Through an interpreter

I purchased and watched the DVD "Communicating Effectively Through an Interpreter" published by the Cross-Cultural Healthcare Program. This program originally provided over VHS now comes in DVD format and at 28 minutes only, it certainly costs an arm and a leg. It only covers the basics which are certainly nothing to gulp down in 28 minutes and conclude you mastered it. At best, you perceive the issues at stake. Medical interpretation is not a lucrative business, and in Japan, it is said to be even less than that. The focus is empathy.

There are other focuses. Some niche markets very high on the lucrative scale are maybe the less known about. I met with a veteran in such niche, one of those rare non-Japanese top of the top practitioner. Both impressive and a strange feeling at the same time. The threshold may finally be between those you simply can't meet, the majority, and those exceptional cases who accept to share a cup of coffee.

Circumstantial rather than systemic is the path that launched a career. A fortunate sending by a national government to learn at the S. school in Tokyo. A bubble era still lifting off, and smart move at quitting the tracked formula of the school that ramps you up strict levels of competence and gives you mouthful of assignments until you reach (maybe) the stars. He decided to go alone, that is freelancing all the way through. Things to remember : what was the single tool of the trade learned that has kept significantly valuable over the years? Note-taking. And the lists of technical vocabulary to gulp down.

We were on the same bandwidth concerning chances at doing it through the standard local ecosystem. Mostly nil. "They don't even hire "foreigners" born her!" And the worse is that the embassies do the same (happy to hear, I knew it).

Word of mouth in niche market more important than web site. You can leave it alone for years gathering dust and wild foliage. Nobody cares.

Hates translation, just as I do hate translation.

Highly technical domains allow and justify to charge for preparation time. 

That lack of content for training. How it hurts each week to find for valuable content, especially in Japanese, content in real spoken Japanese, not marketing, not politician, not PR Japanese. Simply the real stuff. So the gap between what one works on at school and real professional life may be huge.

Probably, and as in most cases, nothing will be left about the experience. How do you say this in English? "Après moi le déluge."