No bonding in English

"Meetings with at least one non-Japanese in attendance are all to be conducted in English, and internal reports will need to be written in the language. "

If I had any talent at drawing, I would draw a caricature illustrating the above sentence with a view onto a meeting room at Rakuten showing a meeting where it is clear that all attendees less one are Japanese. The non-Japanese would be clearly identified as a Chinese national. Other nationalities could apply where English is not Globish.

The above sentence comes from yet another report on the subject from the Japan Times. It tells how journalism runs so law that it does dare having any opinion, and the opinion reported is cautious enough not to dare call stupid the King CEOs of religious sects like large companies that happen to make money and gulp down entities abroad. 

A regular client of mine - French speaking country - would often switch during intense sessions of presentations and training between French and English, because he says he is so used to deliver this or that presentation more often in English. That flexibility between the key and the global language is a very positive point. It soothes the mind of the client to be able to speak his own natural language, and it is very valuable during breaks where chatting in native mode help build up bonding and the feeling that "it was a good idea and investment to hire that interpreter".

You don't need to be a deep thinker to forecast that the obsession for English is a boon for the big but failing industry here in Japan. As a collateral effect, it is a terrible blow to whatever other language, except Chinese. It is now a long tradition that French is for wine and cheese, elegance and you name it, Spanish for hot tempered people prompt to start dancing right away, and Italian for Italian lovers. It's a blow and it shows. No serious French for business course offering. Replace French by any minor language. No Italian for tech and industry course, no Spanish for management. The culinary courses make the most money and attendances. But in the field of liaison interpreting, managing globish, the partner's lingo and the client's natural language is a necessary mix for more than pure interpretation skills.

Competitive advantage in business liaison interpreting services

As a freelance service provider, the fees factor is crumbling under the siege of any other provider ready to offer "the same" for less. I got a tip this morning for a "short" assignment as an "attendant- interpreter" for some business person. I was to provide my fees and availability. I provided knowing that I would not get it, and stressed in the message back to the tip provider that "anybody cheaper will get it". The subliminal message of "short" and "attendant" is that it deserves less. But I already covered the issue a while back.

Which brings me to something more constructive. Competitive advantage in business liaison interpreting service provision must be based on some added-value, and a soon to come stint is revealing as a strong signal on what could be that added-value which would justified the higher sticker. To keep it short, the service to be emphasized is pre-meeting minute scheduling and terrain preparation to maximize the encounters ROI for the client.

I know this sounds like books you read while doing an MBA, but there is no fluff and hot air involved here. A mission coming soon to me is proving to have half-backed level of preparation in meetings schedules, agenda, and what to take back home. I got the green light to call ahead of time the receiving side here in Japan, and the result is appalling. To keep it short, the following questions I got right away is the best to summarize the issue : "What do they want exactly to talk about?" The facilities to be inspected has not yet been listed up, so a list should be coming soon, and they, my clients, will be invited to pick their favorites.

This may be an acute case, but experience tells me how badly prepared meetings are common, bringing later frustration and a series of further badly prepared meetings, unless someone in the interaction ring call it quit.

What the business liaison interpreter is potentially able to provide as an added-value, is the knowledge that meanings and level of preparedness and the average competence at coping with the unexpected (request) is usually not the same between the West and the (Japanese) East. Feed well ahead of time to your Japanese partner what you want to ask, what you want to know and what you want to take back home, and chances are very high that you'll get a carload of feedback, of course, in standard, non-threatening or conflictual situation. Don't ask much and rely on improvisation on the spot and you will get less, much less. And even the promise to send you later on additional documentation won't fill up the lost opportunities to discuss around those documents, granted things were finely set and tuned up before the meeting.

So the fine tuning, prior contacting and consultation with the other side prior to D-Day is where to focus the competitive advantage. 

Functional glossary management for interpretation

I have a question to myself with no clear answers and no cue. But if you have some answers, you are welcome.

What makes a glossary functional in the perspective of usage for interpretation?

How do you classify items, by various categories, alphabetically, by potential rate of appearance, other? Do you allow for redundancies in glossaries for the sake of ease of quick localization of words and expressions and other strategic purposes?

At what size do you print glossaries? Yes, it sounds lame, but that's where you learn tricks, by asking lame questions.

What does a "practical glossary for interpretation" looks like? Copies, pictures, snippets, something anyone?

I am very bad at managing glossaries and the the dry recommendation to build glossaries as you can read around is unhelpful, and the more you think about it, hopelessly useless unless it comes with examples of best practices. There are solid stuff around note-taking, but what about glossary making?

Where liaison interpreters are thriving

I watched an NHK special Asia documentary about Thailand on Sunday. The boom days of Asia with Japanese corporations escaping possible death from the domestic dying markets,  and scrambling in Thailand and the surrounding countries is an ultra hot topic. And what comes with it is language barrier, that's one thing, but also and more than that, communication barrier, which is not the same as language barrier, but somewhat related though. Watching this too much dramatized documentary (that's how it feels when you usually don't watch TV), I noticed the interpreters blurred on the scenes of factory visits, on the job training, negotiation tables. It's a busy era for liaison interpreters and I kind of envy them.

But the most impressive scene of this documentary was the session where frustrated Thai technicians and frustrated Japanese engineers have a meeting to lay out bare the problems. "There is a problem of communication", says one. "The Japanese don't communicate well. Their explanations are fuzzy."

There is a special room in that factory, the room used by the Japanese engineers. They are alone in it and fuming. There is no interpreter by their side.

I am reminded of a similar situation, but that was in France a good 30 years ago. The Japanese engineers had a room of their own, they were the winners, having bought the ex-French company. They were coming and staying to change things. They were full of self-confidence, and there was a permanent interpreter in the room, outside the room, following their trails, sometimes leading proactively although still an amateur. One day, while tension was high in the company, a delegation came from Japan, quite a lot of people with a top brass. They crammed the room. A meeting was to begin, for Japanese only. I was in the room though. One new comer asked with suspicion about me, "What is he doing here?". The top resident engineer answered back : "Don't worry, he is one of us."

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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Almost off topic : English speaking nurses are coming in Japan

Japan is getting down to earth and this is no small thing.

"Japan will provide English translations in a professional nursing exam to remove a language hurdle for foreign applicants after almost all of them failed the test this year, officials said Wednesday.
Hundreds of nurses and care-givers from Indonesia and the Philippines have been allowed to work temporarily in rapidly ageing Japan, but they have to pass the Japanese-language test if they hope to stay longer than a few years.
To respond to rising complaints that the tests are discriminatory, the health ministry has also decided to simplify the wording of some of the exam questions ahead of the next test in February, ministry officials said.
"We have decided to review the exams because they place an extra burden on foreign applicants," said Yoko Shimada of the ministry's nursing section.
"English translations will help foreign nurse applicants read and understand the national examinations well, and we consider it's appropriate."
Historically, Japan has imposed tight limits on immigration but has allowed several hundred certified nurses and caregivers from Indonesia and the Philippines into the country to help make up a shortage of health care workers.
Those who hope to stay longer than three years in the case of nurses, and four years in the case of caregivers, need to pass the exams, forcing them to quickly learn thousands of Japanese characters and medical terms.
This year only three people -- two Indonesian nurses and one from the Philippines -- passed the test, while the other 251 applicants failed."

So your next medical interpreter in 20 years time in Tokyo will be from the Philippines. But tongue in cheeks apart, infiltration of English will come through the best service providers (besides the delivery companies) I know about : nurses. When I was involved in medical interpretation over the phone, multiple visits to the bookshop at the rich medics floor was and still is awash with books. The manuals for nurse exam prep are numerous but none would even come with readings of kanji (Chinese caracters), which I found a little bit disturbing. I finally found a small book that dared put readings. It was not geared at non-Japanese speakers, but at your average beginner nurse that did not specialized in traditional literature. Literacy rate in this country is 98% or above, because it takes into account the number of people who go to school. It doesn't take national exam scoring into account.

As with everything negative that can't pertain to Japan, domestic violence, AIDS and what else, it takes time to come down to the reality that Japan is, well, just another country. The fallacy of near perfect literacy will fall down. It will take more time though than it took the exam to usher in non-Japanese speaking (yes they will speak faster the language than write the files) nurses onto the market. The more there will be, the less they will be exploited as expected. And the more Japanese nurses will benefit, that is, for English. The proud doctors will cringe but it doesn't matter. And if you were contemplating a "career" in health care interpretation in Japan, you might want to think twice, and maybe thrice.

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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Word lists

This country Japan where English learning material has been nurtured as a full industry is choked full with books listing words by categories, the more the better. I fished out the other day one that had laid dormant since having bought it earlier this year. A.H. Birse in his memoir - pre-Internet historical time - stresses the importance and challenge to work on glossaries. If you have about ¥2000 to spend, I would recommend this one : ニュース英語のキーフレーズ8000. If you want to spend less, you can find the previous version for under ¥300 at Amazon Japan. The book comes with 2 audio CDs, the core words being read aloud both in Japanese and English. 


There are 33 domains listed in the earlier edition, and 36 in the new one. That is why, unless they replaced the narrators with better ones, the cheaper version may be plenty enough.


Each core word or expression comes expanded with related vocabularies. This alone doesn't make the book exceptional in anyway. But if you look at the content, you get a pretty much good idea that a wide but essential chunk of basics and more for business liaison interpreting is covered here. Here is the content list of the latest version. The difference with the earlier version are the end chapters related with IT, environment, medicine, etc.


1 経済(市場経済
経済成長
統計・数値
景気循環
景気動向
景気対策
国家財政
税金
社会保障
国際経済
外国為替
国際貿易)
2 金融(金融・日銀
銀行
郵貯・保健
証券・投資
株式市場
株式売買)
3 産業(産業・生産
流通・建設
電力・環境
鉄鋼・機械
電子・バイオ
農業・食品)
4 ビジネス(企業・組織
営業・業務
販売
人事
雇用・労働
倒産・再建
経営
会計・財務
業績・法務)
5 補遺(IT
環境
医療・その他)

Chapter 4 - Business (Corporation, Organizations, Management, etc.) alone wraps up very efficiently matters that invariably pop up in real professional life. In that sense, at least between Japanese and English, the amount of ready to use up material for interpretation training and real life preparation is solid. What is lacking are strategies to make the best of these materials not specifically geared at interpretation, for interpretation purpose. Glossary workout must be plugged into a global approach that help crystallize the reviewing of words on one side with a constant stream of listening and shadowing exercises. The audio CDs can be manipulated using simple audio editing software to adapt the content for other languages. The copyright owners won't like it but does it matter? 

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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Changes

An interesting remark read over a professional bulletin board, that the defacto private industry of interpretation training in Japan is loosing steam and will flounder, now that interpretation studies is taken over by universities. The historical anomaly of leaving the territory of interpretation to the private sector has shaped what the market and its perception is now all about. The new trend if it proves right may affect Japan in big ways, over the years, maybe. One is that average interpreters will be younger, paid less and happy with it. The separation between simultaneous and consecutive/liaison will be extreme. Universities may open up to non-natives. Curriculum will reveal how general culture can't be ignored besides being "good at languages".

The real thing

"After we had tasted the vodka and the wine, he poured a light brown liquid into a small glass which he offered to Churchill.
  'You must try my "pertsovka",' he said. 'It is the best kind of vodka that we have. Ordinary vodka is all right, but too weak. This is the real thing..'
   When I had interpreted, I added in an undertone, not for Pavlov's ears:
   'May I say, sir, that this is vicious stuff, and I cannot recommend it.'
   Politely but firmly, and very wisely, the offer was declined."

A.H. Birse, Memoirs of an Interpreter
"he" being Stalin and Pavlov Stalin's personal interpreter.

Now, let's talk about interpreter's neutrality.

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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Content for training in business liaison interpreting

Whereas informative content that helps keeping wet in matters of business talk is available aplenty, it is hardly the same when it comes to secure content that comes close what really happens during business liaison interpreting settings. I suspect that the key issue with developing curriculum is directly related with matters of content. After close to a semester of testing business presentation interpretation in the classroom, I can certify that it works and does look very much like the real thing. The trainer has to be a playful partner in the setting, pretending to be a real businessman doing a presentation. Online documents, especially power point presentations on many subjects are available for nothing. Some modifications are needed and the trainer cum presenter has to do his homework as much as the students. Ideally, the course would be run with two trainers, each a native speaker of one of the language pair. Currently, it is not the case so doing Japanese to French business presentation has been a little bit tricky. IR presentations, and especially corporate overview not too much loaded with figures are available online, in Japanese, with audio or video. That is what we have been using. As it is public content, the students can easily locate these although I strongly suggest them not to do so. The powerpoints documents are readily available so the students are given a full week to work on these. As far as recreating the real thing in the classroom, it can be better.

A more common situation however is the discussion sessions, negotiations, persuasions that take place in small committees around meeting table, sometimes with very thin attendance.   These could be reproduced granted we work as a combination and both trainers are budding actors. Getting involvement from students within formats to be defined is also a possible alternative. As most students are working grownups, some could be volunteers to make in Japanese a presentation of their own workplace must that may be tricky. Locating at the beginning of the new term those who might accept, those that are more open minded than the others may be required next time.

In the public sphere, the video of the grilling of the committee reviewing public spending and led by current Minister of State for Government Revitalization Renho could make for interesting training material, granted they can be retrieved.

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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What the JAT Project 2010 in Tokyo tells about the state of interpretation in Japan

If you are into professional translation and in or around Tokyo on September 11, make a good investment and attend Japan Association of Translators full day conference. I attended the previous one. It is well worth the money and I still remember the clear, down to earth mood of some presentations telling you practical things like what and how to do to find work and keep your customer base. Only the presentation about interpretation was soporific BS.

Which means that if you are into interpretation, forget about Project 2010, but do have a look at the program and take notice of the single presentation about interpretation : Interschool.

There is no point here and no intention to launch a polemical attack. This has been over for a while. Cold, pragmatic observation of facts suffices. These facts invariably confirm my own long and tedious deconstruction of the market that started and was helped by writing this blog. If you go back several years into this blog - warning : there are much better things for you to do today - you may notice a clear mood of despair and unsettling. Now that my own mapping of the dynamics and ecosystem of the market has proved to match realities, despair is no longer in demand.

Facts :

- Interschool this year, Simul next year? The pivotal schools that format and define the interpretation scene here, the official one, are corporate machines who will deliver the holy words, and it doesn't matter who will be the presenter. He or she is not even listed.

- Foreign interpreters in Japan, at least for Japanese - Western languages are a marginal creed, and they work in marginal settings the big school cum agencies do not manage.

- Any single example of an interpreter who is Western and eats thank to the system is to be taken as a curiosity.

- As work is in the margin, a more interesting presentation would deal exactly with that : margin mapping in interpretation market in Japan for non native speakers.

- Probably no one, including the presenter, will notice the weirdness of the situation.

- Finding a presenter in the tiny community (wishful word) able to articulate a presentation based on realities for non native speakers is probably impossible.

- There is no conspiracy theory behind the deconstruction of the market. It is just like that for cultural reasons. But cultural dynamics being understood down the innards and deep nooks, it doesn't  make things tolerable all the same. The objective is nonetheless not to claim anything but build the margins into something bigger than a margin.

At face value

From home. A last half-through read before leaving the hospital. "Interpreters as Diplomats - A Diplomatic History of the Role of Interpreters in World Politics" by Ruth A. Roland. Put this in the category "Must read". It gives a pleasant overview of diplomatic interpretation through history. You can start reading from any chapter without getting lost. One such chapter is about China, Japan and India. The early references to interpreters, the post-Satow's, are of much interest. The reciprocal absurd level of misunderstanding and despise on both side is made clear with jaw droppings anecdotes. Long live ethnocentrism. Satow gets send (current wording : flawn) to China because the FO thinks that Chinese and Japanese are more or less similar languages. It needs to be stressed enough that pondering deeper at these misconceptions, in regards to this contemporary time, is mandatory. There is value in anecdotes as long as you pull the breaks on each and think. It is the best medicine I know to survive against the daily tsunami of public anecdotes.

Incidentally, and to stop the pompous, a recent read, "Smoke and Mirrors : An Experience of China" by journalist Pallavi Aiyar is a sweet as candy but insightful relation of meeting the differences, and that a 100~150 years time is not a big deal.

To go back to Interpreters as Diplomats, it exemplifies how, as a matter of fact, one turns into an interpreter, especially before the School of Geneva. Of much interest to me is the relationship of Arthur Herbert Birse, a British national raised in Russia who turned a banker and was summoned thanks to the war to interpret between Stalin and Churchill.

Fluency is the first quality that comes to mind to justify why this person is praised as an interpreter. There is something more to that, something in the lines of "what are the qualities needed (and consequently to work on) to be a valued interpreter, beyond fluency?" These considerations in books about interpretation are put on the sidelines when I wish to read about these as a core thematic of investigation. 

There is a picture centered on Birse delivering right in front of Stalin with Churchill on the side, a picture I could not locate online. I picked it from the book. Sorry about the low quality. It's a rare picture in the sense that the interpreter is the center piece. I am now sort of haunted by this picture as a unique piece of interpretation about what else than fluency can be highlighted among competences needed. It is an important question I believe because once you know for instance that clear elocution is one key among others, a trite for sure, the next move like anecdotes is to go deeper into this and investigate pragmatic methods to strengthen that side of the business gear with full awareness. I was introduced recently to a professor of Japanese elocution - the name is not clearly that way - as a result of going deeper into a fact and a practice none had any advise about.

At face value,  Arthur Herbert Birse oozes of command, self-mastery, assurance, "sûreté de soi". The eyes meet the eyes. It might be something important in Russian human interaction, I don't know.

As books lead to yet other books, this one leads to Arthur Herbert Birse's own Memoir of an interpreter, I could locate second hand at Amazon, and should be now on its way to Tokyo.

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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At the forefront of medical interpreting in Japan

What a surprise to find a link to this blog featured (until it lasts because I asked to be removed) over the page about Japan at the International Medical Interpreters Association. It took me time to understand why on earth was I featured here, when medical interpretation is mostly a subject I am not covering here, for sheer lack of competence, but there is no lack of interest. Quite a lot of years ago, I attended to some meeting on the subject, and felt like a Martian coming uninvited of planet Venus. I started writing a blog about medical interpreting but moved toward better known shores. The choices of links on the page (what does the interpreter of Mr. Toyoda has to do with medical interpreting) is a remembrance to that "something" wrong feeling I had at the time.

There is one of the big school of interpretation in Tokyo that started last year advertising a training course on medical interpretation, and I have been playing lately with the idea of going through some training, knowing that locally there has been nothing until Intergroup, that's the school name, came in. The problem is that unless you are local and unaware, Intergroup and the other big ones are businesses defining what the market is and making money, in the case of medical interpreting, on the idea that there's a future market for this. There are needs, but don't call it a market. Intergroup training is a one year costly investment, in time as well, that doesn't show its ware online. Which makes it all the more fishy. The picture of simultaneous interpreters on the ad page is one typical example of slanted cuckooed subliminal meaning largely unrelated with hospital interpretation. But we are in Japan here, not in Texas.

Being in a hospital right now, pampered (maybe not appropriate) by excellent monolingual staffs, I reckon again how the nurses are masters of intercultural communication, only they don't speak English. But intercultural communication at its core about serving people, whoever they are, and they deliver. It's not about linguistic competence but communication competence, and they are better than I at it, believe me, and usually superior to the more intellectual doctors who would switch to English a few hours ago while it hurts. There is a telling about what and where "natural interpreting" may be all about, dwelling at the very center of helping the other soul. A one year course at Interschool may be not enough to learn it.

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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Everything is so hyperlocal

Now being stranded, it was planned, in a hospital and soon to be released, it seems to me that everything is so hyperlocal, places, people and matters of concern. But there is value to yield from this situation still. Let's take the starting point of this drowsy .......

we are interrupting this program for some super hyperlocal concern, when the nurse comes to refit the drip catheter, meaning pealing off the old gluey plaster that keeps the needle in place under the skin, that means force shaving via glue pilosity you now hate to have at this angle of the arm. I told you, this is all hyperlocal.

Back to our program. I was brought to rummage about things local when getting the tip about the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators conference in November. I did briefly consider even summing up the cost that would involve going to this venue, anticipating the last time - more than 10 years ago -  I did the very same thing, boarding a JAL flight from Tokyo, a convenient night flight, that would taxi back within a short minute while an announcement informed the travelers that an engine needed a part replacement that would take an hour and more to perform. There are flights that feel almost local, that is domestic, not only because of the relatively short flight time, but because in the case of Tokyo to Sydney or Melbourne, it felt as seen on the map that you only had to release the brakes, and the plane would reach destination by pure effect of gravitation, by falling down the map. It was and still is a straight line.

It was circa 1995, the beginning quickly followed by the end of multimedia. I was in, writing in a local magazine about CD-ROMs from the world over (excluding Africa and where you can't eat). Interpretation at the time was anecdotal. One day, I was roaming Netscape and bumped into the announcement of an international conference about ... multimedia! Getting green light and cash from the magazine was a piece of cake. I boarded that plane, landed, had a meeting with someone locally to turn maybe famous. Then came next early morning and the registration (with coffee). And I still plain and clear and loud remember the reaction of the lady at the table noticing where I was coming from. She almost shouted : "You came from there for that!?"

I was proud (replace this by "stupid"). I had a ready to deliver answer, the importance of multimedia, how this would change the world and blah blah. Wasn't it Mr Nicholas Negroponte who was the international juicy morsel of the conference, that international tip of an otherwise very local (asparagus) conference?

Being local is not insult.

Nicholas Negroponte, the very man I read about this morning who just announced that in 5 years time, the physical book is dead? Incidentally, Bill Gates at the same venue announced that "Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world", hastily summed up by a media I am hating myself to still read that In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web. 

This big news is now being echoed comme ça without notice, comment, yeahs or boos by many "friends" over some social network (not Facebook).

I went to the same conference the following year was it,  on my own money this time because the multimedia burner was getting cooler, that is, dying, but it was not correctly correct to reckon it, especially with the self.

The conference was mostly hyperlocal, hypersufficient, hyper neverlasting. I would not suggest the same about that conference in Australia, but when it comes to ROI, I know it would be foolish to invest in getting there, in terms of slim expectation of valuable networking - unless I would consider moving to Australia very soon - or even in terms of the program content which looks enticing enough but the published papers to come some time later can already be spent doing something else.

The ecosystem, the dynamics of the business of interpretation between Japan and Australia have no common ground nor even pipelines. They exist on different planets. Waiting for the report, because planet Australia is way much more interesting when it comes to interpretation than Japan, is the best bet.

In the meantime, I came to understand the innards, the inside mechanic of these conference and how it translate in terms of ROI. They are hyperlocal although they try so hard to feel international and hype by inviting the unavoidable personality du jour that will deliver a so well wrapped up quickly forgettable cool and fun presentation. I can taste the coffee too much like Proust with tea.

All this doesn't mean that this or that conference is meaningless. The point is to determine whether the meaning of it interlace with your own meaningfulness. Both are very much hyperlocal concerns, fooled by daily roaming of news web sites that fool you into tangibly feeling a dimension of globality, by stopping by the Nikkei, much longer on Le Monde, and somewhat over the NYT. It's a matter of agenda and possible community of purpose at some level of the agenda of that gathering. If none, present of future, and if not sponsored which means that you are part of the dynamics, it's better to cast away Australian dreams. But there is value in reading the program just like with every other international, regional, local or hyperlocal dynamics.

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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