Performing expertise

As already introduced in a previous post, The book Freelancing Expertise - Contract professionals in the new economy - by Debra Osnowitz is an important reading even if it doesn't specifically covers cases of interpreters. A key chapter I have been reading several times and pondering about is chapter 3 : Performing Expertise.

The sub-chapters in order of appearance are :

1. Making Impressions, Conveying Competence
2. Exuding Confidence, Engendering Trust
3. Asserting Control

It is not easy at first reading to draw links with a situation whose dynamics are pretty different from the one described by the author through specific examples drawn out contracting for programming or editing projects. In these examples, time seems long, with meetings between potential contracting client and contractors to assess competence. Not all but many cases feature contractors working inside the client's location, although some do perform away, usually from their SOHO home office. These are playing a somewhat different game.

There is no mention on how these contractors were contacting by potential clients. Did the web played a role in this, in terms of serendipity of encounter thanks to Google?

If you expose your ware online and your web site is the essential net to catch fishes (it must feel the reverse for clients though) , the three points listed above are managed first in the design and content of your web site. The web site has a major role in making impressions, conveying competence, exuding confidence, and engendering trust. Asserting control, which is open to various interpretation of meanings, it better kept apart for the time being.

At the professional freelancers network I created some three years ago - Freelance France Japon - we will have a meeting in March in Tokyo about strategies of professional self display on the Internet. The purpose is to have between three and five members doing a 10 minutes presentation each on how they perform and what are theirs takes on the subject.

In my experience, a professional web site is an on-going building process that must be nurtured by theories, intuitions, and facts yielded out of ones own experience. New incisive perception of ones market dynamics will turn into actions at the web site content, which comes down after a few years to matters of fine tuning rather than big overhauls. 

Everything that sustains and allows the three points above to be exposed and perceived have to take into account that the encounter with a prospect who may turn a client is a usually a short affair where dialog is scarce. A prospect finds your web site because she was searching for something that happens to be more or less what you are offering. Finding your web site and leaving it is a matter of a click away. A sticky web site must therefore probably answer within a few lines located at the top of the top page what you offer - that must match what the prospect is looking after - and how to get in touch with you. And these first lines play a major role in making point 1 and 2 tangible.

From a marketing point of view, there is nothing new here, but the relationship between the two actors, the hunter and the bait, is different than that of a shop display. Because the visitor came on purpose, looking for something specific.

Although the purpose here is not to lay out everything in terms of strategies and how I came down to the current state of my professional web site, one item I have learned the hard way is that the web site is obviously part of your strategy of displaying your professional you, but it is totally linked to real life time and space, and does not belong to some virtual location distant, or independent to "real life". It is part of an ecosystem whose parts create a realm of professional strategy of self-display.

Just to illustrate this core fact with something that may sound trite but needs deep understanding instead, if you display a phone number as one of other means to be contacted, you must be aware that someone may effectively call you out of the blue and not be surprised that such thing could happen. It will, and their will be no warning signs. When the phone rings, all of a sudden, everything you put of that virtual show window of yours over the Internet is literally thrust forward into reality with a slapping bang (or ring). It calls for action, which is to deliver on the spot expressions that do match the three points cited above. And as the inquiry will most of the time focus on your availability and fees, you have to deliver answers on the spot, and not fumble on fuzzy, indecisiveness. There won't be a second call from that prospect.

Uncreative and safe

Corporate Japanese language, the descriptive lingua that tells what a corporation does, is standardized , uncreative, and very much welcome as it is. Take French as a contrast. I did a test some weeks ago, looking for various French corporate sites, watching how the description went as far as what these firms were active in. Many I could not figure out right away. I had to dig in, get rid of the marketing fluff, the poseur sticky like slime catch phrases and all those smiley people to understand at long last what these corporations were doing. You don't have trouble understanding what a Japanese company does when roaming a web site. Even if some fluff and hot air is visible on the top page, you click on About this company and get a stiff administrative listing of what these people are doing in plain language. It is no surprise that interpreting a corporate presentation from French to Japanese can be daunting.

You have heard or practiced paraphrasing a text as an introductory exercise to bend and warm and get the rendering machine flexible. It is more difficult I believe in Japanese, because the original is so plain. When starting from corporate stance French, paraphrasing is often a mandatory exercise whose purpose is to lay bare the core meaning behind marketing hyperbolic, and at last be able to interpret it. That is why there are extra reasons to suggest clients to use plainer than usual language and avoid the cool catch phrases.

Some shameless suggestions to my next customers

I already provide some suggestions on my professional web site on matters of best interaction between clients and business interpreters. Let me recap only a few tiny points that are all the more important that I have seen them lacking many times.

Most of my clients are visitors to Japan, sometimes for the first time, more often with some previous experience in the country. However, I have not noticed much differences with the two categories, although the newcomers are keen to come more unprepared than the rather more veteran.

- Know something and a more about the firms you are going to visit. Read web sites and whatever information you can grab. If nothing is available in English, get a report by a competent agent. She could be a translator, or your interpreter. Don't rely on the single English page of many SMEs (many big Japanese corporations still fit the SME approach though) web sites where it is clear that the Japanese content comes by dozens of pages.

- For a first time meeting, don't assume they have not done their homework and search about your activities more than you may believe. The reverse, that they have done no homework, can also be true.

- Don't bring gifts albeit very small corporate goods might be OK, but not necessary. Gifts are welcome to warm up an already warmed relationship.

- Listen.

- Never ever show emotion, especially looks that express surprise, delusion, scorn or whatever negative feelings you may have.

- Don't be arrogant, even yours being world top class is true.

- At the opposite, don't be sheepish and expose real of false incompetence. You have heard about humility and modesty, usually faked but part of the formal communication ballet to be an essential feature of Japanese interaction. You are not ready to play that game.

- If you are unclear about how much time is OK for the meeting, ask right away and adapt to perfectly fit the duration for presentations and the likes, leaving ample time for questions from their side, and to talk about the weather. End your meeting 5 minutes before the end rather than 5 minutes after.

- If you business interpreter didn't check with you about the time offered by the other side, and do not ask - with your permission - at the beginning of the show, fire her.

Seeing note -taking in action

The research persued by Marc Orlando at Monash University in Australia leverages the technology offered by Livescribe digital pen, allowing to see note-taking in action while listening to the speech being spoken. It is fascinating because you read about note-taking in famous books I won't mention again, but you don't see the dynamics of it. It is like those books that still plunge deep into matters of music but that won't come with a CD to listen to the melodies under the scalpel. There is one example in a Japan of a unique book published some 3 years ago, mentioned in this blog, that covers the matter of note-taking. It comes with a rather poorly recorded DVD still fascinating, because it shows in action veteran interpreters taking notes on huge paper notes for the purpose of visible post-analysis. What Marc Orlando pushes forward is to see and hear the same thing, but in a realistic dimension. That the Livescribe technology requires special paper notes is a clear disadvantage compared for instance with the Pegasus digital pen, but the recording capacity of both the writing and the surrounding sound is brillant. It will totally modify note taking classes.

Now, are there any technology that will aid in the future consecutive at work?

Look at this

Marc Orlando, lecturer at Monash University in Australia, harnesses electronic pen for the purpose to evaluate note taking training progress. This is very interesting, as well as the brief introduction pdf.

Interpreter turns moderator

Part of what would be following was largely unscripted, left to the laisser-faire, knack at improvisation of the client's culture. On the opposite side, that is, the Japanese site, prior scripting of what shall take place, must have been fine tuned to a higher degree with deeper briefings. Although I have a relationship with that particular where expectation for me to act way beyond "a mere interpreter" are high, it was the first time that I felt compelled to improvise a role of icebreaker, moderator, funny story tellers, and doing interpretation on top of that. Improvising speeches where the culture of formal speech is strong was no small deal, and the point for next time will be to focus while watching the assembly rather than inwardly. Besides that matter, (most) everything went alright. I was reminded of one or two instances in reports and research papers around and about liaison interpreting, that you should be - in most circumstances - proud about how you did, especially because you dared do it.

Unrelated to this

FYI, I have started a new blog about Japanese craft. It is still tiny and feeble but will grow.

The name is The Daily Kogei, "kogei" (or kougei, or kôgei) meaning craft, craftwork.