Helping and caring for the self

I have been reading by bits "Interviewing Clients across Cultures" and praised the book over and over since last year at least. Moving out to a new house in Tokyo has messed up with habit of knowing, more or less where books that matter are thrown all over the place. The new territory helps rediscover books piled up in search of a place in the already crowded bookcase. ICC is I believe an essential piece of reading for liaison as well as community interpreters, although the author is not directing her speech at us. It is more a kind of modesty paired with keen awareness and fast adaptation that are necessary to deal with the many encounters of people and situations over job assignments. One such situation I have as usual not read about is when the interpreter is bruised or offended by what a speaker says. Supposed neutrality is a matter of keeping balance and focusing onto the single act that matters, i.e. that communication gets going on. Today was such an opportunity to test a badly felt situation of cultural arrogance on one side, utterly misunderstood on the other side. When Japan stance of superiority meets Japan enamoured Westerner. It can turn sour but to the mind of the interpreter who secretly thinks having spent years after years of pondering the claims, brought into pieces patterns and motives of claiming superiority of this over that. Love of Japan by Westerners goes against the very definition of ethnocentrism. It's a game of self-depreciating, of yearning for the other. But the interpreter interprets. Dealing with the sour taste actually comes later on, when the party is over and farewell scenes are over. Self-help for post-interpreting syndrome is a competence to be nurtured with books that do not talk about interpretation, as these do not talk about such matters. The paucity of writings about what the job is effectively on the job is in fact hardly understandable. That's where practitioners could make a different by writing more about the job in action, and expanding from anecdotes to deeper stuff.

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