This will kill that

Serendipity is bringing home crosslinks between apparently separated issues. You know you have been too long in Japan when you don't listen to what your interlocutor talks about, but how she talks about it. That's more than often the way you are listen to. And if you are (seemingly a Westerner?) still craving for what rather than how, you never belong. Beyond tongue in cheeks are two articles going against the announcements of Japanese corporations going global linguistically speaking, Fast Retailing and Rakuten. They are by Professor Tatsuru Uchida of Kobe college, (why should I write sorry?), they are in Japanese only, here, and there. But to summarize, Fast Retailing and Rakuten will fail. What those corporations need is Globish, and what Globish stands to interpretation at large (not in the UN, but really at large) is equivalent to Darth Vader in episode number (I should ask my son for the number, but not a happy end).

Globish too will fail in Japan because everybody wants Oxford English or nothing. Because how matters more than what. I have had several Globish speakers among past clients. Hopefully, their counterparts with culled English competence at an early age couldn't even cope with such grainy English style, still awing at how those French gentleman were so good at English. It is funny how one bases judgment on other people's foreign language competence from the mere fact that one doesn't understand at all. But one day, my customers probably met Japanese counterparts OK with Globish, and that was the end of my professional career with them.

Thanks kami-sama (that means God), there are plenty of English turned eunuchs in Japan so I don't see interpretation opportunities drying out next day. In fact, I see a potential increase in assignments, but that is another story.

The untouchable CEOs turned gods (that's how it works here more than there) announcing that professional life must be valued at 700 TOEIC score or you get the ax, are as modern as wooden shoes that make a nice clatter when walked with but prove a horrible tool to walk, to perform the job of walking. "Just do it" does it better. Globish introduced in grainy perfect Globish is the way to go and the score to reach is 700 Globish score, nothing less. And no English native speakers as teachers, as Professor Uchida suggests.

Globish will kill in the long term a lot of reasons to work through and interpreter. Lots of reasons to work through an interpreter will survive.