Liaison interpreting has different meanings whether you deal through an agency or directly with the interpreter. Who are the most appropriate persons to define what is liaison interpreting? Practitioners. Don't leave to others the task of defining based on experience what your job, role, task are about.
A liaison interpreter is first an interpreter, but a liaison interpreter should be able upon request to provide more than interpreting. That is where we split with the holy scriptures. I would not want to hire most of the liaison interpreters I have met over +20 years. As long as they perform the automatic words spewing machine way and no more, they are a business breaking factor.
The added value of true liaison interpreting should include as an option the mundane scheduling support, visit timetable management, but also the strategic negotiating with the partners you will meet in order to pave the way for you to get the utmost benefit out of your business meetings. That is what repeaters clients sometimes ask me to perform. You need to have repeaters to be entitled to do that. But as long as you leave your clients with the impression you are a just but a "linguistic articulation", that is what you will be. It is fine to be content with that. But there is more to liaison interpreting.
A competent business liaison interpreter can act upon request as an informal agent of yours and business communication facilitator. No interpretation agency is able to provide such interpreter, and standard interpreters consider that the tasks beyond interpreting is not their business. I don't agree with them.
From the point of view of pure interpreting, liaison interpretating allows for communication to flow between small to medium groups of people in discussion, presentation, negotiation or training settings, while assuring that the whole message is delivered on both sides. Technically speaking, liaison interpreting is consecutive interpreting with the interpreter working in both languages. It involves at times pure consecutive interpreting when the speaker talks for a while and the interpreter delivers after the speech, and fast give and take interactions in natural discussions where the interpreter must keep pace with the flow, helping to reduce at best the interruption due to the consecutive distribution of communication in both ways, but also constantly checking that the other side got the message, and suggesting you repeat or re-frame the message to secure understanding.
Consecutive or liaison interpreting may take time, but is much more precise and effective with natural speech in professional settings than simultaneous interpretation. It is time well invested granted the interpreter knows his job. Liaison interpreting allows for both sides to fully consider what is said and talk back with a good strategy. A good liaison interpreter strives to shorten the delay of consecutive communication and make the encounter with your partners well worth the time spent.
Many differences of speech patterns, attitudes and non-verbal cues are involved with communication between Western and Japanese speakers. A pro-active yet discreet interpreter should help you navigate the cultural differences and go the extra mile for your advantage. In the languages pairing where Japanese is involved, cultural, communication, and rhetorical gaps are so huge that standard discourse about liaison interpreting simply does not qualify.
Years of experience have shown that unless your interlocutors speak seriously good English - and has serious long term experience living in Western countries with an understanding of non-Japanese discourse dynamics, you will waste time and money going globbish. Fuzzy, ineffective communication will invariably happen and slowdown your business hopes and expansion here. Hiring the services of a proactive interpreter is an investment into your future.
A competent liaison interpreter is a good communication manager who knows when to take command and when to lay back in standard neutral interpreting. It might sound shocking that an interpreter should take command, but experience shows typically in messy meetings that a call for regulation and effective communication must be dispatched and generates positive effects. The interpreter should at least recommend on the sides to his clients to take action and not wait for things to calm down. A standard interpreter, especially educated in the automatons of interpreting schools in Japan will not even refrain from acting, but won't suggest any action to his customer, because of the holy but inappropriate rule of neutrality and non-intervention in such situation. A poor and shy interpreter can be quickly overflowed by the situation and put you, the client, at risk.
An obvious and last recommendation : do not rely on an interpreter provided by the other side to help you navigate the business setting and provide a debriefing. In business, come with your own interpreter.
0 comments:
Post a Comment