I have been fine tuning the following over the past week. It will soon reach novel length. I am inclined to add a section on why working with an interpreter rather than without. Here it is at this current stage anyway.
Some Advices on Working with an interpreter in Japan
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(Adapted and expanded from the Financial Times)
How to avoid garbled communication
Finding and selecting an interpreter
1. If possible, talk to other businesses and get their recommendations.
2. In Japan, most interpreters work through agencies. You usually will not be allowed to interact directly with your interpreter prior to day one.
3. If you secure an interpreter through an interpreting agency, most of what you will provide orally as background information to be transfered through the agency to the interpreter will be lost to the interpreter. Dispatch written documents and written recommendations to be used by the interpreter for preparation.
4. Avoid interpreters who see themselves as translation machines. Business interpretation doesn't stop at language competence. In Japan, many interpreters value language competence but may be poor at supporting your objectives. Some even may believe it's not part of their job.
5. Insist on the right personality. How your interpreter comes over as a person will affect how your company is seen. Find an interpreter who suits your culture and who can project the personality of your brand.
6. For highly formal situations with speeches and toasts, you will prefer a Japanese native-interpreter. For down to business settings where you welcome on the spot communication guidance besides pure interpretation, considering hiring a non-Japanese interpreter is meaningful in terms of your strategy.
7. Non-Japanese interpreters in Japan are a rare species though. Local agencies usually do not consider a non-native to be capable to work as an interpreter. They are wrong. But as a consequence, you will be on your own if you are looking for an interpreter keener to your side in the multicultural balance.
8. Look for interpreters with experience who have worked in your industry. But do not look under interpreters new to your industry. They may have worked in parallel industries, and they are usually good at challenging new domains in short time. This is actually part of the competences of an interpreter, and a business liaison interpreter.
9. Agencies usually are remote to the realities of the job and their only concern is to keep you from getting in touch with the interpreter and get their commission.
10. The major advantage of going through and agent is that if your interpreter is suddenly not available, illness, etc., they may secure another interpreter at short notice.
11. Some independent interpreters work in loosely fashioned cooperative networks although these are a rare bread. However, they may end up facilitating the finding of another resource.
12. If you are planning to often come to Japan and regularly meet with the same partners, try and use the services of the same interpreter if you were satisfied with him or her.
Preparation
13. Provide background information in good time. Interpreting is a difficult and demanding job. Interpreting is to a large extend about understanding contexts. Clients who fail to provide speeches, agendas and presentations create unnecessary problems for themselves.
14. Be as much detailed as possible with suggestions for reading material beyond presentation documents. Suggest articles, white papers and anything of value freely available online.
15. Nowadays, chances are your company, service or products have been highlighted through video, audio interviews that may be available as podcasts, YouTube or equivalent audiovideo sources.You may also have corporate audiovideo documents of value to help the interpreter better understand your context. Be creative when thinking about preparation documents.
16. Interpreters are not responsible for the lack of prior information and the consequence of potentially less than average service. However, some interpreters are ready to challenge short-noticed, urgent requests.
17. A competent interpreter should be able to give you advices on the validity of presentation documents to be used in Japan. Remember however that the time of the interpreter besides the assignment is not a free lunch.
18. From an interpreter's point of view there is nothing like a mundane or general, non-specialized talk. Any setting is a specialized situation even if it sounds trite and routine to you.
19. Try and brief your interpreter as much and early as possible, once if you can get in touch days or weeks before the assignment, and one more time an hour before the meeting.
20. During briefing, state your objective, what you want to achieve by the end of the session. This will help the interpreter match the context with your intentions. Clarity of purpose will help both of you.
During the session
21. During your presentation and in any situations, use simple language and steer clear of jokes. They are useless, inappropriate and put stress on the interpreter's task.
22. Try and avoid as much as possible conceptual talks as they usually are not understood here. Stay with tangible, practical speech. Be down to earth and sprinkle with lots of examples.
23. Beware of examples that are too local to your country, and too foreign to them.
24. In many cases, most of your Japanese interlocutors have made their homework of researching your company and context. Don't teach and preach them on what they may already know.
25. Especially with specialists, don't teach medicine to a doctor, engineering to an engineer. Create instead a rapport of implicit professional sameness.
26. On the slides, prefer flowchart like descriptions of processes, with icon illustrations, over long sentences.
27. Don't try and cover everything. Stay focused and follow your agenda.
28. Don't boast you are better than the competition, even if it's true.
29. Don't speak like an ad copy. Pure marketing talk with magazine like flowery jargon is terribly difficult to interpret and inefficient. Besides, your counterpart will politely hide their scorn at the fluff, but the interpreter will have a hard time concealing her malaise.
30. When things are "culturally different" in the examples you raise, that is, they may be based on realities of other countries outside Japan, briefly state that you know that they "certainly know that things are somewhat different here in Japan but" ... .
31. For Japanese with no serious experience living abroad, "foreignness" is usually a foreign concept. However, if you talk with top brass, avoid this tactic even if their experience abroad is thin or nil. Suggesting that they don't know something is rude.
32. Look at the opposite side, not at your interpreter when you speak. Create human contact through the eyes and facial expressions.
33. Speak directly to your counterparts. Do not speak through your interpreter like "Tell them that ....", or, "Ask them if ....".
34. When listening to you interlocutors, show you are indeed listening by nodding from time to time. Don't stare. Nodding doesn't mean you agree.
35. Be ready to accept on the spot request for clarification from your interpreter. Keep it brief.
36. Don't rely on the other side to provide interpretation for the meeting. The other side's interpreter is not your interpreter.
37. Neutrality of the interpreter is a book concept that does not apply in business and professional realities. An interpreter in face to face contacts leans on the side of his or her customer and must be an agent for your benefit first. Also, if their interpreter isn't up to the job and misrepresents you, your business will lose out.
38. Don't assume the other side has only one or no interpreter and don't understand you. Other members of the team may speak your language too, although they might not reveal it. So, watch what you say in the cloakroom and on the sides of the meeting room.
Debriefing
39. In most business cases, you should debrief your interpreter.
40. A business interpreter with no opinion at debriefing may not be the person you will want to work with next time.
41. Interpreters may have opinions but they are not stakeholders of your business. However, they may provide valuable insights.
Post-session
42. Going to diner and after-diner with your clients still means working for your interpreter.
43. Selecting a female interpreter will run into the potential for late night entertainment with your clients. They may be eager to bring you at a club to a last drink. Young interpreters may be inappropriate in such precincts by lack of experience and knowledge on how to behave.
44. Let your interpreter not drink. Interpreting requires a clear head.
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