most do not have an adequate level, not to interpret, but first, to listen and understand. They are rated as higher level students, but when it comes to listening, they usually score poor. I was punched in the plexus to read about an issue with class teaching speed concerning lower level students that according to a teacher's perception "learners are learning a language culturally and linguistically located far away, to which they are exposed 3 hours a week."

You know what? If such is the case, teachers are criminals not to teach learners strategic methods of getting further exposed to the language outside the classroom. In 2009, with all the technology and content around, they are kidding themselves and the students at that. Massive exposure, language shower, listen until you die, shadowing marathon, whatever will do. Show them what's around. Wet their appetite for out-of-the-class me-alone activities. What's the fear? That the aware students won't go back to school? At least in Japan, they will. Make then crave for more and they will come back to courses that actively take into account what they watched or listened to outside.

Your man in Tokyo, or Havana

The liaison officer, our man in Havana. It starts with the convenience of using that young local lad who speaks the language, who is local, here, that is, there. He is sympathetic. He seems to communicate well, that is less in terms of linguistic competence than in terms of bonding competence. For the businessmen who have disregarded using an interpreter, relying instead on physical descriptive language (go fingers) pointing at things, using drastically reduced and oversimplified English, our man in Havana (was it Tokyo) smoothens and enriches the interaction. He leaves a trail of good feeling after the meetings are over. The businessmen feel the interaction was richer than ever. They go back to their country and back to the slow process of spotty exchanges of email with their local partners. The momentum locally felt has loosed steam.

During their stay(s), they discussed with the interpreter many times. He has shown opinions, he has made suggestions in the mist of deliberations. He has shown self-confidence, has offered on the spot alternative ways to push forward the discussion. He has absolutely not shown what you read in books, that is, neutrality. The clients have been all the more grateful for him not being neutral. He has been an interpreter and a counsultant and a facilitator, switching caps on the spot, demonstrating deftness at anticipation and fitting the requisite of the situations, that is, what he felt as the requisite to benefit his clients.

This interpreter is hardly defined and described in the literature. Even the liaison interpreter - an almost pure linguistic agent - doesn't look like him. He belongs more to the burly local guide tracing the way through the steppes of the last of the Mohican.

This interpreter is at risk of overdoing, stealing the show, self-confidence being a slippery slope to bragging being cleverer than his client. He must not only monitor the situation, but monitor his play on the stage. The less experienced he is, the more he risks to forget that his job is still that of a conduct. How much of showmanship will be needed massively depends on the client's style, but also the level of specialization of the client, and also the human relations between the members of the team being his clients. A single traveling businessman will not behave the way a group with a leader does. You don't read about this in the books, except in theater plays or vaudeville.

Calling it quit

Not this blog, but my trial at generating a dynamic of discussion among Japanese-French interpreters online, and offline as well. The pro shunned at it, unsurprisingly. The learners and other students who registered were in pleasant apathy from day one, as they are too many of them in real life. We did meet, four monthly meetings, but things were tepid for too long. It helped at least confirm most of what I elaborated about that language pair tiny world. It was not worthless though.

On an unrelated thing, I can't find again some article I had a glance at about the usage of translation memory in interpretation.

Musing and digressions around Computer aided interpreting

There are mentions but few clues on CAI in action. There is no Wikipedia entry. Google Scholars yields nothing. Yet, at a lower but indispensable level, CAI is already here. But what would be real dedicated CAI tools?

There is a dual stage of effective usage of CAI, at the preparation level and in-situ. Technically speaking, CAI starts as soon as you grab and put on the table your IC dictionary when starting a session. I always spread in front me a block note and my IC dictionary as a matter of fact. In that sense, CAI before and during sessions is already here. Over the phone, I use both the dictionary and an online version that proves to be usually easier to use. The IC dictionary keyboard is cramped and the screen too dark but the speed of display doesn't rely on Internet access speed. Now, it is talking with the PC before getting fully integrated online.

Opinion : I don't expect any tangible progress with display interface from Japan.

Speedier, more accurate, and online glossaries especially designed for CAI are the next steps. What would a CAI ready glossary offer? Speed, legibility, tolerance for mistyping, contextual clues on word usage, functional display, inspiration, anticipation, serendipity.

With advanced CAI oriented glossaries, interpreters will train more on the acquisition of meta-knowledge than the nitty gritty of the knowledge itself, because there is too much knowledge around to fully absorb. For instance, I am working on nutraceutical right now and the task is overwhelming, with hundreds of ingredients names you simply cannot remember. Everything that helps skimming a corpus of language to first get the big picture will be strategically essential, meaning also that the interpreter/language learner should focus in priority on verbal structures and phrases that are typical and typical in her specialties.

In the following sentence : Rainforest Fungus Synthesizes Diesel , the minimum vital single piece of word the interpreter must know is the verb, synthesize. The rest comes next. Sounds obvious but language is not ushered in from this functional point of view in the classroom and books.

Task: find out what are the typical verbs used in biochemistry. Master these and start reading on the subject with better ease.

Digression : forget about vertical word lists, forget about Excel. But what is an efficient glossary display architecture? How is the screen real-estate to be used for CAI purpose that makes the task of selecting the best choice better that roaming through elevators of word lists? Word clouds? Bilingual word clouds? Something else?

My SII Japanese-English IC dictionary is already beyond the single column display, into the dual column, and in specific display mode, even into the three-windows mode.

Oh! Found this later.

Kiku Nikkei no longer free

I kept away from shadowing the Nikkei podcast Kiku Nikkei for several weeks. I am now back to learn that it is no longer delivered for free. They set a fee close to ¥600 per month. It is not big money but there are so many still free content around that I am procrastinating. The Yomiuri daily podcast still comes free at this time. I have a mixed feeling with the Nikkei move away from free content.

Tracking progress

I am going through discoveries after discoveries. Take for instance this Norsk Experiment, being the report of a self-learner of Norwegian language. The purpose of the game was "learning a foreign language from the beginning only in this language without any use of other languages". Not only is the approach (maybe) unique, but the reporting of it, and how reporting about ones efforts at achieving something may actually enhance the will to go further on is a major point of interest. It reminds me of a similar report on progress by a learner of manouche guitar I followed a few years ago. Tracking personal progress as a self-supporting medium could be a mandatory part of learning at school.

Last words found on that Norsk Experiment web site. They read like a prophecy:

"We believe that the best way to look for the truth is to be engaged in an atmosphere of dialog and discussion. With our readers' contribution we want to maintain an exchange of thoughts and we hope for a process of evolution of thoughts getting closer and closer to the truth about effective methods for learning languages and, in fact, for all kinds of learning. "

We can't afford an interpreter because of the cost ...

- We can't afford an interpreter because of the cost ... ... thinking about it, this is the third time in a month I am dealing with potential clients who are not newcomers to Japan but have reached the limit of communicability using approximate English and many gestures on top of it. The latest prospect just told me that "we didn't want to hire an interpreter", but communication has reached a level of excruciating inefficiency.
- something that is reaching a new level of efficiency is the reach factor of being visible online. Although work has been scarce with the economic gloom, there has been a growing number of inquiries from SMEs about my services.
- in manufacturing, SMEs doing or trying and do business with Japanese quickly bump, no, crash on the local deep incompetence at English, especially with factory staffs. While calling for "linguistic help" was out of reach, SMEs are fishing the web for resources they rightly figure out they can now more than ever find, just like any other stuff sold online.
- We can't afford an interpreter because of the cost ... I love this statement, especially after reading the long exchange between the client and its Japanese partner. A log exchange of mail in English where the Japanese side raises the issue of providing an interpreter more than five times, with the client answering "We can't afford an interpreter because of the cost ...". Crazy.
- What is the formula to evaluate the loss of time and money, the impact on trust this statement has brought forward because of an issue of communication?
- I love it, that statement : We can't afford an interpreter because of the cost ... but now on, if you want that business relationship to go on and grow, you have to.

What to do with an SRS in the context of interpretation self-training?

I am asking the question, but I don't have answers yet. I used a Spaced Repetition Software years ago and I am now using Anki, but there are many other. AJATT put SRS at the core in terms of tools in the long term effort to learn Japanese - or any other language - by oneself. AJATT author stresses that Japanese must be learned in the end in Japanese, and that sentences collected in the SRS archive must not carry translations on the reverse side of the flashcard. I tend to agree with this approach. Now, what are we about to do with an SRS in the context of interpretation training? Many SRS now allow to insert audio snippets, so a multisided SRS entry could be a three fold card with in order of appearance : audio recording of a sentence -> vocabulary notes -> script of the original sentence. The second and third sides could be reordered on the some ground I am still not grasping. You could grow a collection of annotated sentences for interpretation training to be used alone or in the classroom. I know that short sentences are not the real world as you don't uniquely face situations where short sentences are delivered. Reminder : I am always putting my feet in the shoes of the liaison interpreter, where dialog interpreting is the main dish. But the same format could be used for longer sentences iterations from beginners to intermediate levels. I am going to test this approach right away.

Yet another definition

"Liaison interpreting is consecutive interpreting which enables conversation, discussion, etc. between speakers of two different languages.", whereas consecutive interpreting refers to "longer speeches (rather than two-way conversation)", this according to Newcastle University.

At the University of Nottingham, an English/Chinese course refers to bi-lateral interpreting learning with these aims :

"This module aims to equip students with the advanced knowledge and skills required to provide Bi-lateral interpreting between English and Chinese. It focuses on delivering the speaker’s intended effect on the audience, with emphasis on the overall performance of the interpreter and the impact of interpreting upon the audience, in addition to accuracy and completeness. It trains core skills of projecting the speaker and delivering effects such as humour, indirect requests and intended impression. Techniques are developed for communication with the audience, such as eye-contact, use of pauses and use of voice. The module is workshop-led to maximise practice in class, focusing on two of the most challenging scenarios – speeches and presentations."

Yet another and other definitions.

Confused and inspired

I am both confused and inspired by the wild non-academic massive take of "amateurs" learning languages and intensively writing about their adventures. The confusion comes from the sheer volume of what is available around and the variable interest of what is expressed. The inspiration comes from the fact that they more than often thrust forward methods but also attitude toward the task of language learning that have nothing to do with school, with the universities delivering language curriculums. And beyond the bragging, slamming, in your face hyper inflated ego of a Khatzumoto at All Japanese all the time dot com, there are many things to be inspired with. As that author mentions in one article, he did not invent his methodology but got inspired by others, while adding his own dimension. Where he succeeds is in communicating about the task, the efforts, the work, the travail that is language acquisition. And the effort to communicate is stretching on a long term, repetitive scale laced with readers comments. It makes at times for a lot of noise, but it is the noise and the serendipity of nudgets of gold that pops up from time to time that is totally new and exiting. Before, you would buy a book and read about "how to learn any language". You might have loved or hate that book, be inspired or be bored, but when you reached the last page, the only things allowed was to read again, or just forget about at it. The author too had no means to expand into sequels, a conversation with the unknown or what else. "Amateurs" confide more than often how they are inspired by reading these blogs, reading about the efforts of others. And it is exactly where the major shift has been taking place in the matter of language acquisition, and maybe in other subjects as well. It is non-academics that are sustaining, keeping alive the conversation. For sure, it is noisy and not everything is inspiring, but is has created a formidable window through which the wind of pounding and pouring around a subject that means efforts is in constant maelstrom. And it is a good thing. It does not takes place much in the interpretation realm although some are pioneering the concept and act of writing about the profession in a different tone than the upper stiff lipped Victorian manner that is inevitably the tone of professionally trained interpreters born and raised at least 20 to 30 years prior to the internet. Their circumstances must be understood in a historical dynamic context, just like those who are starting and dare muse about their wares in blogs recently. They don't belong to a world of open conversation though. The inspiration you may get for technics on improving, self-training and the like may be from now on fished out of the messy pond of online expressions mostly lead by less professional than yourself.

And this makes a total difference. Take this very poor blog for instance. It has some anonymous readers but it does not generate any conversation, even offline. In a sense, it simply reflects the absence of discussion between professional interpreters, that is, outside microconfidential circles. In the open, there is nothing, which is no news. Amateurs are pouring new blood into the void. That would be the standard old fart like comment on all this. But it is wrong. They are not pouring anything because there has been no circulation system to pump blood inside. They are a different system and the blood that flows in it. And when it comes to language acquisition, some if not the majority seem to be very honest with the task. They don't brag about learning Chinese in 5 minutes. Long term effort is an open mantra in what they write about, and writing about the effort - and encouraging readers in doing so - is one of the major impact they have been infusing in the task of language acquisition. They mostly are promoters of self-learning and this directly pertains to this blog because liaison interpreting being in many cases a profession learned and self-made on the job, training for competence development and systematization of technics and processes has to be performed mostly on a self-training basis. There is mostly nothing around, and there has been mostly nothing around before the Internet advent. Once language is acquired to a high level, you generally don't talk nor speak nor read nor listen about higher level and above language further acquisition. All the Japanese language learners I know that started before the Internet never would talk about their past subject of studies. Yes, sure, you don't talk about maths and physics once you leave highschool unless you focus into those subjects at a higher level. But in professional settings, there is nothing I know I am inspired of that is written by specialists - you know, research articles in hard to find or too costly to purchase. And invite you not to despise too much and too broadly what amateurs tell about self-learning of languages because there are points to be inspired with.