Your mission starts now

As a business liaison interpreter and thanks to writing this blog as a way to focus and think, and also thanks to reading whatever academic paper is available around, it looks now obvious that an assignment does not start when interpreting is required, but prior to this.

I was thinking deep and clear about that fact while commuting the other day where I was to meet first time a new client and bring him to the meeting point with his local business partners. We were about to spend three days together, me as his hired interpreter. It may sound trite to highlight that the business relationship that had been mostly epistolary until the meeting was about to start the very moment I was to recognize him in the lobby and shake hands. The first contact and the following minutes spent to know each other are crucial and related with interpersonal skills. It is a time of trial when you are not especially comfortable meeting people first time. I am one of these uncomfortable lad. It can be done though. Nay, it must be done, and perfection is not required.

These first minutes should be dealt with strategy in mind, and not only as a time to try and get a good briefing before interpretation actually starts. In fact, granted the client doesn't engage right away into the matter at stake, and you have some time ahead, just don't jump asking questions about what's coming next. Instead, invest emotionally.

I called this moment in front of my students a few days ago a time for "emotional investment". Whether you will deal again with that customer or not is not an issue. Just walk the walk as if you are building a lasting relationship with a repater. You must create a good impression, a sense of your reliability, competence in navigating the space - this time moving by subway to another location or giving instructions to the taxi.

Besides covering the mundane like how was the trip, is it your first time coming in Japan, etc., I have found that whenever possible, asking questions about the town from where the client comes is a sure way to gain granular insights and please that person because evoking home usually feels good. Don't give a presentation on Japan, the Japanese. I did more than one time and it was wrong. Keep your answers short and smile, and whenever the focus falls on you the interpreter, don't keep it that way and progressively push it back to the client by asking questions.

Be reassuring, especially with clients who need to be reassured. Not all business travelers are comfortable ... with traveling, especially abroad. Be reassuring by deeds more than by words, help when the business card exchange happen. Ceremonials and formalism can generate stress with some clients, even with those who are not new to Japan. Being of help by doing, ushering, smoothing, that is, interfering to allow interaction beyond words to go smoothly, when smoothness is required, is one quality that is rewarded with much praise, even more than "pure linguistic" competences.

I could go on like that and break into more minute parts the interaction that is pre-assignmental. I will do it one day. In the meantime, all this that is learned the hard way by just doing it is vastly missing at least in the literature on interpretation outside the booth. Maybe they talk seriously and in depth about these many aspects of the job in schools, but it doesn't show outside school. That is why, the repetitious counsels like being good at social interaction without drilling down what is meant by this should be refrained from in the writing of professionals. If you do not intend to elaborate, don't mention the mundane. Because the mundane, mundane as it is needs to be drilled down to start being meaningful.