Doing things with concept maps

Years ago, before the Internet, I loved the concept map builder software Inspiration. I bought most of the literature they were selling at the time about strategies to make the best of using it. Inspiration is still better to my opinion than what is available today, but it still lack a commercial web based service, it is still not multilanguage ready, and you can't even simply purchase the software online. There are other and free tools, like Freemind, not user friendly, and Cmap Tools that now fails to launch. I ended up registering to Mindmeister, an OK web based solution but not as flexible as Inspiration, and lacking the toggle between text and map mode that make Inspiration brilliant and unique. But, c'est la vie, and this solution among many still allows to brainstorm with the self in a more creative manner than jolting down notes in a list.

So I embarked, pretentiously, to develop the ideal curriculum for business interpretation, what they don't teach you at school but could, in the ideal school setting where I never went.

It's a work in progress, and as with many concept maps, it may hang like this in the air for a while, because concept maps are a tool to move forward with ideas and discover the branching and extensions. It doesn't matter usually that it is not complete and finished. It can be endless. So here it is, in its almost bare and trivial starting.

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show/66817653

Dynamics is a keyword, maybe overused here, to pinpoint at what and what for should the interpreter focus on. Understanding corporate, business and the people inside the professional ecosystems is a fundamental pivot for better navigating business interpretation. They say, experience makes perfect, but starting early on at least to understand the mechanics and osmosis between parts even outside a real setting may allow at least to accelerate the comprehension of what matters, from the viewpoint of the interpreter.

I was about to write that there is no such a book like "Business for dummies" in English, but there is, as a matter of fact. The For Dummies series offers pragmatic and narrower books, but what I was looking for is something that tells the reader in simple fashion how things work in a corporation. How a business works seems to deliver on that basic approach, but Japan offers many more books that tell about basic stuff, with flow charts and visuals attached. The culture of humility may explain why there is a market for dummies without calling them dummies, because you won't want to make readers loose face.

Incidentally, concept map, or mind mapping has gained traction the past years here, but I have yet to see any results in business presentations. Powerpoint goes against the dynamics of concept mapping, which is unfortunate.

Poor speakers

At a recent session of the presentation interpreting course, we used the audio recording of a corporate introduction to individual investors. Such recording are freely available over the Net and are gems for training. The students who are primary students of advanced French rather than students of interpreting are discovering how bad speakers can be. This happens under any nationality but the tendency here in Japan is strong. hey are now and more than often for the first time lending a sharp ear at what and how the speaker delivers. The interpreting act requires way sharper than usual listening attitude. Yesterday's selection turned appalling at times. The students (and I) could not make any sense of bits and portion of the speech. Daily Japanese is awash with stages of awkward speeches in speeches situations. Politicians often lead the pack of mumbo jumbo,badly articulated lip service, but you would expect something better when an IR Dpt. staff delivers with clear purpose to induce the listener to buy shares of his company.

The interpreter faces the task to deliver meaning where there might be mostly nothing but linguistic filler. We tried paraphrasing, focusing on the bits that were stems of meanings until they would vanish after the fifth word or less, what with these typical loops where the speaker kind of wraps up his ware, rehashing keywords but keeping the confusion as confused as at the beginning. My suggestions was to skip it, not entirely, but cling to simple bits that weaved together would transport some sense and hope for the best. Even as a foreigner, you can reach stellar level of hot air empty Japanese granted you pretend mastering your thought trail and betting on the fact that the Japanese listeners at least won't raise a hand to notice and request clarification. Is this improper an attitude when the setting is such that asking for clarification is simply not permitted? Guardian the holy scriptures would say so. I won't. At least, one situation I have known is that by asking the speaker to rehash, or rephrase, you are potentially putting shame on him, implicitly pointing at poor articulation. That the interpreter is usually the prime suspect when meaning doesn't get through is the knowledge the poor speaker should cling at, granted he knew it.

There is only one case, in business interpretation, that I would unabashedly high-jack the interaction flow and ask for clarification to the speaker, shame or not on whichever side, for the benefit of my client. The next chapter would obviously to go deeper into the matter of how to manage shame induced by poor interpreting or not knowing that piece of vocabulary one should know as a matter of fact. Possible title for an how-to book : How to survive blunders and get back on track. A bestseller to be.

The accidental interpreter

The best career track for business interpreting is to spend some years as a staff interpreter. I spent 6 months in a corporation as staff interpreter, freshly graduated from university, without any training in interpretation but a single course where sight translation was the painful single dish to be gulped down. There was no career track. It just happened. Some famous manufacturer was newly bought out by a Japanese blue chip. Engineers and technicians came from Japan to live with families in the North part of France. They needed to communicate on a daily basis, at all level of professional and non-professional life. Japanese was still a rare currency in the market. They would hire anyone with whatever level. I was an anyone. Hardly competent but definitely feeling that the job suited me very well. And the pay, for a freshly graduate was very high. It was "Japan as Number one" time. Six months is nothing, especially when awareness is absent. I could have spent a few years there if not for military service, and forcibly learn a lot about business and corporation dynamics by being soaked in it.  Only, circumstances made things turn differently.

I have yet to see the articles of that conference that took place in Trieste - was it last year already - about liaison interpreting in business. I don't know whether the thought about curriculum development goes anywhere beyond the recommendations found in an Australian book in the chapter "Business Interpreting" tucked inside the broader category of "Community Interpreting" : read a lot of business related newspapers and magazines, with examples of titles added. Even the holy scripture - "Liaison Interpreting - A handbook" - is mostly mute about the strategies to apply to grow and why. Among my current students, some are seriously thinking about launching into business interpreting. They have no corporate life experience. With French as B language. chances they find a position as staff interpreter even in a French subsidiary in Japan is nil. Business material is everywhere, in multiple media form. Reading material is but a single version about business expression. There are real conference recordings (not in French), real business people interviews. There is of course and without surprise a lack of negotiation settings to be watched and listened to. Negotiations are off record. There is no guidance though besides the obvious suggestion to regularly "read" a lot. Someone I can't remember about wrote in the academia about patterns in medical interpreting. Patterns in business interpreting must be delineated, listed up and described from the point of view of participants' dynamics and the role of the interpreter within each of these. Some can be recreated at school granted there were a school dedicated to business interpreting. But the vast majority of people interpreting in business settings happen to do so out of circumstances they hardly master nor understand. Practice makes perfect but the lack of practice because of the lack of constant assignments doesn't help. Alternative self-training approaches for the "accidental interpreter" could be enunciated in depth granted the veterans give a helping hand. In many situations, learning is receiving articulate, meaningful,  strong, deep tips, that are not drops of wisdom but tracks toward professionalism. Listing titles of newspapers and magazines to be read daily is too feeble an advice to turn the accidental into a purposeful interpreter.

Confessions of an interpreter

I just read the previously mentioned "Confessions of an Arabic Interpreter" by Leslie McLoughlin. It's always good to read a book of souvenirs by an interpreter, whatever the quality of writing, purpose and the value of content. And receiving the package swiftly from the UAE, a first time in life, is still somewhat thrilling, despite the banality of Internet worldwide roaming. Mr. McLoughlin starts very quickly in the intro with a diatribe against Israel. I assume that's part not only of a personal opinion, but more broadly a convention of discourse where (politely) cursing the arch-ennemy is a requisite to be published in that part of the world.

From a "pure" interpretation point of view, the author stresses also early in the beginning that it took more than 20 years before he got into interpretation. He hails with very good arguments the superiority of consecutive over simultaneous. He also announces that he will go into deeper details of the methodology of learning the language that prepared him to turn interpreting at a later stage. Unfortunately, he doesn't delve into any details, besides stressing the fact that learning has always been an alternative exercise at translating back and forth. I certainly want to agree with this "old" approach, and I am reminded reading just a few hours ago an article in the French Le Monde suggesting briefly that this method won't do. But methodology may be in the end a personal matter.

Mr. McLoughlin is humbly proud to have worked with PM Ms. Thatcher and the UK royalties. He demonstrates through a long career in-situ, in multiple Arab countries that a deep knowledge of language and the attached cultures is (was?) a conduit to find positions in business more easily than with an MBA. There are hundreds of people named and hundreds of references to regional dynamics, meaning lots of blood shedding, you hardly read or hear about in the news. Middle-East buffs will be much interested by the book even without any relationship to interpretation.

The book is prominently a life record and it feels like it. It is wrought for the pleasure of colleagues and past human network to read and remember. That's why there is a feeling of being allowed to eavesdrop on circumstances the unrelated reader is exceptionally allowed to have a glimpse at. It is at time a weird but pleasurable experience. I would  have loved to read about daily life in Lebanon - the village down the hill where the school was located -  more than the political action at play, but that is not the author's purpose. Private, daily life is kept private. Mr. McLoughlin is no Lawrence Durrell. He is in opposition to the writer-poet.

How come that the technical aspect of learning a language in regards to interpreting is not deeper covered? We hear a lot sometimes later in the book about the risky business of interpreting, meaning, the risk of screwing up, and feel for the first time a common ground. Screwing up with Ms. Thatcher, or screwing up with a VIP peddling some business software at a sales meeting in downtown Tokyo is basically the same. Erring at No. 10 Downing St. or a never heard about middle size corporation office is equally messy, whatever the scope of the consequences.

It's the ppt stupid

Powerpoint may make the whole business world stupid, but it's here to stay for a while. So much that understanding Powerpoint dynamics on speech is an important practical issue within business interpretation study. A new book published in France, trailing an earlier book in the USA liking ppt to stupidity is a good reminder of formulas, recurrent patterns and easy to forecast ways of speech delivery of speakers using a ppt presentation. Practice leads to perfection, maybe, but laying out plain issues and facts are the real gist of curriculums, granted one goes through formal training. That is why books deriding ppt stupidity (and I personally tend not to disagree) are potential reads of interest for strategic purpose. As liaison interpreting means catering to both ways of communication, lucidity toward how ppt induced speech impacts the dynamics of Q&A is also an important territory of awareness. Maintaining a personal debriefing book - can be a private blog - is a way to make all this thinking about many thing crystallizing  into tangible awareness of the whole.

Alone in the arena

... and the people are watching. I learned that in Italian you are not an interpreter, you do an interpreter. Next time I'll be Italian. This state of being that screams of identity has been as annoying as superfast drying concrete. It seals the self in a sort of fixed, stultified role that knows no path to promotion. A corporate employee gets promoted and a raise. A freelancer simply improves and shuffles the business cards according to the situation at hand. There are lots of business books on business behavior, grooming, fashion strategic attitudes, how to speak, how to act. I haven't yet bumped into a real good example that raises the issues when you are alone in the arena. maybe selfhelp books for consultant will do. Suggesting mere copycatting of corporate persons lack the fact at the core that you start and end up the day alone. Debriefing will be mostly performed between you and yourself. It asks for early clarity toward the fact.

So you agreed after many email exchanges on the conditions and the schedule. The prior day, you receive at long last the presentation document - a draft you were told. It's already past 9 pm, and with nightly chores, you won't really start reading and annotating it before 11 pm. A mere 45 pages, not impressive, standard stuff besides some inner jargon no Wikipedia can help with. It should be fairly standard.

The following day you meet, start the presence work, smiling, small talk, reciprocal probing, understanding what will happen. That's where you usually notice that the visiting client is pretty much in the dark about details, who will attend, how many people, what are they geared at, and countless small things. You check, casually, if your client has any experience of business interaction through an interpreter. The answer is no. You suggest the minimum standards, the speaker should mostly watch the attendance, not the interpreter. Our coordination between us, when to start, when to stop and baton touch, will implicitly be understood after a few minutes into the action. The interpreter here, even if nervous, must claim for commanding part of the action, not by telling it explicitly, but by casually advancing with a cool attitude that she is piloting the interaction and will give clues to the speaker. The action takes place in a meeting room, a cramped one at that. Not calling what is your turf right away will cost you later embarrassment when it is clear that coordination is needed, especially when the client doesn't know the value of speaking not too fast and not too long.

Actually, this is exactly what you forgot to tell, speed and the length. You were busy relaxing the client worry about the degrees of bows, whether he shall call A with A-sama or A-san, and other issues of stress you, the long time resident, do not see the point about. Just be your business self, is the recommendation you deliver to the culturally concerned.

It start with a tsunami like wave of flowery speech as an introduction. You were focused on the PowerPoint document, but for a long, very long 5 minutes, everything that is uttered is not included, not mentioned in the ppt. Shuffling the papers while concentrating, taking notes and trying not to be seen as struggling are to you clear signs that you are struggling. Flowery speech, the cooing of business introduction, if only one contract, like a Vandross song, delivered at a car chasing speed - the customer is used to steering the wheel of his flowing words, all this you know you hate. You want hard stuff, specs, regain control thanks to the many cues on the ppt.

Also, you are an attraction, as usual. A Caucasian lad interpreting here is a never-ending attraction. You know your limits, you overstate to yourself that speaking fast, while you deliver though, is not your forte, what with in that foreign language. It is one of those still rare secret feat to yourself, that you can somewhat deliver while taking mental notes of what is not going OK. What you should focus on next time. More client's preparation, more prior concentration and anticipation of what was meant to happen. After a while, you get the rhythm, you compensate or check your stress by overtly taking charge with faked commandeering of the visual cues that order the client to deliver the next part of the pitch. You do not know because you do not want to know whether the Other side is listening to your riding of the tricky and mysterious local jargon with interest, awe, or concealed disillusion at your language limitations. You believe you are limited ... although the results so far do not suggest such is the case. They speak to each other.

Later on, you will feel secret solace to ask for clarification when the Other side's CEO is asking a question that requires reformulation, simply because it is not clear enough.

But you are reminded at your casual daily loneliness when in the restaurant at noon, where it appears that even broken English is enough to talk direct about food and the weather and leave the interpreter munching, you consciously refrain to participate to the exchanges, playing the intensively listening guy, helping the left side understand which pickle to start with - cultural guidance on the fly, your other competence - helping and being aware that you are the unavoidable "unconcerned but not indifferent" guest, or communication spare wheel soon to leave the place, leaving them with their socializing you don't belong to.

All is fine, it is loneliness business as usual. You remember how that seasoned veteran interpreter justified with semi-hidden irritation why interpreters don't mate with each other, "because they talk all through the day", and by the end of the day, they don't want to talk anymore. Debriefing with a glass of plonk will suffice. And that is when you start, devoid of affectation and hard emotion, to consider definitely, without any need for further argument, with a higher than ever level of self-confidence on that matter at least, that it sounded and still sounds to you, as far as argument to justify the anti-socializing trait of interpreters, as total bullshit.

Musing about the other side

There is a characteristic pattern. It reads more or less somewhat like : "Please be advised that we don't have the capacity do deal with you in English."

If you leave aside the competent chunk of Japanese at English, the majority under the spell of not being able to even start blurting English, and feeling confident to be part of that majority is a staggering factor in business.

I don't work for the Japanese side, but I notice this trend, that this other side brings forward the warning that communication shall be an issue we won't deal with, basically meaning that, if you want to do business with us, please find solutions so that we can understand, in Japanese, what you tell us. The sadly comical part of this is that the other side is being courted to do business, do open up to new and potential channels of so dearly looked after pieces of fresh ROI. But they won't bulge.

I have seen IT corporations far bigger than your fishmonger's shop telling the same story, lamenting on one side (discreetly though) that business (read, domestic business) is tough, but not responding to the calls of the wild, that is outside Japan. Even when the calls are singing : "we want to buy from you." Those IT business would not think about hiring one or two Indian engineers bilingual enough to do the job.  The sheer idea of it as even a far away possibility won't even faintly pop up in the corporate mind. And this is not limited to IT only. Struggling domestically oriented SME would say no. The communication syndrome is one essential factor that rings in the background of the glum, and not enough consideration and analyses has gone through this.

Which does bring new assignments opportunities from foreign entities still looking to do business with Japan, and asking for more than standard business interpretation. The liaison piece of business interpretation has never felt so meaningful.

Being wrong, and dealing with wrongness

The previous post, thank's to the initial comment, is an appropriate transition to the matter of being wrong in interpretation and what to do with wrongness. I have never read about the issue, a clever sentence to push forward how one is smarter than the next door's lad at fishing out themes the academics left in the pool, until someone tells me I was wrong.

Wrongness is a subject I have covered in my introductory courses in consecutive and communication. The students are usually not interpreters, nor aiming at professional interpretation, but interpretation is ushered in as a different angle to French as a foreign language learning. I cover the subject in a few short minutes, advocating that being wrong, falling short on the face, bumping into the wall, screwing things up is part of the fabrics of interpreting. Opening the mouth is the surest way to risking belching trash and generating shame. But turning a clam in interpretation is not an option. You've got to deliver, something.

The story says you are in the middle of the interaction, but you are in front of the stage too. I can remember being wrong last week, and another time some three weeks ago. Learning about wrongness, as everything else, starts with exposing the issue. Exposition is the beginning of anything that could come next. Exposition is not confession, it is just looking plainly but not painfully into a fact society loves to hate, and shame the other culprit of wrong doing. I invite my students to be wrong, that is, to utter something even wrong rather than nothing as so many Japanese students trained to shut up are so inclined to do. I tell them that during the course, I will demonstrate what is being wrong by blundering at times, not even on purpose. And I deliver. That's part of the trainer's training.

Without getting deeper into it, interpretation wrongness as I decipher it stems from pure misunderstanding or wrong anticipation. I remember someone telling about that interpreter being laughed at in some conference where the word "chest" in the feminine sense was used, in a medical context, a totally technical word in Japanese that does not belong to daily life. The interpreter caught off guard used "oppai" (boobies) instead of "kyobu". And this triggered that. I check not to laugh when someone blunders. Humiliation is not fun. It resonates with something personal and laughing it away doesn't feel like a cure.

One reason I don't watch TV is related with the sheer malaise at watching ice skaters and the anticipation that they might just crash and stand up again with forced gracious smile. It's just overwhelming. Word blunders do not generate such anguish but the curiosity to listen to these, gleefully, is not here at all. It doesn't teach anything nor does it feel good to click on the replay button even found oer Le Monde newspaper to relish listening until the belly is full some French minister the other day fumbling on (was it "delation"?) , to deliver "fellation". No kids reading this blog, good.

There is much similitudes between the ice skater and the fumbling interpreter, that is, dealing with shame and having to go on delivering the show.

It was an obvious decision to start reading "Being wrong" when I got notices of that new book. Which also suggests that having being wrong has a lingering aftertaste. Just started the lengthy wordy introduction. The good news is that it is not a "How to never be wrong in 7 steps" book. It might prove reading the book was the right decision.

New book, not seen

Yet another book you can't find traces of, except a presentation here of Confessions of an Arabic Interpreter: The Odyssey of an Arabist, 1959-2009, Motivate Publishing. I leave here the tips for the self and readers to know and remember. Amazon still doesn't know it. 
Mandarin Blue about Chinese language interpreters (ears) of the RFA is also one of those books you read about but can't find.