Liquefaction

Soil liquefaction is one characteristics of earthquakes that thrusts to the surface of land created upon the sea tons of sand that wreak havoc the well delineated streets and pavement. An example of the principle of liquefaction is to be seen not far away from Tokyo, in fact next door, in Urayasu city. I go once a month to Urayasu and have seen the incredible results of liquefaction. Liquefaction is also a perfect image for how the Mar. 11 has impacted life far away from the terrible scenes of the Tohoku regions. At a professional, personal and many other levels too, what happened is like liquefaction. Something thrust from the inside visually messes the traditional surface landscape, but at first less visible are the deep modifications brought below the surface. Just like Urayasu, pipelines of certitude, habits have been broken that need rewiring, mending or abandonment in some cases, like leaving the country for good in a matter of days with the consequential certitude not to come back. This extreme consequence doesn't matter to me, but the landscape has changed, and when the surface is a mess, it also projects to the surface unknown facts, or features that escaped so far analysis, some eschewed on purpose, but put now under a crude light. They tell how some ecosystems were described and perceived that now need deep and painful reassessments.

I am now working maybe for a few days, maybe more, among an army of engineers. It is a new perspective, and this new thing is in a sense nothing new. When the market is thriving, you may jump from one subject to the other which makes each day a new one. What is new here is that it opens up new perspectives on the market which had been dwindling down following Mar. 11, and shown its razor thin scope more than ever. Being a Western interpreter in Japan is being a margin in itself, within the local job market that is already marginal. What I now see here are new elements that are not positive at all for liaison interpreting in Japan. Crisis have created new opportunities, but essentially domestic ones, which have been yet an island like territory of the market not accessible even if you are living in the very same island. I am for a time within this domestic market, but circumstances are showing facts that were eluded so far. The biggest one is that there are so many employees able to very well function in-house as liaison interpreters that once you get a foot inside, you understand the potential market is even thinner than your previous hypothesis. A new generation of internationally raised children of international couples have brought perfectly fluent employees who at various echelon can work without interpreting, or can help as interpreters on the spot. The few examples I see are probably of the natural interpreter types. They may lack something, being insiders and part of the inner ecosystem of the corporation. They are part of the inner drama which is the unique view of the world projected from the inside by each entity. Each entity creates its own world view that shuns the possibility that there are other, viable world views. It doesn't come as a surprise that manuals on good communication suggest you should ask questions to your counterpart rather that talk about yourself. Other people more than often hold single world view and as I have noticed keenly recently, playing the game of the book yields in most cases one-sided discussions where the owner of a strong single world view has basically nothing to ask you. You need not to feel bruised by this apparent lack of interest to yourself. As long as you don't belong, and this is the fate of freelancing, you are but a guest non-star of the show, a prop.

The advantage of freelancing is that it opens up a constant vista on the reality that world views are many, but each one beholder naturally thinks that his is not only unique, it is THE world view. Whatever else is weird. This is the core destabilizing factor when you do not belong and feel your view as a frail and fragile, unsure one compared with the Goliath views you bump with daily.  Viewing world views as a plural and not coming to any rejecting conclusions is probably what flexibility is all about though. It is also being alert to minute changes of the landscape and accepting to reconsider ones own world view as being ephemeral and nurtured by beliefs mostly. Liquefaction is about liquid. It requires to be tread upon with utmost care.