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.