Where are the growth markets

A reader of another source of information about interpretation I collaborate to contacted me asking questions about schools teaching Japanese-French interpretation in Japan. 23 years old, bilingual, enamored with Japan. A growing set of characteristics bound to grow further with bi-national weddings. But what about the markets to ...

we interrupt our broadcast due to a small but sensible earthquake in Tokyo ...

Back to work. The players in the market this young person is dreaming about are mute like clams. Even tighter in the small JP-FR pair. There are three schools I am aware of offering some courses in JP-FR interpretation. I teach in one of these. One of the other, Simul, is the black hole of interpretation in Japan. It sucks out large amount of money from students, on the premise that if they get through, they will be part of the Simul Inc. agency rooster and by back their financial and intellectual efforts. I have heard from several channels that teachers at Simul are reluctant to talk about market realities. After all, they are paid to lure in students, and are politely despising each others, unless they are tiny enough a group to understand that there's no need to fight internally. They do train the next generation, despite the fact that at conference level at least, JP-FR is said to be replaced by JP-ENG-FR. 

In consec, the market is massively of the liaison type. It's partially a try-your-luck market, partially a organized market where embassies and chambers of commerce attract demand and offer.

There is the open wild market : be present on the Internet and wait to catch a bird. Or rather, get caught.

This market is untapped in my sense, although JP-FR is and will be always be marginal. JP-ENG-FR is a better combination. I believe that partnership and common visibility over the Internet are one of the combined untapped strategy. This strategy doesn't appeal to people I have approached. They are all deeply buried in the lone wolf scenario of independence. They do have professional friendship circles, small groups of same job people, but they don't think to transform this dynamism into visibility. Rodents meet rodents. I think this is lame.

As training is scarce, most have had few if no training at all. In liaison, it is my belief now that training is 50% dialog with practitioners to understand the ecosystem, the dynamics at stake when aiming at this job.  I know for sure that in other schools, trainers don't talk about practicalities. You will learn on the job, is the mantra. I believe that part of this on the job experience can be padded with prior theoretical knowledge of what empiricism will teach.

Many interpreters in JP-FR I have met also do translation. Interpretation alone won't feed them.

This does not answer the title question, "Where are the growth markets". I am not about answering it, but when I see with many clients how bad communication, half-cooked English, cultural gaps have left trails and trials often meaning loss of time = $$$, in the SMEs category at least, I believe that growth markets are the one stemmed by some different approaches and attitudes of liaison interpreters being proactive.