Science Cafe

Science Cafe videopodcast from Hokkaido University over iTunes. The video quality is low but it's good, natural, non-TV stuff. But why do they slice a single session into tiny films? I don't get it. Anyway, we want more of this, natural, non-formal, no-TV content. It could only happen in Hokkaido, maybe.

Rotten eggs

Last April, the Nikkei put a curtain on the free daily podcast now lost in a local delivery system I don't even remember the name. I might have paid for it if under iTunes though. To compensate for the loss, the same Nikkei now offers 日経朝のたまご, a free daily podcast. These eggs are rotten. Five minutes of sirupy female kawaii "me dumb but trying hard getting dumber" speech on economics ma non troppo. It is a five minutes podcast to feel good while commuting. I won't befriend with anyone feeling good with these eggs.

Out of the Booth Simultaneous

Interpreters/Fixers working on the stage of documentary shooting must know the answer but I have heard now about several instances where the interpreters was requested on the spot to perform in simultaneous mode for interview recording. I have not read anything about "Out of the booth simultaneous" but it does happen and must have a set of rules and specificities.

Music to the ears

Listening to Bloomberg podcasts comes down very much to learning to listen to jazz, opera or gamelan. It makes sense over time. I perfectly remember how incompetent I was at listening to Bloomberg news a while ago, maybe two years ago. I couldn't hear, I couldn't decipher, I could not make sense of most of it. The rhythms, those of each speaker's sounding different, I could not grab, the groove, the tempo I could not snap fingers on. It's over. I get the music most of the time. Down there, there is no much difference between getting comfortable listening to jazz than listening to any type of content where pleasure may not be the main factor. It doesn't snap onto the process of interpretation per se, but listening, hearing, understanding being the absolute requisite, working on the requisite is mission critical number one.

Preparation Express V 2.0

So you have that short notice OPI session on company X you've never heard about, in industry xX you more or less vaguely know about, and the intermediary won't pay you preparation fees because you are an interpreter so you know the languages and interpreting being exclusively a matter of knowing how to say "cheese" in another language or reverse like flipping patties at McDonalds, there is hardly any argument sustaining to pay the interpreter's time for preparation because there is no such need, or otherwise, it suggests you incompetence at .... OK, stop. You know the song. However, you still have that "professional conscience", that dutifulness that makes you cringe at not perusing nothing before the show and just when the phone ring, simply answering : "Hello, what's for lunch today?".
So here is it, PE, that stands for Preparation Express V 2.0

Jump to X web site, scan the business description, usually not on the top page where they just brag in marketing jargon that will be useless for the job.

Look into Wikipedia under the xX industry for a possible overview of who does what and competes with who in that industry.

Check the news, first with X as a single keyword, next with X and xX, next with xX alone, next with X and "competitor", X with "perspective", X with "ranking".

If not enough, check for xX industry report and scan the free index.

You are done, in less than an our, an our max.

Depending on the subject angle, orientation, fine tune the above.

There is no time nor probably no absolute needs to look for a glossary (yes I know, it sounds anathema but) as the stint won't last past an our. It is risky for sure, but chance are you already get a grab at the standard essential vocabulary in all the query researches above.

Enjoy the stress, and when it's over, slap yourself on the shoulder, even if the performance was so, so. Don't expect the views in the industry on the needs for OPI interpreters to get prepared. They are looking forward for the day when they can get rid of you and persuade the client that Google Interpreter is smart enough to go into the pilot seat. The views won't change but you will grow more competent, and that's the single and unique thing that matters.

You don't need an interpreter or Yod comes on scene

It's that time of the year, nay, the month, come on the week, or was it the nanosecond that doubt sets in again. All the mumbo jumbo in this blog won't reverse the fact that work has been so scarce it's .... well, let's call it worrying. OK, the crunch was topped by the flu now put in second rank in the media. But then, again, scarce it has been. June looks better, but I fear the following months, the US business men going on vacation and the consequences of it.

Anyway, in order to self-sustain the optimism inside currently at a low web, I am reminded of a regular client who stopped using my services starting this year for what I think cost issues. I don't, no, no, I don't think they went through the efforts to look for a cheaper interpreter in Tokyo. There are cheaper interpreters, indeed. There are more costly than me.

No, I think they wen back to the old song that says, this and that client speak English pretty well so we can skip the terp. I now remember last time we worked together. We went to visit a client I heard about many times during previous visits in Japan, It was that client where "we shall go on our own, we don't need you for this one, they speak English. " And the train leaves the station me stranded on the platform waving a white handkerchief.

Then one day, last time, they asked me to go along so we met the Japanese client. It took me so many long years to notice the following, and I am still not fast enough to detect it when it appears although it does, so often. They have known each other for years. My clients know that their exclusive man on the spot will be waiting for them right at the building's front door. Here he is. The reunion is effusive without slaps on the backs. We climb to the meeting room. We start the dance. I am introduced but it takes time for the Japanese side to switch to Japanese. After all, they have been conducting the ballet without an interpreter for so many years that I am the weird factor on stage. Anyway, they speak English indeed, both side. It is not pidgin, it is not Oxfordian English. Actually, it doesn't matter at all that they are far from perfect on both sides. What does matter is that it is faked on both side, and especially the Japanese side. When you speak a foreign, you tend to don a new coat of social appearance, you were Kazu but now you behave Georges. And it's fine to don a social cloath of this or that color because you need to be clad into something. What is interesting though is that in this social ballet of chuckles, giggles, smiles, laughs, remembrances of past meetings, it appears that you have been going forth and by for years with this "essential client" trying and expand the scope of your sales of toothpicks. You sold one, or was it one and a half? Now, you have been expecting for the last three visit an long waiting third toothpick order. That you sell or not a third toothpick is not directly my concern. But what I can detect in your joyful exchange is that you still are not on the same bandwidth. You, my client, are still trying and get the message dispatched. You've been chewing the fat in English meetings after meetings and you still need to confirm, this, this and that. Your fingers are fidgeting on the fuzzy fine tuning big slippery knob, and as far as I can see, you are going to add yet another visit to Japan with tiny gains to take home. It will take you another few weeks to feel that things have not been moving enough and another visit to Tokyo won't be a luxury.

I don't mean that is always happen like this. I don't mean that you don't progress. I mean that you never clearly enough stated what you want to achieve, to yourself as well as to your client.

More on shrinking messages and training

Despite the fact that the Nikkei podcast is now far away into non-free mode, but worst, outside the so convenient distribution system of Apple, I still own a few copies of old daily podcasts. I want to link this with BNO news I was referring about in a previous post.

There is a conjunction of facts that are pointing at a possible shift of popular expression toward ever shorter sentences. In Japan, English language books are competing in the realm of "short phrases by the thousands" and there seems the depth of it knows no end. I am looking forward for a "15 000 short English sentences in daily life" with a DVD to stock the huge amount of audio file.

At least one publisher dared and launch last year (was it?) a 2900 phrases slim these days, but with a set of audio CDs containing not only the English but also the Japanese version. I am looking forward to more bilingual audio content like this in the future for the sake of portability. Publishers will get to it.

What has all this to do with BNO? The shortness of expression, and the verbal factor. The first part of the Nikkei podcast was a reading aloud of modified newspaper style of article titles into spoken language. Whereas most 140 news strings in BNO News are verbal sentences - that is fit to be spoken out - none of the Japanese written press titles I know belong to spoken language. If not experienced, I think a newspaper with spoken language article titles would make a big buzz in Japan. Don' count on anyone though.

BNO News - whether it's around here tomorrow or not - is showing the way toward something you may not be pleased with, but short titles short of any development will be enough a source of information for a majority of people sometimes in the future. Machine gunned newswire titles fd other wireless devices or beamed direct into readers eyes will match the limited memory retention and concentration span a standard urbanite will be able to display in year 2052.

Is the age of Tanka ripe? Is Japanese poetry structure to strike big after japanimation and sushi?

I don't now. I only know that utterances are shortening, in length of sentences and in length of time to wrap all it up.

The startup doing its presentation stint - you have 10 minutes - is your typical example. Only, now you only have 90 seconds.

Concision is a requisite in interpretation, the liaison stuff, and so hard to come with. From now on, you have to get ready and deliver.

The next best seller is a "How to speak in 140 or less signs sentences - A workbook".

Here, I am only half joking.

Japanese will loose voice competence more than ever. In 2053, Sony, nay, Rakuten Electronics that bought Sony 15 years before, will launch LetsTalk, a Tamagochi sized device that allows to speak via emoticons-to-speech or text with someone in front of you while keeping almost mute on both side. It will have a tremendous success. Everybody will start machine talking with anyone without meeting eyes.

And I am half joking.

You see, you can read aloud most of BNO News headlines and it makes for a good if not sexy sentence. You can't do that when BNO News Japan is released. get the unofficial Google News Japanese Twitter feed and you will get a better than ever picture of the problem. You don't speak like the titles. It requires a lot of energy to inflate a news title lacking active verbs into a correct if not sexy oral message. It will have tremendous accelerating impact on current trends of speeches in society at large.

All you can eat OPI

Impulse Japan is offering a monthly fixed rate of ¥10,500 providing all you can eat OPI to registrants. The literature tells that Impulse has already been providing OPI to restaurants, hotels and other touristic locations where foreigners gather. Asakusa is cited as one such example. They make interpreters work round the clock to deliver between Japanese and Chinese, Korean and English. Of course, as a majority of their tourist users are probably light users, especially during off times for restaurants and in the middle of the night, Impulse has only to work hard to sell the idea. After all, it is cheap enough to by an excellent sushi meal for two, beverage excluded. I hardly believe this will generate more business for more interpreters. In too many mundane situations when selecting food or asking for salt or a timetable of trains to Narita, a few hands and fingers flying in the air with added onomatopoeia should suffice a it does everywhere else on Planet Earth. But Japan being a different planet ... blah, blah, blah.

The thrill of mobile interpreting

Once a way much lighter Mac gets released, I will go mobile more than ever, ready to work from anywhere in Tokyo. Is it a thrilling perspective? I don't know but I want to give it a try.

Short notice interpretation remote and onsite has been around for some time. In Japan, I don't know the facts. But in the UK at least, there is a lively description of what readiness means for a public service interpreter called to deliver in various tensed or tragic situations. I already mentioned the book in a previous post and re-read it today : Public Service Interpreting - The first Steps - by Ann Corsellis. It's a good book. I don't do public service currently but I am advertising all the same short notice availability in Tokyo business districts within 1 hour when available for business and technology. The shortest time from call to delivery I experienced was maybe 4 hours so I did not have to rush. I do think it makes sense as an offer and the sense of it will grow over time, as time is the limit indeed. I don't mean it's a good idea for a client to call and expect someone to rush at the meeting table and save the day, but if saving the day requires to jump into a context with scarce information, I am ready to jump in.

Shrinking messages and the death of hyperlinks

BNO News is awesome. I was not much surprised by that news service over Twitter than by the fact that titles are linked to .... nothing.

Yes, no link! Hyperlink is dead! A title is a story by itself and life discourses are 140 signs long. Articles are dead. Who needs articles after all? A shower of unrelated short burst of news will suffice. News for short attention syndrome gets shorter.

OK then, why not use it for sight translation training on steroid? And will the standard lingo of 30 years from now on sound like a bursting stream of 140 signs long sentences on average? Will the longuish sentences be a sign of incompetence?

Is OPI thriving with the flu?

That's the question of the day.

The bad taste of OPI

It leaves a bad taste in the mouth when an OPI is not fulfilled well. The dryness of OPI - nobody' see the other bodies - adds to the malaise. I wish sometime I could give some advices to callers but it's not part of the script, not the function, and the service provider simply does not communicate on that stuff:

- unless under tight confidentiality, provide ahead of time a list of questions to the interpreter or the interviewee
- if no list, provide some hints on what you want to know, understand, ask, and elaborate a little bit. Three words won't help
- provide something because unless you ask very broad questions, don't expect the majority of Japanese interviewees to snap back at any unexpected questions with a "It's a very good question ....." followed by something in length and depth. If you want granular stuff, provide questions.
- provide questions because your standard Japanese interviewee will work on these and get ready with buckets full of answers because he wants to make you happy and also, he want to protect his dignity as an expert.
- the interpreter too will be happy to get more than a spoonful of orientation.
- the interpreter will be happy that you were made happy and the interviewee will be happy to have pleased you and happy that the interpreter had time to prepare and how helpful she was and everybody will be happy and they will be happy forever and have children who will be happy too ... you know, like in the books.

Only, it usually doesn't happen like this, and this "usually" tends to be more usual as time goes by. And it leaves a bad taste for sure.

Going higher tech

I propped out the computer on the table first time. I don't know why I procrastinated doing it so far but you have to start with a first time sometime. The setting was standard, business talk around a table, medium formality (that helped for sure). Did it help? Well, not much but here are reasons:

- we, the client and I, sat with the bright window in the back. As a result, the MacBook screen although was blinkering and hardly legible.
- I had my standard IT dictionary on the side, which made for too much hardware at the same time.
- I only had to use an online dictionary once (am I brillant? no) and could not make it in grand fashion, because of legibility but also because of wireless Internet speed just not on top. And at times 英辞郎 on the net sucks with speed.

So not fully ready but already here.

Advanced Japanese Language is back

I have put back into the public arena my ramblings on Advanced Japanese Language. In the meantime, Google modified a few things that make Google Sites a little bit prettier. I would of course love to get opinions and reactions.

Social language learning

Just heard a Bloomberg news podcast interviewing Rosetta Stone's CEO him announcing they will launch a customers' online social network. How this won't turn into propaganda is an issue which is not mine. But it points again at the social dimension of self-training. If RS is able to instill a level of encouragement and solace in users, they will come back and buy more.

Unrelated : learning language proactivity

E. has an interesting wish. He wants to create a school to each proactive English to Japanese for business, English with attitude so that they fit in that "other" culture. Would it be appropriate to call this "conscious stereotyped English course for professional"? I perfectly know what he means. His staff are rather correct in terms of competence. They are so so in ENglish, but they are incompetent when interfacing with his English clients. They are locked in self-stereotyping - overwhelmed Japanese by loud voice blond. I have to talk more with him because he is touching something massive.

Text-to-speech?

How does this could be valuable in any way?

Relaxed liaison

"Liaison interpreting does not require as intense a level of preparation on the part of the interpreter as the other three. Unlike consecutive interpreting, there is no note-taking in liaison interpreting. It is a fairly spontaneous, flexible and relaxed form of communication for all participants and calls for a lot of time."

Courtesy of a Turkish agency called Sentaks.

My comment : bullshit.

Sayonara to French?

I can hear the wolves gnarling but it just came to my mind that in more than one assignments with French clients, Japanese-english fit. The clients were indifferent, switching at times from one language to the other. It means that working more on English than French makes sense. I may be late at this discovery but experience has shown that it does make sense. Getting deeper into solar and smart grid.

The Aural/Oral revolution

I had news in an unexpected manner about my past university in Paris. I don't know to what extend these news are correct but when talking about the fact that when I started (and ended) learning Japanese over there, there was basically no audio or video resources of any kind to work with, inside as well as outside the university. Language lab was like the term Paradise, not to be found on earth. I heard that it hasn't changed. It could be true, and besides, a no money university could indeed be stuck in post Edisson era even today. But students have changed as audio video resources, granted you have access to these, are ubiquitous. I still cannot understand why this matter of fact situation sound impact does make more than a blip on the radar whereas we should still feel the big bang heat it was and still is. Everybody except the language schools maybe take this revolutionary situation as, well, convenient, thank you, whereas it should be perceived as the biggest thing that happened to language learning potential in ages. The environment is poorly exploited except for the lean self-learners plodding in the wealth of legal and illicit audio/video content around. Their interaction with the language, any language, is totally different. It does not make language "easier" to learn but it makes the quest richer. Having been raised on textual stuff, I am lacking and will always lack the highly colloquial natural kind of Japanese you sponge in if you are raised on popular culture content. I don't feel bad about it - after all if I did feel bad, I could just light up the TV and feel better right away. No, in professional settings, in business interpretation, nothing sounds like Crayon Shinchan - maybe during after hours but I am usually no longer around with the clients. What I mean is that accessibility to colloquial, mostly TV based, Japanese renders the language way much more familiar than before. It's not only the popular artifacts of contemporary Japan mostly focused on specific areas of Tokyo that create the cool factor of things Japanese, but the fact that with some efforts, you can quickly catch phrases and a few short joke and feel a part of it, the IT of that part being to a large extend poorly reflecting reality and the banality of daily life. It won't change anytime soon, at least for Japanese. This aural/oral transition is a major evolution in language acquisition that does not make much fuss.

Glossary generators

OK, I have been rambling aloud and in this vacuum several times here about automatic glossary generation. Conversation with myself brought this finding : TermExtractor and GlossExtractor. The first one is running at the time of this writing. The second choked on capacity, the lack of it. I run TermExtractor with Wikipedia entry "Solar cell". First I was impressed while feeling the extracted list was short. After examination, I am not impressed but it is showing the future. The resulting glossary is missing huge amounts of words and expressions. I uploaded various formats from pdf to .doc down to txt. Strangely enough the pdf version downloaded from the browser after setting the Wikipedia page in Print mode yielded the most words and expression but still totally useless in real life. The same documents copy-pasted into a wordprocessor and cooke in pdf format yielded less words. The .doc, htm. txt versions yielded ... nothing. Anyway, I won't blame anyone. In a few years time it will be here and in a few more years we'll have multilingual glossary generation. Who could ask for more?

How to shout in Japanese

I am all the more eager to read "Deciphering the Rising Sun" when it is released in a few months because it should hopefully set a different perspective away from the peace time meaning of language learning and intercultural relations. When you come to think about it, language learning, that dipping into the otherness, is strongly set basking into a warming glow of goodwill, fun, smiles and fluttering voices cooing like in spring time. That's why you find cool books with titles like "Fun Japanese", but nothing like "How to have a brawl in Japanese". War is a shame and an anomaly. That's why it has been repeated over history time and again somewhere on the planet. Not only war but stressful situations may be met in daily life where the speakers have to make do in foreign languages. There are no books in Japanese about brawls I am aware of except the rare "Dirty Japanese" made acceptable by being ushered in with loads of LOL and sly smiles. Dirty but still fun. Movies may be the single media through which to get accustomed to language interaction situations where not everybody is oozing goodwil. You know, the scene when that man grabs for his sword ... . There are references to stressful, not friendly interpretation situations, "terps" in war being the extreme, maybe. But there are also references to interpreters in mental health settings and judiciary interpreting being a subject gaining momentum, the issue of interpreting in no so nice situations may get slightly more coverage in the future. This being said, interpretation is very much perceived as taking place in gracious or mending settings where smiles are requested and the finding of a win-win solution expected. It's a different story to be part of an incident when you are a direct actor of it or a conduit of communication. It was a different story when learning a language in crash courses was about strategies to win over the enemy. Once peace gets in and the trials are over comes the sunny side of interpretation and the coolness of that over you crave to get the language from. I refer to this in my course on first steps into interpreting, that not all situations are rosy scenes in an Indian movie. But finding content to exemplify my point has never been easy. I don't want to use bits of movies because you know that it is fake. Documentaries could certainly be a source of ordering situations to work with. I need to find some sources soon.

Inspiring school

We started impromptu brainstorming yesterday with T. at Gakushuin Kaikan, and it all fired up when I talked about the idea of "encouragement" that I could perceive so hot in AJATT, a medium of encouragement. That's when I came with the idea of turning immersion into a business. Nothing less. I can't go further into it but it's a totally crazy but feasible idea.

Wonderful stuffs

Wonderful stuffs over iTuneU in foreign languages. Japanese is the poor guy in the bunch (OK, OK, there's not even a molecule of Italian there). Found some good French interviews to use in the course. Thinking of Japanese, I had a big chance thanks to Prof. T. yesterday to meet the boss of a famous press corp here in Tokyo specialized in Japanese learning material for foreigners. Cognocenti will easily guess the name. Unsurprisingly, I heard not pretty things about the state of Japanese teaching in French universities, ivory towers, poor level teachers, inadequacies of learning manuals and other details that give a not so fine blurred picture into that far away mess. It reminded me when Prof. M. a few years ago questioned the state of Japanese studies in France by sheepishly summarizing it with "we don't have a clue!". Waiting to hear and talk more at a possible further meeting.

Towards a dynamic role conception of liaison interpreters

I am shamelessly using the title of Kristina Mullamaa's thesis dated 2006 as a sign of praise for the work. A deep bow. I wished I could copy some pages, the part starting from p. 34 to p. 39 that extensively covers the definition of liaison interpreting, the profession where I feel myself most attached to, best described in these password protected pages. I have never read something so complete that raises in few lines the essential issues. Even Gentile's book, a must, must, must read by the practitioners to start and gain self-dignity, possibly early on, still lacks in the area of neutrality, the fallacy of it. But I have to re-read the book and confirm this feeling.

Liaison interpreting is a shamed down profession for so many reasons I won't list up here. Shame is also in my view one reason why the subject, even in academic closets, have been so much disregarded in comparison with the almighty conference interpreting that has pervasively defining over history what is pure and impure. Liaison interpreting has had no coming out, except for rare books and writings. The current coming out is taking place in community interpreting which is also in a sense a blow to liaison interpreting. What's in name? Full worlds apart.

But, anyway.

Shame is triggered by a situation where the target of humiliation, that being intentionally or not an humiliating act, feels naked, revealed in her incompleteness, inefficiency. She reacts by shouting, crying, catatonic silence, sly insinuation as a backlash thrown back to the humiliator. Once again, there may be no intention to bruise, to humiliate from the other side. It is sometimes a matter of interpretation on the receiving side who shows to herself first how unsure, easily destabilized she is under circumstances that reveals something, tells a story of lack of self-confidence, of undigested self-repeated story of feeling half-backed, socially unfit.

I am reminded of two such recent situations when some powerful individual I was introduced to, a "user" of interpretation services, would blast with vehemence and self-assurance some definitive facts about the performing act of interpretation. Just try and argue, you, as steak eater, about what it means to cut a slab of meat to your butcher. Beware of the blades though. No professionals likes to be taught "a few tricks" from the receiver's side of the trade.

Another similar case happen in a school where a person in power lashed back an equivalent of "what's the fuck?" when I referred to "shadowing".

Age, experience, diplomas all play major role in building dignity, self-respect and more important, the capacity of affect releasing, of not caring too much about what "the other thinks". My dear interpreters, full-fledged interpreters, unassured interpreters, half-backed interpreters, arrogantly beginners interpreters, I have seen shame in all of your pretty eyes, a top interpreter lashing sly and scorn at "others", a feature so redundant I believe it is a feature of the profession, out of the booth or inside. There is a whole work of psychotherapy needed in that profession, liaison interpreting first, to release the affects, the humiliation-humiliated spin, by gaining self-insurance, dignity through peers meeting and discussion. It did not happen with all my dear colleagues with so forcibly avoid to meet at all price.

So what's the point with the above? Simply that giving away, making public again and again a definition of liaison interpreting is a therapy in itself. It feels good even and especially when pointing at the ambiguities of the trade. Voicing over the facts and concerns in a thesis or a blog - the former basking in academic glow - is a therapy, an explanation of the self to the self.

Now reading more.

What's in a name, and excellent stuff from Estonia

This PPT document "A profession in the making: insights from a translation culture" is excellent. And a good enough reason to slightly change the title of this blog.

Oh! and add to this the full article on the same story to download here.

Not all massive

Clearly speaking, enjoyment is not the point when trying and reach higher level. The argument of fun is like "cool", a totalitarian concept. There is nothing fun to listen to an earning call conference, a politician for who you have no liking, but they provide valuable "content" that require focused attention. While massive immersion is the intention, it is to be understood as a conscious act, not a given. Simply being in Japan is not enough for conscious immersion. It requires attention during the day and the trying at setting aside time for study. For instance, my own conscious massive immersion strategy # 1 is to listen a lot of podcasts. But as I hardly can find solace in the poor choice of Japanese podcast and I am no TV viewer, I end up listening more to English or French than Japanese. I try and work around that issue by listening and relistening to the short selection of stuff I find palatable. Repetitive listening of selected stuff is definitely a good, tangible way to feel one's own improvement and where things get stuck into. I think that some times during the day, let's say 15 minutes, should be set aside for relistening to past content in deep fashion, and keep the rest of the available time for massive listening (and watching).

On smart.fm

Very smart business model. Could only happen in JP with the language industry. Kids are let play with the system creating lists but the real game is with the official lists made in collaboration with players on the language market as Alc. They have lists leveraging the kikuyan database of written and audio ready to port away words and sentences.What is the business model? Sell full courses over Nintendo gears. The site is an open lab for model validation, getting feedback and demonstrating the concept. But the real stuff won't be web based, all the more in Japan. No, it will be mobile.

SRS meets CAIT

SRS meets computer-aided interpretation training.

Do we need to provide "the answer"?

What do we need to provide, what do we need to intervene with and at which level?

Provide key words, selected to provoke the switch turning, the rotation, the clutching of the gear that turns the wheel that moves, transfer, translate the sentence A toward a B rendering. Yes, what we provide are ammunitions, 媒介物質, agency to help flip the crepe.

More on smart.fm

Set in the interpretation learning frame, does Smart.fm fit?

The assumption is that there is AN answer to A question.

Or let's say, a rendering of language A to language B. The problem is that there is none.

So the issue is this :

You give on one side of the flashcard a sentence.

Then you give "the answer", that is, a possible rendering on the reverse side. Is this a way to learn interpretation?

I think the answer is NO. And yet, at the same time, this doesn't make a reason to throw the SRS baby and water in the sewer.

I still don't have a clear enough understanding of what the computer-assisted interpreter training systems around really look like and what they provide in details. The researchers, the academics or their publishers don't care to provide even a single screen shot with their papers - and I bought a few expensive ones. But anyway. They are behind, and Smart.fm is ahead. I read in AJATT a reference to this company located in Tokyo together with the utility subs2srs. The creativity of it all is awesome. Nintendo will follow suit and sell this at a price but for the time being, it is delivered free. How will publishers make money or die out of this in the age of digital replication? I don't know. But the learners of all kind, granted they can break the procrastination wall, are already empowered to enter with a vengeance into learning, forign languages first. What I see currently lacking in Smart.fm but also in any SRS is the encouragement factor. Please, no clapping at the end of a successful study session, but something that sustain the fire for going on is required. And by the way, why can't I opt to be email reminded that it's time to learn? Anyway, anyway, there's something awesome here. Phrases books are coming with CDs, mp3s. Now they should come with SRS stack ready to feed Anki and the likes. Will I still buy the books when they do so?

smart.fm is (possibly) awesome

Go to smart.fm, register and check the lists in the Partner Series first. Awesome for some.

Life without the Nikkei

Now that the Nikkei podcast is kept behind the screen of a third rate distribution system and a fee, I am missing a dose of daily Japanese news to fit the ears so much that there is no way around but to bear with the Yomiuri drab. Listening to that podcast is much like drinking your daily spoonful of fish oil. I hate the format, the grunting intro of a blue eyed blond gaijin belching testosterone laden English to get the listener's in the Rambo mood needed to gulp down what follows. What follows in contrast is the best version of robotised news anchormanship after the Nikkei. I much prefer when the lady does the show rather than the wimpy man. As it is indeed fish oil to the ears, it has do be dealt with in medicinal fashion. It's good for shadowing, good to grab the news words of the day, good to keep in touch with what is supposed to matter locally. The after taste in the mouth is fishy but washing out the bad breath should not be difficult, a mouthful of poetry, This American life, or simply music. Am I pretentiously arrogant here? Yes. I would much prefer a daily dose of 世界経済ダイヤル. Not that it is music to the ears but the format is simpler when not redundant but at least, it's less fishy.

A conversation of difficulty

Japanese is less difficult that conquering the procrastination to start working on it in a regular, steady, untiring, obstinate, never failing, sturdy, hard-working fashion.
I had a conversation with a young lad the other day on the issue of "how difficult it is to learn Japanese". The same fit for Russian, French, Okinawan language, serious cooking or understanding photovoltaic cells principles. The "difficulty of the Japanese language" is part of the mystics on the language, the traditions and the way the West at least has historically related to that country. Italian is not mystic, cryptic or whatever. But Japanese is shrouded in "mystery". There is hardly any article about "Japanese things" where the regular qualificative waxing on the unscrutanibility side of things is not present. It is nothing new. When did Japan and Japanese things started being seen and reported as "mysterious"? Anyway, my young lad was piling defense lines after defenses lines for not facing the fact that procrastination was the unique frontier of him not "progressing". Among things that are difficult indeed is to understand that one needs to reach a high level of competence before getting respect, before people here start to listen to what you are saying more than how you are saying it. Until the end, your closest local partner will pinpoint at some inconsistency of your Japanese, some form you regularly miss, some accent you are still falling flat onto that shows you are still not perfect, as most everybody around. The difficulty lies here and with your procrastination much more than anything else.

Systemizing short notice assignments

I have started trying and systemize short notice assignment requests so that both the client and myself benefit from the session despite the constraints and lack of information and preparation time. The idea I had vaguely fleeting around yesterday got encouragement from a meeting I had this morning with E. in my best secret relaxing place in Tokyo. I jolted down preliminary notes while waiting for a short notice customer the afternoon. Would have I benefited from that customer feeding me details based on the questionnaire linked above? Definitely. K. considers that "professional interpreters" would surely decline request for last resort missions out of fear of not delivering with perfection. I am not a professional therefore I dare face imperfection. Some customers seem to appreciate though.

Managing short notice assignments

Here is how it could go in a perfect situation. After the financial aspects and overall explanations are settled between the client and the interpreter, the client would set the stage for the interpreter this way, pushing emails or short message as she talks.

- Here is the web site of our company.

- I invite you to especially read this page that gives you a summary of our activites with essential highlights.

- This is a link to a recent piece of journalism that gives a well rounded perspective of the market we are into and its players.

- This is a public announcement about the situation we will discuss at the meeting.

The client is sparring precious time for the interpreter to prepare and grab the big picture in no time.

The perfect interaction in short notice request. Not yet here though.

Behind the goodwill mask

Discourse is historically set in a web of beliefs and fixed views that make you think things have always been like this. A strong tone in the background echo of interpretation is the function of facilitating harmony in international relations. The PMs raise their glasses in front of the camera while the interpreters behind, trying hard to play the back clad "invisible" prop setters at the kabuki allow exchanges of international mundanities to take place. Now take some prison in some island where indistinct prisoners are under harsh questioning. There is an interpreter attending. Take another location where some MP in heavy gear is checking IDs of passers-by. The guy with a black mask hiding face features despite the torching heat is not playing rambo, but doing his chores, that of a military assisting interpreter. And the mask is a way to hide and save his life. A new book is to be released in July. The name is "Deciphering the Rising Sun: Navy and Marine Corps Codebreakers, Translators and Interpreters in the Pacific War". I had been waiting for something systematic covering the subject for years. From a US point of view at least, interpretation with Japan blossomed under violence. In the legendary mythical recounting of interpretation, what comes as a prominent story is how simultaneous bloomed in piece treaty negotiations, in trials of the villains after the wars. In Japan where the subject of interpretation is a public focus of interest, the trade is basking on a stage dripping with chorus of harmony among nations and trading people oozing of goodwill. At a university in Tokyo, a coming competition of student-interpreters is scheduled to end with some conference on 通訳と異文化コミュニケーション. Warmth and effusion. I am curious to read a coming book in Iwani junior collection about interpretation. Yes, a book for teens. Would such book be possible in your country? I am curious about what will be highlighted in that book. The international goodwill with marginal reference to court/police interpretation, interpretation in violent communities, under war, etc? It could be that the book covers most about everything though. That deep vein of interpretation in goodwill, of mending situations is pervasive as it has set the tone of a profession that is also ripe to take place in conflictual, putrid situations, including business interpretation where courteous relationships are not always what is at stake.

The powers heard

The powers above got the message. Just when I was whining for short notice assignments, I got two inquiries today and one transformed with an urgent assignment tomorrow. The second one I am almost glad it was not transformed. I was asked for help with a judiciary situation, something I have never done nor do I have any knowledge for to start with. It ended with the client calling back telling that the powers in charge down here provide a package with a lawyer and an interpreter in combination. They must be busy these days, not with high society crimes but something in the lower end, Japan having failed to transform into a rich destination.

Asking questions to get answers

I can't dive into this now but there is a redundancy of situations in professional interview interpreting (not the TV type I don't do, the researcher in the field type gathering info through interviews) that clearly suggests that the client must be monitored very closely in order to yield the best possible answers from the Japanese side. Applying the rules by the book - exactly translating what the people tell, especially the questioning side, is a call for catastrophe. I do feel that the Western fashion of asking questions is most of the time inefficient here. At briefing level at least, the interviewer should discuss with the interpreter to clarify what she is after. It is the interpreter's task to facilitate the yielding of best answers in order to satisfy the interviewer (again, it's not TV), and the interpreter duty should be to adapt the questions on the fly in order to make them generate valuable answers. Objective based interpretation should be the rule, and aided through close briefing and monitoring of the client by the interpreter.

The need for eye opening

When you learn a language, you learn a mainstream discourse, an official propaganda. You adhere to the party of the majority without any second thoughts. Second thoughts may come later, about the language, about how it is perceived around, by the locals, by the learners, by yourself peddling the same propaganda s a matter of fact. As a learner, you want also to be an owner, a part of it , New York, New York. So much that you gleefully adopt mostly everything. It is by no means surprising that early learners of a language are often ardent defenders. Of everything that pertains to their object of self-contentment. I know all the more than I was such a learner. Ambiguity may strike one day. That not all is rosy, you knew it but you kept going delivering the good news, despite of all those interfering winds. This one wind deserves reading. Long stuff but it tells so much in contrast to the propaganda. The love affair with Japanese has been over for a long, long time. It does not impair my selling services related to it. On the contrary, it is I believe an essential stage to cross, the disillusion of the illusion. It is not comfortable, but the comfort zone does not bring solace. There is anyway a need at some point for an eye opening experience. Blind love over time is bad for the eyes.

Today, when we sat down in the cramped and stuffy room at some ministry's office in Tokyo, we exchanged cards and I gave on purpose my Japanese only card. They had Japanese only card as well. We sat down and the leader dead serious asked me if I could understand Japanese. That is why Japanese for me is dead as a source of pleasure. The mantra does not function anymore. In Tokyo, in 2009, in a ministry, anyone dead serious that asks the interpreter whether he speaks and understand the language, in full knowledge ahead of time that my client was accompanied by an interpreter, that the interpreter's name was mine, anyone that asks such question is the victim and the culprit of a crooked cultural misconception of planet Earth. Anyone who still behave like this is not culturally or mentally impaired, or showing reverence or whatever. He is a plain moron and deserves to be treated as is. I looked at him speechless for a whole very long second and answered : "I am the interpreter."

One day, I may be more specific and stop the humorous cheat chat right from the beginning and ask them what's the matter with their disease. It may be bad for business though.

Is there business for the flying interpreter?

Interpreters need preparation time, but the market for liaison may force you to skip it anyway. A book I read a while ago - Public Service Interpreting - The first steps - Ann Corsellis - offered a rare practical description of what an interpreter called to jump on a judiciary scene or something equivalent should usually carry in her bag, down to suggestions on clothes. There are flying interpreters in situations the kingdoms of booths do not fathom about. War stage may be such situation. I am longing for short notice requests for business and satisfy these. Yes, delivering business interpretation in downtown Tokyo like pizza on subjects for which there is no time to dig the internet and experimenting the thrill and stress of it all. There have been past experiences that are telling similar stories. A booked interpreter that did not come for many possible reasons. A three days training session that is showing from day one things can't be managed without an interpreter. The shortest delay from inquiry to delivery I did was probably around three hours. I want a test at daredevilling stuff like "we need you now". In downtown Tokyo, in business districts, granted the conditions are ripe, I can get on the spot in 1 hour or less. There are for sure interpreters working for the police that may be called on duty in no time. My interest is to fill the unexpected needs for business. Clumsy business but that's the client responsibility. I can try and mend the mess, if possible. I am advertising on Twitter. Who will look on Twitter to find an interpreter? Someday, someone will. Agencies can't deliver in such situations. They will never be able here to deliver. Interpreters too would not be willing to jump at the first call. I am willing an betting it will happen more in the future.

The city as an open manual

Book project : the city as an open manual, or how to walk and keep the interpreting banner smooth, lean and ready to snap by looking for words and phrases around and mentally translating these while walking.

Note to myself

At the risk of repeating, as I feel I wrote or thought about it the other day : investing time and efforts into two or three specific technical domains and betting assignments will come on these is no time wasted. Assignments may not come but the efforts will be useful for other situations as well. Self-patting on the shoulder.

Endeavor, solace and preparation in the fog

OK, it sounds like a fixation on AJATT but it's rather an inspiration. I am jealous of this center of endeavor, not what I see as a community, in the sense that AJATT is not built on top of a social network platform, but it stands rather like a tree with fruits where bats gather for a rest, a bite and solace. That's the proper image indeed, a tree, a baobab.

A redundant affair, the matter of strategic, ultra-focused preparation for over-the-phone interpretation with scarce contextual data and scarce time. It happens again and again, and very often on subjects I have never covered so far. It comes in three words : solar energy in Japan, or in a short sentence, the present and future of wind energy in Japan. Besides that, go figures. Indeed, where to start with, where to go without downloading gazillions of articles?

First, retrieve a possible glossary online.

Second, think a little about the framework. What could be the focus? Who will be the people? What kind of discussion? Scientific or business? More of this? More of that? If business, chances are few technical discussions will pop-up. Now that's where you get aware that the glossary is choked full with technical stuff. Don't scrape it but don't look for more academic papers.

Next, jump into Wikipedia and locate the chapters that are focused on economics, country regulations, programs, incentives and the like.

Next, go to Google News in both languages and scan the business buzz but keep an eye too on things like "university so and so in Japan has announced the development of a new something". Think global, not only what they are doing in Japan but also what Japanese firms are doing abroad, of foreign firms doing here.

Also probe for some research report advertising. They usually give away the index for free and when you find a bilingual version, you get a bunch of keywords and hints big like elephants about what the people in the industry care.

Ok. This post sounds arrogant as if I have mastered my subject but such is not the case. Do they teach you Resourcefulness in interpreting schools, or is it something you acquire on the job? I never went to a school so I don't know.

Simulated environment : in praise of the poster

I like the idea of creating a simulated environment to enhance the will to learn, fighting procrastination. It could have an even bigger reach in terms of efficiency and why not marketing. In fact, lots of goods and services play on simulation in a "poseur" manner to create a fiction. That's why an Italian restaurant with a jazz BGM has all it wrong, although I like jazz. The majority of simulated environments are for selling entertainment. Disney could come up as provider of perfectly fake and faked environments for language schools, the French classroom, the Japanese one, although I would reek at the mere idea of going there. All the more that the best simulation must be personal. No entity should force upon what you instill in your ears when listening to native content, or the posters you may put on the wall, granted you are the master of the wall sanctity and are free to use them. Grown-ups are grown-ups when they scrap the Rolling Stone poster on the wall for nothing, or something of a farther past.

Thinking about it, buying a poster as a flat personal shrine dedicated to ones efforts toward knowledge acquisition, a visual motivator and dispenser of silent encouragement, would benefit to be tackled with enhance strategy. I remember having bought in London, in that largest bookstore in town, a poster featuring hiragana and katakana, a few weeks or months before starting learning Japanese in a Paris university. It was a sign of commitment to oneself, and also a talisman from which to get and sustain the fire that was my enthusiasm at learning Japanese, at a time when it was still an oddity.

I would benefit for a few posters on solar cell technology or nutraceuticals, but walls are scarce and a source of conflict is used in unmoderated fashion.

Objectives, motivations and courage

Probably the most daring thrust forward on the Internet has been the concretization of the idea of sharing. It didn't start with Wikipedia although that online encyclopedia is the most visible tangibility of knowledge sharing. A while ago, I touched with some person I am familiar with about my failure at trying and gather interpreters under some kind of guild for sharing advices, knowledge and thoughts. He told me that it is maybe because privacy is such a concern with interpreters that they are not inclined to share. I was not convinced at the time, but thinking again about this, I am now perfectly convinced that privacy is a false but convenient issue justifying the silence. I think that the single reason for not sharing is not the uncertainty of the value that could be yielded out of sharing, or the risk to spill customers' name. It's more simple than that. The reason there is no sharing is because ... the actors do not want to share. Sharing without the safety net of knowing that you are sharing in an environment that may come with authority or none is a bet into the future. Few want to bet anything except consolidate their present.

I would like to go back to AJATT because it has kept me busy thinking these days, not only about the perfect school, but to a larger extend, what a non-official, non-notorius gathering can turn into and the dynamics it may generate. I used to quip at the commentaries that come to most of the site author's articles but no longer. Besides the waxing and punning of these commentaries, they tend to show a common and strong thread of gratefulness. Most share a common goal : learning alone Japanese (or another language). Most recognize the value of the method offered. Most come back and seek for reassurance and courage to go on learning. The author delivers the gospel with a very clever and funny fashion. The echoing between the learners vibrating to a new piece of writing is at times almost touching.

It may tell a story about some ingredients that come lacking in models of social networks. The first thing is a common goal, meaning momentum into the future. A social network may be a location for gathering, but there is usually no common goal, no momentum into the future. The interesting thing about that common goal is that it exists before and beyond the location where people meet. After all, AJATT is nothing but a blog in terms of format. But you have all those individuals sharing a commonality of individual goal : that of learning Japanese. There are many goals with each members of a Facebook or equivalent to join, but once online, there is no goal that is both at the same time individual and common. The AJATT site has been the serendipity factor that happened to bring together, through silent reading or as commentators, people that happened to share a personal goal set into the momentum of required learning that happen to be a goal shared by other people. Also, competition does get into the picture and keep the place pristine, a fact that calls for more examination.

I think it is in contrast the lack of a common factor set into a shared and perceived momentum of growth into the future that killed the trial at creating a community of interpreters here, or the still valid freelancers social network I launched a year ago that is dragging feet. Here too, the common factor in terms of momentum is extremely feeble. Being a freelancer is a static raison d'être. Gathering mostly for the perceived benefit to be listed under the freelancer banner is no momentum.

Scooping loads of sentences

Scooping lots of reading and listening is part of the unending training of better usage of the languages, be it with clients or not. There is an interesting correlation between a max 140 signs sentence in Twitter and the inflating number of English sentences offered in recent "conversation" books in Japan. A recent one is shoveling in 10,000 sentences of daily life. As far as I know, it is the second one to dare cross the 10,000 altitude (they put a "+" in the title). The first 10,000 landmark book came with the audio CD included. The latest one is opening up a new trend and possibly a new stream of revenues for the publishers, that is, selling the 6 CD pack apart. It doubles the cost of the book, which make the previous 10,000 mammoth look like a bargain as the books are still priced under the ¥3000 psychological threshold. Above, you enter the twilight zone of specialized books (daily life is not specialization).

.... CD? Why no DVD? ... ha, yes! We are in Japan.

Anyway, what's the link with Twitter? It's the length my dear, because - I would have to check - probably if not certainly - most if not all of these sentences fit each under the 140 signs hood. Speed comes with a shortening of utterances. This is not new but here, it is vividly exemplified. Yesterday, we worked - a first time - on short sight-translation of Kyodo News headlines. It was a brainy and motivating exercise I will had to my bag of tools. Each sentence is a story by itself requiring to get a quick mental perception of the context and adding here and there liaison words of expressions that are "naturally" missing in press article titles architecture rules in Japanese. a very challenging stuff that allows to swim into a large amount of vocabulary and stress the need for deduction in liaison interpreting so often under partial contextual settings.

But all this is done again using not sliced texts, but collections of short sentences. I mean, there is no coincidence here that the Twitter unit of max sentence size and a focus on learning the language based on consuming short sentences encounter. Obsviously, "10,000 daily Japanese Sentences" is the obvious missing book.

Bits of this and that ....

There is not a single magazine on science in the comfortable library of the school where I give a course in Tokyo. Science and technology are not part of the language romance.

Fearful time : this time of the world calls for serenity. My market is blank. The post Golden Week syndrome is in full swing, what with the crisis everywhere to see like the invisible man. The mort worrying part is that there have been trickling in, slightly more than I can remember. But they don't call back. The market is in for the cheapest interpreter around and they will find them anyway.

Don't invest time and resources into a speciality as a bet for the future needs of interpreting. Do it because it is an effective way to grow with a valid, marketable purpose. Nutraceutical and heavy dose of science and tech at large from now on, that is, now.

I am looking forward for this book : Deciphering the Rising Sun: Navy and Marine Corps Codebreakers, Translators and Interpreters in the Pacific War.

Fact is I have been looking forward for years for something about "the vital role played by Americans, not of Japanese ancestry, who served as Japanese language officers in World War II. Covering the period 1940-1945, it describes their selection, training, and service in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps during the war and their contributions toward maintaining good relations between America and Japan thereafter."

Language training for troublesome times. How did they do it? What is lacking that was there at the time? Most probably the sense of urgency, motivations, etc.

Peer encouragement teaching : the new school that could be

Musing about the phenomenon of language self-learning. It's not self-learning the salient point, but the peer encouragement ecosystems the Net has made possible to bloom. I believe self-learners don't simply go to discussion groups for ideas on how to start learning or progress. They also go there because they find encouragement among peers doing the same thing and chronicling their efforts. They exchange tips and they dispense encouragement. Where is the school where you get a sense of encouragement? Where is the school where you get courses on encouragement and self-motivation, courses explaining and encouraging the "joy of learning" despite the harship? It has do be found inside, or so the untold story goes. Learning communities are telling a revolutionary story, a totally different story.

And this points at what a new school could be when teaching languages, and mathematics, and physics, and whatever. A source of learning AND resourcing, or call it motivation. I want to remind again to myself that exchange of mails I have seen passing around as a single course teacher in a French school here in Tokyo. A part-timer with a single course on introductory interpretation doesn't belong but in the viewer's seat at the edge. That exchange of mails and concerns about curriculum stressed twice the argument that students have no contact with French language besides their attending school. I was blown away when I read this assertion first time, but puzzled when I read it again. Let' say students do not have contact with the language outside the courses. In 2009 isn't it insane to think that way? What is "having contact with a language"? Is it "conversation with natives" only and solely? Reading books, listening to songs, podcasts, conferences, etc. is no "contact" because it lacks the interactive factor? Obviously, no school of Japanese would suggest their students to look and be inspired by AJATT. First, they would have to know the site. Big hurdle. Second, they would have to understand the concept, not in this world. If they get it though, they would have not to choke at the repeated "school sucks" slamming. Now we are outside this universe. Then they would have to be convinced that once they grow up enough not to reach for the revolver with that sucks thing, they found the biggest hint of their life over all the generations of schools directors having run the show. The big hint is in the message, so big that probably no school will see it. Let's say I go to my school, bow at the power in charge and tell the big guy with iron fist who lashed me back a more polite way to tell "what the fuck!?" when I tried and explain that clown gentleman about "shadowing" :

I have a new course in mind to offer : "How to discover and make the best of French resources all over the place in Tokyo and the Internet and learn mostly on your own".

That's when I'll get fired on the spot and jeered at by most of the teachers' rooster, including the young cool ones making their courses pleasant and fun. In another school in a different world, the students would rush outside the classroom after the course and run for more language in the city, a map in hand. On that map would be featured the school location too, the alma mater that nurtures, because ... but read the following:

I think what a new school is to teach should be mostly about strategies to learn outside the school. And that's where the schools' morons will scream, foam at the mouth and reach the hatchets. Because they will read that as a call to blow the ship. How could a school be kept afloat when teaching students how to do without the school? Simply because the school will be :

- a place where you learn less language but strategies on how to do it
- a place where you come back because you get inspired, encouraged, peer learners interaction, insights, and ...
- .. interaction with natives who encourage the learners, show them new tricks, check with them how far the tricks they suggested last time are doing now
- in a nutshell, a docking station where to get the juice, the food and the warmth to go on

A new school would load students' hands with dynamite like lust for learning more, doing their chores at home and how to do these.

Could this school exist? Yes, I have no doubt about that. Not in Japan though.

Suck in, parse, merge and push

Suck in Google News titles (category selection aloud), have it pushed to Jim Breed dictionary, pick key words and append to the related title, push the result to Twitter, and you get an automatic pushed stream of short sentences with keyword to practice short sight translation anywhere. Sounds so easy, does it?

Twitter sight translation

I am wetting my hands in Twitter (lioneltokyo) with a mixed feeling:

- why am I following the crowd?
- who are these people all cool and wacky monologuing or dialoguing on things you just don't have a clue about?
- it's a moving mic when you just browse and read, a moving mic in a crowd in a cafe that is picking up bits of conversations.
- Some are talking to others, some are talking aloud to themselves.
- No silent thought aloud.
- Weird stuff : a traveler in Thailand at some gathering puzzling aloud about why no one else twittering. Childish standard reaction. Normality is what I do. Why others don't?
- Another one having quit blogging feeling revealed to have done so.
- It's a closed world. I don't know why I would follow the majority of followers.They just keep blurbing aloud shit. And they must rightly think the same about what I deliver. But do you actually read or mostly contemplate your "works" in the muck of other's brouhaha?

Searched for other interpreters/translators. Mostly no one advertising gears. It's still an arid place.

Hardest training stuff : Twitter sight translation. You are lacking context 99% of the time.

- Trying to figure out a push type of sentences to sight translate (a training service) with vocab aids.

Better flashcard architecture

The idea using Anki was to have a JP sentence on side A and the equivalent ENG on side B.

It doesn't work as an interpreting training tool because it suggests that the correct oral translation of A is B (and vice versa), whereas A vis-a-vis B are only one among possible interpretation of each others. The second approach then is to have a sentence on A and some keywords translated on B in order to fire on the switching process of oral translation among students. Adding the voiced over sentence is technically feasible but painful. On the other hand, I am favorably reconsidering using Vertov and its colleague Zotero over Firefox or an equivalent browser because it puts the oral or video on the center stage of the task.

What happened to technical Japanese?

Yes, what happened? Besides the Master of Engineering Japanese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison still running, technical Japanese doesn't generate didactic content anymore. The Technical Japanese Series came a standstill in 2002. There may be no reasons to refresh a book on Polymer Science And Engineering as basics are always the basic, but I wonder what this dismiss means besides disaffection for technical Japanese.

Automatic sentence feed to Twitter

Learnkanji delivers a daily Japanese word over Twitter. I assume the service is man managed.

But is there a way to feed a stack of sentences I store somewhere (140 signs or less) to my Twitter account at fixed interval? I would be in control to tell Start or Stop the feed as needed by sending back a keyword. I would also be able to select the stack I want to be fed with. It would be a kind of remote SRS feeder.

Partial answer : it's called scheduled tweets.

Further links and bits on Liaison Interpreting

There is no end to the quest. I googled "liaison interpreting advocacy" and bumped into a new treasure chest of gold.

First Liaison Interpreting in the Community, a book published in South Africa in 1999. I located an expensive copy over Amazon at more than $100, and whopping >$400 somewhere else. A review of the book is here. There must be books on the same subject in other language I cannot read although I would like to have sources at least.

A paper from Bar Ilan University being a "a personal account of the author’s experience in conducting (for the first time) a community-based interpreting course, designed to foster social activism and political awareness, while maintaining acceptable standards and coping with the typically complex issues associated with this task."

COMMUNITY INTERPRETING: RE-CONCILIATION THROUGH POWER MANAGEMENT : "This paper investigates current practices in community interpreting in Australia with a view to identifying the role actually played by the interpreter within the overall power dynamics of linguistically mediated triadic interactions."

A conference proceeding : "From ‘Community Interpreting’ to ‘Discourse Interpreting’:
Establishing Some Useful Parameters" dated 2007. As the following picked from the introduction clearly demonstrate, liaison interpreting is ever still searching for a self-identity: "In contrast to conference interpreting, which is today a fairly well-established discipline with its own research paradigms, the bilateral ‘retour’ interpreting of communicative events, often referred to as community interpreting, is still controversial as far as its concept and methodology are concerned. Its unclear conceptual basis becomes evident in the array of different expressions with different, often arbitrary foci which have made it difficult to position the interpreter’s role in interpreter-mediated scenarios. "

Dialogue interpreting (pun intended):

- I am a liaison intepreter
- Oh! I see. And, what do you do for a living?

Parallel development

Just like Wikipedia moved the encyclopedia out of the dominion of academics (let's not start bickering about the quality when we use it), everything that is related to language acquisition is also discussed outside the realm of academics, and the two streams are far away to meet anytime soon. There will be a time when the non-academic side will publish recognizable content to be used officially in schools. Tools are already being published. The SRS tool from All Japanese All the Time is one example and there must be others. But what is currently being published massively is conversations around language learning by language learners. Interpretation is totally backward in that sense. You can still spend time and find free to download academic writings on many subjects pertaining to interpretation, but it is still by far a heavy walled castle where you don't get into without the credential, but also which produce very few outside the boundaries. Andrew Gillies may be the major exception. Very few are building conversations outside the castle, or in parallel of it. It won't happen tomorrow. There are many practioners not born out of interpretation schools and most make a living out of their skills of various levels, just like myself. But few care to discuss about it. You can be a taxi driver and have no passion for automobile mechatronics. That's why I am puzzled and reading these days, the muck included, many discussions among self-learners of foreign languages. There is a lot of good stuff and also in some quarters a lot of emotional support. I envy them especially when jolting down words and broken thoughts in this open monologue.

China threat

As a factor of deflation, the China threat has been more tangible these days. Western prospects located in China would call for information on my fees for an assignment in Tokyo and would decline the offer. I reduced my fees some 25% end of last year, reaching a level I never asked for even 20 years ago when Japan was far out of reach from now Euro based countries, far out in the mind and the wallet. But China and delocalization over there came in. Invariably, the inquirers are into retail and retail doesn't carry the budget for an interpreter unless she asks for peanuts. There are plenty asking for peanuts and even others asking for gold. The crunch is one factor but it doesn't tell the story. But the worst change was revealed when that prospect asked me whether my being a Westerner could be a minus factor when interacting with Japanese. I was speechless for a microsecond. Everything argumentative, everything in the untold story of why there are so few non-Japanese interpreters (of Western language), everything that is part of the local segregative mind set is now pervasive among the potential customers from the West. There is a need to further develop an argumentation for why your not being Japanese is still a competitive advantage. of course, calling it quit and going into French cuisine at a restaurant could be a way out of this joint.

Swine flu as text

I am doing it as I type, and it's not poetry.

Swine flu as text.

Go to Interpreter Training Resources, notice the links Using the Internet to prepare.

Notice how it's stale already. Well, no criticism here. It must turn sour just like this writing will.

It must still be valid though when time is on hand.

But time is not on hand. I have an assignment, an urgent Over the Phone Interpretation request in a few hours related with swine Flu.

Actually, I am not, but let's say I am, we are under the constraint, the stress, the frill of a mission impossible kind of request, in X hour time (less than 3), you will be doing OPI for .... ummm .....

1) A financial analyst wanting to talk consult with some knowledgeable colleague in Japan about the local potential benefit on healthcare related industry.

2) (tougher one) : here the subject is around the national preparedness, state plans and medical capacity

3) (even more tougher) : medics on both sides discussing medical procedures

As you do, I have been reading in leisurely fashion about the coming flu, immune to the fact that I could die of it. I have been doing more skimming, surfing over text, audio and video, the media soup.

But now, surfing must quickly take some depth and do the submarine.

Latch closed ... diving we do.

I have the clear feeling that in 2009, you don't start reading and franticly write down a makeshift glossary. Clearly, the task is to get the big picture AND the words that come with the picture.

It's no poetry despite this RETURN.

So in 2009, you go after the glossary and bump into this one (there are others).

Reminding to the crew : all this is happening live, but you have to understand that it took a minute or less in this case since we started diving to grab that glossary.

The glossary. It's number 2 in the Google query at this time. Number one could be added, compared to it, but remember that time is the limit and it's scarce at that.

What you do from here?

Read it aloud, full speed.

Now comes the tricky one : get the same in (your B, C or Z language here).

You know what is a global language? It's a language for which you type "swine flu glossary" and you find results right away. Let's not start bickering about the imperfections of the findings. You find something quickly, so it's global.

My B, Z whatever language is Japanese. I don't want to start my standard Japan bashing but you won't find a swine flu glossary in Japanese right away. I mean, now, because it may change later, next month or next year. But right now, in the first query results, you don't find one. What you find instead are links to factual stuff, aggregations of articles, starting with Yahoo followed by the Asahi. There's a telling here that find the factuals as top query results but we are diving in stealth mode. No time for sociolinguistic considerations.

Now, the glossary in English is giving us the big picture with words, medical oriented but you have to start with something that is potentially highly technical. The collateral policies and financial related stuff, we will scoop reading the news in both language.

But we want the EN glossary in JP, right? How we do that? Any magic trick? Not magic but we could use Google translate - don't trust it today though, but tomorrow ...
we could use Jim Breen's brilliant (nay, stellar) online dic. No we can't unless with cut each words in English. Why no English -> Japanese text translation, at least to generate a list of words? am I am missing something here? Anyway, we can still do something and come up with a bilingual glossary of sort.

Next? We read in both language news, keeping in mind the coming setting and orienting the queries to veer more toward business, medical or policies at large.

Are we ready? Do we have time for something else? Maybe some TV news, maybe some podcast, anything that gives audio input.

Still some time? Read aloud a selection of clipped articles and call it ready. Have your dictionaries on hand, put the headset and here we go.

Does this make sense? Is there something more strategic, efficient to do?