Conduit or facilitator. These two stems seem to summarize the two approaches to what the liaison interpreter is doing in the middle of the scene, very often a setting with a table. There is an extension to the facilitating role when the client do agree for the need for more, especially where post-meting follow-up is concerned. Here, I am not referring to the mundane task of translating post-meeting emails between the protagonist. I am referring to situations where the client now back home request the interpreter to liaise, keep the momentum running by calling the other side, reminding them to send the brochures, the estimates, the drafts, etc., whatever tangible things and actions that were pledged during the meeting. This appointing can expand to larger scopes of responsibility for the interpreter. It may be time for him or her to switch business card from Liaison Interpreter to Business Continuity Facilitator. I was summoned by that other side the other day for a post-meeting meeting, that is, alone as my clients were back home 10 000 km away. I fed back the client about the request and ended up carrying a mission of conveying a set of messages, working here to make them understand this and that, rehash the intentions and the expectations, that is persuade them of a set of items that would prepare the ground for a future meeting. I was paid to persuade and did it the local way. First, coffee shop, exposing consideration about the weather, next the business. We then move on my suggestion to a nearby good place for beer and sashimi as I saw the opportunity to massage the purpose and have it seep through the skin of this side of the world. They said with satisfaction that I looked more Japanese than ever. I thanked them but didn't tell back that I was rather looking more strategist than ever. If the liaison interpreter is to turn at times, and where cultural barriers make the simple conduit role simply impossible to stand, a facilitator, then getting wet about what facilitation is all about appears to be yet another subject to consider as part of a liaison interpretation curriculum. And that's exactly what I am going to get wet into the coming weeks. I bet they don't teach you that at school.
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