It's a tale heard very often. A young lad, usually a foreigner in Japan, with some competence at Japanese language will offer services as an interpreter to visiting businesses. This will go on for some times. The young lad is making money and connexions. From day one, the purpose has never been to specialize in liaison interpreting but to it as a way to create opportunities for doing something else. It grew clear over repeated sessions that what the young lad appreciated the most and was frustrated with in the role of a transmitting pipe was to be but a serviceable part of the communication process. He or she wanted to be "in charge". And what's more, in and around, it was clear that most people working as liaison interpreters were Japanese, female, and more than often of the shy type. The young lad would not admit to be like her. He, she was a maverick from day one, and a freak from his colleagues. The young lad was too young and too loosely connected with a job he had never been trained for, nor much thought about, to consider build a professional persona of his own, that would set him apart and for good reasons in comparison with his competitors, that is, the local market at large. That is why most young lad do not end up professionalizing. The defining of service differentiation is not something you start pondering early in the business. They don't write about "why you should consider the nationality of your business interpreter when you select one". It is too much impolite, in this harmonious one. But the question was blankly asked the other with a new client I am to meet today. And I intend to ask him why he asked the question about the potential pitfalls of choosing me over of a racially native interpreter. Even after all those years, the call to expand or shift toward a role of representative, even a non-official player in the shadow, is strong, especially when some clients are asking specifically for more, or beyond liaison interpretation.
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