At face value

From home. A last half-through read before leaving the hospital. "Interpreters as Diplomats - A Diplomatic History of the Role of Interpreters in World Politics" by Ruth A. Roland. Put this in the category "Must read". It gives a pleasant overview of diplomatic interpretation through history. You can start reading from any chapter without getting lost. One such chapter is about China, Japan and India. The early references to interpreters, the post-Satow's, are of much interest. The reciprocal absurd level of misunderstanding and despise on both side is made clear with jaw droppings anecdotes. Long live ethnocentrism. Satow gets send (current wording : flawn) to China because the FO thinks that Chinese and Japanese are more or less similar languages. It needs to be stressed enough that pondering deeper at these misconceptions, in regards to this contemporary time, is mandatory. There is value in anecdotes as long as you pull the breaks on each and think. It is the best medicine I know to survive against the daily tsunami of public anecdotes.

Incidentally, and to stop the pompous, a recent read, "Smoke and Mirrors : An Experience of China" by journalist Pallavi Aiyar is a sweet as candy but insightful relation of meeting the differences, and that a 100~150 years time is not a big deal.

To go back to Interpreters as Diplomats, it exemplifies how, as a matter of fact, one turns into an interpreter, especially before the School of Geneva. Of much interest to me is the relationship of Arthur Herbert Birse, a British national raised in Russia who turned a banker and was summoned thanks to the war to interpret between Stalin and Churchill.

Fluency is the first quality that comes to mind to justify why this person is praised as an interpreter. There is something more to that, something in the lines of "what are the qualities needed (and consequently to work on) to be a valued interpreter, beyond fluency?" These considerations in books about interpretation are put on the sidelines when I wish to read about these as a core thematic of investigation. 

There is a picture centered on Birse delivering right in front of Stalin with Churchill on the side, a picture I could not locate online. I picked it from the book. Sorry about the low quality. It's a rare picture in the sense that the interpreter is the center piece. I am now sort of haunted by this picture as a unique piece of interpretation about what else than fluency can be highlighted among competences needed. It is an important question I believe because once you know for instance that clear elocution is one key among others, a trite for sure, the next move like anecdotes is to go deeper into this and investigate pragmatic methods to strengthen that side of the business gear with full awareness. I was introduced recently to a professor of Japanese elocution - the name is not clearly that way - as a result of going deeper into a fact and a practice none had any advise about.

At face value,  Arthur Herbert Birse oozes of command, self-mastery, assurance, "sûreté de soi". The eyes meet the eyes. It might be something important in Russian human interaction, I don't know.

As books lead to yet other books, this one leads to Arthur Herbert Birse's own Memoir of an interpreter, I could locate second hand at Amazon, and should be now on its way to Tokyo.

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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At the forefront of medical interpreting in Japan

What a surprise to find a link to this blog featured (until it lasts because I asked to be removed) over the page about Japan at the International Medical Interpreters Association. It took me time to understand why on earth was I featured here, when medical interpretation is mostly a subject I am not covering here, for sheer lack of competence, but there is no lack of interest. Quite a lot of years ago, I attended to some meeting on the subject, and felt like a Martian coming uninvited of planet Venus. I started writing a blog about medical interpreting but moved toward better known shores. The choices of links on the page (what does the interpreter of Mr. Toyoda has to do with medical interpreting) is a remembrance to that "something" wrong feeling I had at the time.

There is one of the big school of interpretation in Tokyo that started last year advertising a training course on medical interpretation, and I have been playing lately with the idea of going through some training, knowing that locally there has been nothing until Intergroup, that's the school name, came in. The problem is that unless you are local and unaware, Intergroup and the other big ones are businesses defining what the market is and making money, in the case of medical interpreting, on the idea that there's a future market for this. There are needs, but don't call it a market. Intergroup training is a one year costly investment, in time as well, that doesn't show its ware online. Which makes it all the more fishy. The picture of simultaneous interpreters on the ad page is one typical example of slanted cuckooed subliminal meaning largely unrelated with hospital interpretation. But we are in Japan here, not in Texas.

Being in a hospital right now, pampered (maybe not appropriate) by excellent monolingual staffs, I reckon again how the nurses are masters of intercultural communication, only they don't speak English. But intercultural communication at its core about serving people, whoever they are, and they deliver. It's not about linguistic competence but communication competence, and they are better than I at it, believe me, and usually superior to the more intellectual doctors who would switch to English a few hours ago while it hurts. There is a telling about what and where "natural interpreting" may be all about, dwelling at the very center of helping the other soul. A one year course at Interschool may be not enough to learn it.

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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Everything is so hyperlocal

Now being stranded, it was planned, in a hospital and soon to be released, it seems to me that everything is so hyperlocal, places, people and matters of concern. But there is value to yield from this situation still. Let's take the starting point of this drowsy .......

we are interrupting this program for some super hyperlocal concern, when the nurse comes to refit the drip catheter, meaning pealing off the old gluey plaster that keeps the needle in place under the skin, that means force shaving via glue pilosity you now hate to have at this angle of the arm. I told you, this is all hyperlocal.

Back to our program. I was brought to rummage about things local when getting the tip about the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators conference in November. I did briefly consider even summing up the cost that would involve going to this venue, anticipating the last time - more than 10 years ago -  I did the very same thing, boarding a JAL flight from Tokyo, a convenient night flight, that would taxi back within a short minute while an announcement informed the travelers that an engine needed a part replacement that would take an hour and more to perform. There are flights that feel almost local, that is domestic, not only because of the relatively short flight time, but because in the case of Tokyo to Sydney or Melbourne, it felt as seen on the map that you only had to release the brakes, and the plane would reach destination by pure effect of gravitation, by falling down the map. It was and still is a straight line.

It was circa 1995, the beginning quickly followed by the end of multimedia. I was in, writing in a local magazine about CD-ROMs from the world over (excluding Africa and where you can't eat). Interpretation at the time was anecdotal. One day, I was roaming Netscape and bumped into the announcement of an international conference about ... multimedia! Getting green light and cash from the magazine was a piece of cake. I boarded that plane, landed, had a meeting with someone locally to turn maybe famous. Then came next early morning and the registration (with coffee). And I still plain and clear and loud remember the reaction of the lady at the table noticing where I was coming from. She almost shouted : "You came from there for that!?"

I was proud (replace this by "stupid"). I had a ready to deliver answer, the importance of multimedia, how this would change the world and blah blah. Wasn't it Mr Nicholas Negroponte who was the international juicy morsel of the conference, that international tip of an otherwise very local (asparagus) conference?

Being local is not insult.

Nicholas Negroponte, the very man I read about this morning who just announced that in 5 years time, the physical book is dead? Incidentally, Bill Gates at the same venue announced that "Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world", hastily summed up by a media I am hating myself to still read that In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web. 

This big news is now being echoed comme ça without notice, comment, yeahs or boos by many "friends" over some social network (not Facebook).

I went to the same conference the following year was it,  on my own money this time because the multimedia burner was getting cooler, that is, dying, but it was not correctly correct to reckon it, especially with the self.

The conference was mostly hyperlocal, hypersufficient, hyper neverlasting. I would not suggest the same about that conference in Australia, but when it comes to ROI, I know it would be foolish to invest in getting there, in terms of slim expectation of valuable networking - unless I would consider moving to Australia very soon - or even in terms of the program content which looks enticing enough but the published papers to come some time later can already be spent doing something else.

The ecosystem, the dynamics of the business of interpretation between Japan and Australia have no common ground nor even pipelines. They exist on different planets. Waiting for the report, because planet Australia is way much more interesting when it comes to interpretation than Japan, is the best bet.

In the meantime, I came to understand the innards, the inside mechanic of these conference and how it translate in terms of ROI. They are hyperlocal although they try so hard to feel international and hype by inviting the unavoidable personality du jour that will deliver a so well wrapped up quickly forgettable cool and fun presentation. I can taste the coffee too much like Proust with tea.

All this doesn't mean that this or that conference is meaningless. The point is to determine whether the meaning of it interlace with your own meaningfulness. Both are very much hyperlocal concerns, fooled by daily roaming of news web sites that fool you into tangibly feeling a dimension of globality, by stopping by the Nikkei, much longer on Le Monde, and somewhat over the NYT. It's a matter of agenda and possible community of purpose at some level of the agenda of that gathering. If none, present of future, and if not sponsored which means that you are part of the dynamics, it's better to cast away Australian dreams. But there is value in reading the program just like with every other international, regional, local or hyperlocal dynamics.

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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