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.