The Liaison Interpreter

DigInfo TV Japan

2012-01-30T11:08:00.002+09:00

DigInfo TV Japan is a superb resource for self and group training, both in high end technical business speak acquisition and in interpreting. Each short video clip comes with a transcript of both formal, written speech voice over, and the bits of on site interviews. English versions too come with transcripts and can be exploited for two training course development.

Hanging out

2012-01-30T10:17:00.001+09:00

Just finished a second hangout over Google+. Why is it we are doing this now when all the functions available over Google+ have been available more or less scattered over different systems in the past?
I don't know.

Emotionally speaking, on this side at least, it is very charged, like the first time you use a communication mean and hear the voice, and see the face of people whose incarnation so far were mostly constrained by 140 signs over Twitter. It renews the wonder of real time communication between two far away points, and more than two.

In 48 hours with less than 2 hours of talking shop with colleagues in the USA and Europe, I for one have never had so far such an opportunity to exchange in courteous, non-threatening, respectful manners about our different takes, views and experiences of our various involvement into interpreting. Our markets and concerns are different. We are continents apart, yet the common ground is sturdy right from the start.

As with the #IntJC initiative, I consider both to come a little bit too late in my case, but I am awed by the potential lateral communication among peers over continents can prove and generate over time a different breed of interaction grounded in less hierarchical realities.

If you are a student in interpretation, if you are a beginner without much formal training, if you want to share beyond geographical and formal frontiers, by all means, get involve and change the stakes. Nobody is paid by Big Brother Google to pitch the service, but come to Google+ and expand the conversation. It makes tremendous sense.

#IntJC Announcement: Session 10 February 4th

2012-01-28T10:03:00.003+09:00

#IntJC The Interpreting Journal Club topic for Session 10, February 4th : "Justice on the cheap", the case of the UK Ministry of Justice outsourcing legal interpreting services.

Read the details here, spread the word and join!

A blessed course

2012-01-26T12:21:00.001+09:00

The Winter course on business interpreting in consecutive mode I am delivering in Tokyo has now packed 12 students. 12 is huge. Many are repeaters, many are not in the interpreting trade, all want to practice sophisticated French - and Japanese - as an alternative approach to progress in their second language acquisition, that is, French. Most are or were engaged in professional lives. For most, motivation to attend the course is intellectual pleasure. The keyword of my course has been "encouraging", because we are not here to get discouraged by the task, but to progress in strategic manner. Leaving the course feeling charged up and wanting for more is the ultimate purpose.

With so many repeaters, it is a pleasure to witness how confidence in speaking and managing the tasks of interpreting has been growing through time. I am always telling them we are not seeking perfection, otherwise I quit, but progress. Together with encouragement always comes my invitation to make mistakes. Perfection as an inhibiting factor is very strong here in Japan. Where is it not though? I encourage them to blunder, and I deliver my dose of blundering to show how it feels. It is probably the only course where they hear about shame, or malaise at blundering and the management of it beyond the ineffective recommendation not to worry.

This time, we are blessed by the presence of a young working interpreter extremely talented. I was glad to hear he went through the rare crushing courses available in Tokyo and still decided to attend this serious but light hearted session of mine. Due to the market crunch, he looked and luckily landed a corporate in-house interpreting position, working mostly between Japanese and English, both in simul and consec. He is really gifted in language and we could swap roles in the classroom so I learn a few tricks. I quickly intervene right into the first course to tell mostly frozen students how lucky we were having such competent student here. The frost melted quickly. We also have a soon to be bright engineer who is very helpful with technical topics I sometimes choose. This is going to be an excellent Winter session.

Working less for less

2012-01-26T06:12:00.002+09:00

If you are a real interpreter, don't read further. Enjoy stratospheric thin air.

Down there at ground level, there is an acceleration to the idea that working for less is the new norm. It's no longer an idea. It is. Precarity is cool. Eat instant noodles while watching culinary broadcasts on TV. I have been researching that UK affair of the Ministry of Justice over there outsourcing delivery of legal interpreters like pizzas to a private company. Commodification of language services, that was pushed by over-the-phone interpreting companies, is reaching fastfood dynamics. Lean, always in, 30 sec guaranteed before you have your interpreter ready to deliver in a situation devoid of context. Who cares about context, an other passé, déjà-vu word that sucks? If only it could be moved to China.

It's messy over there in the UK. You have seemingly many entities voicing over the net, wordily clashing with that private outsourcer, all in scattered manners that dilutes the potential of counter arguing. But of course, there must be another option to counter arguing, which is to say and act negatively, to say no working less for less, no to even working more for less, despite the fact that there will be for sure someone accepting the job for less.

It is my understanding that a top class legal terp in the UK going to a job location is being paid 22 pounds per hour of service, flat rate, no costs coverage. Just imagine you go by car 1 hour away and back home to spend a half-day business timeframe for 22 pounds flat.

I quit telephone interpreting a few years ago for the same very reasons. What is taking place over there is already, or will take place close to home soon, unless you are a real interpreter, right?

Someone emailed me last week, stealth mode, that is, inquiring for my availability for a few short sessions end of this month. Useless exchanges of mails were prompted to try and know in order: the setting, the duration, the context, the kind of people attending. This was some French businessman, grown-up for sure, mailing from Tokyo. I suggested we could talk over the phone instead of this stupid, unbusiness like, time consuming method. He asked for fees. I offered a rebate on half-days. He asked for hour based. I said no, and invited him to look deeper into the Tokyo market. He would without any doubt find someone agreeing to work more for less, although working more is not a guarantee. Of course, all this mail based until the end. He didn't react to my suggestion we talk. Talking is the new fear, or is it?

If you can offer working less for less, don't accept anything. Don't interpret for a world president. Stop the precarity is cool in disguise. Don't read their counter arguments. Communicate instead in lateral mode with colleagues. Don't just gawk watching TED presentations. Listening is not a conversation.

If you can't say no, consider moving away from unreal interpreting.

Do you need this?

2012-01-25T08:29:00.000+09:00

They need you. Do you need them?

What's cooking?

2012-01-24T20:41:00.002+09:00

I am planning to start cooking lessons in Tokyo sometimes in Spring when it gets warmer. I was pushed by several friends over the years to engage into this and always declined. Now they will have to sponsor me in a way. Many pictures are yellowish because of the mood in the kitchen, a very woody, European environment circa 1970s. Most are taken during dinner fixing with an iPhone. We have to set up that #IntJC session on managing many hats with confidence. There must be recipes for this too. Tell me your opinion. Food doesn't email well in attachment. Sorry about that.

Discussing Liaison Interpreting over Google+

2012-01-23T14:05:00.001+09:00

This is a repost of a note I wrote within the #IntJC circle over Google+.

I would like to think and especially test implement a limited session of discussion using the video conferencing Hangouts function in Google+. There is a limitation of 10 seats and you need a camera with your PC. And you need of course to be registered over Google+.

The framework would be like this: 1 hour maximum, focused on one specific professional subject articulated around 3 keypoints. The first subject that comes to my mind is Liaison Interpreting and the various takes on what it refers to.

If someone involved in liaison interpreting is interested to give it a try, contact me back. The minimum number of participants would be 3. Your comments are welcome.

Of course, this kind of initiative can be taken by anyone as no leadership is needed and #IntJC is not an organization as you all know.

Reality Check

2012-01-20T08:08:00.000+09:00

Fake, and be proud

Liaison interpreting

Legal Interpreting

Medical Interpreting

SL Interpreting

Interpreting at War

Other

More on hats

2012-01-18T10:32:00.002+09:00

I am planning a new foray into food and cooking. Yet another girly subject as with interpreting, right? :) I could keep it in stealth mode while it’s cooking. In a previous post on the subject, Tolken comments on the matter of elevator pitch. Don't we have it already? Isn't it the first few lines that adorn the top page of our professional web sites? Why can't we rote memorize it and deliver when needed? Is it a lack of faith in self, a matter of the usage of the verb to be, or not to be? To do sounds so enticing but it is still not a solution. My Italian freelancer friend A.M. also doubts even if she “fare” many hats.

Why don’t we ask after perusing a business card where the title reads “Director of Marketing” : “What is your job exactly?”. Replace the title with CEO and ask the same question, then chuckle. Lucky those who have nothing to explain. But what and why do we have to explain? The single hats should be questioned.

Ours are multiple. But when asked, do we have to tell the whole list? Then, the problem is not the verb to be, but the conjunction and. Freelancing is not a profession but a “manière d’être en mode professionnel”, whereas single hats have a single denomination yet for similar purposes, one being to meet ends and pay the bills.

What is the difference between a serial entrepreneur and a survivor? They are both cherishing or preferring freelancing as a mean to meet ends. They may be forced too, longing for a corporate fixed, pre-defined (even if a job description may be lacking) title with a name you don’t ask or dare ask the meaning of.

But there are multiple hats who show confidence. They may end up being regulars at conferences, like past-presidents. They master the verb, the speech. That interpreting makes you still doubt in your mastery is telling a story. But when you don the interpreter’s hat you don’t ask yourself such silly questions, unless something external happens that makes you doubt, like for instance bad mouth or plain shaming from “colleagues” wrapped in sugar. How do you translate the trendy French “bisounours” in English by the way?

Isn’t the matter simply pride and the possible lack of it? Isn’t it simply based on whether you are deemed “real” or not by other than you? As with this stunning documentary title no one seems to mention. Isn’t it finally a major side effect of the lack of opportunities, that is, the will to discuss it, for Real?

To slam

2012-01-10T08:30:00.001+09:00

1. To shut with force and loud noise: slammed the door.

2. To put, throw, or otherwise forcefully move so as to produce a loud noise: slammed the book on the desk.

3. To hit or strike with great force.

4. Slang To criticize harshly; censure forcefully.

Job agency slammed over "cheap" interpreters.

Let's shift the focus from the market to the interpreter's view point. What get slammed in the sense of "hit or stroke with great force" are the interpreter's conditions of living.

Sight translation with Tweets

2012-01-08T17:50:00.001+09:00

Tomorrow is another national holiday in Japan, but the school where I teach a single weekly course follows a calendar that often disregards local realities. I will meet my new students and discover how many they are. Always a surprise and a source of anguish, the number usually hovers around 12. The course is a non-intensive training session of two hours and for many an introduction to consecutive interpretation between Japanese and French in business context. I previously wrote about the context and content, but for a refresher, let me state that the students are usually not interpreters, nor do they aim at professional interpreting. They know based on the course description in the marketing blurb that this is a course to practice consec in business context open to any advanced learner of French, both a way to grease up competences, and also a course offering a different approach and strategies to reach higher level of communication by reflecting and practicing from the view point of consec interpreting.

This time, I will test a new dimension to the course methodology. We will go on practicing in business presentation mode using real presentation documents, me playing the business presenter. We will do also sight translation from Japanese to French, and I will test how tweets selected from specific keywords may allow to gain some confidence, instead of jumping right away into using long texts.

Japan is a heavy user of Tweeter, but a quick look at usage shows interesting patterns. For instance, the individual user will gleefully spew shrinked down, grammatically incorrect but somewhat meaningful tweets needing, like dried noodles, to be reprocessed to full blown language with the adequate mind effort and sweat, already a sort of interpreting task.

In total opposite fashion, most state administration entities like ministers using Twitter are delivering tweets in well structured language, usually not missing a verb at the end of the sentence. On top of that, due to the limitation in length, official tweets devoid of gimmicks and Twitter specific styling bits are short but offer complete narratives that may encompass two to three short sentences. Translators from Japanese know how circumvented and unpalatable written Japanese can turn, with information agglutinated in long challenging streams where the period may come at long last after 5 lines. Twitter checks that this doesn't happen by forcing writers to squeeze strings of meaning, ADN like, in a pill size much easier to gulp down. We will see how students will like the medecine. Will you try this, or are you already doing it in full fledged interpreting ccourses?

A personal interpretation on the Olympus affair

2012-01-08T07:37:00.004+09:00

I published an article in another blog about the Olympus affair. It is not totally unrelated with interpreting, as it is about communication and world's views. The article is here. Please link and retweet if you like it, or even if you don't.

What's wrong with us?

2012-01-05T11:28:00.000+09:00

Over at the International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters, Aurora Matilde Humarán is asking "What's wrong with us, colleagues? Are we blind to what's happening? Are these industry sirens so very clever?"

What is happening is self-promoted precarity as the cool (and unique) way forward. That precarity doesn't only refer to material but psychological well-being. But it is not only self-promotion because muteness also plays in favor of the business you would not want to work for, unless you have a plan to set up yet another agency for making others toiling at a fee you scorned and fear about until you wrote the business plan. I just tossed, that is, blocked a guy's following me over Twitter right away when receiving the notification. The scarce tweets, the growing list of followed people were telling a redondant story: we are about to launch (yet another) online translation service (anciently called : agency) to offer clients dirt cheap fees and paid the slaves down the chain something that makes the hourly pay for flipping meat patties at McDonald's now look enticing. The young lad I zapped writes in a Tweet how difficult phone interpretation is. But he leaves the meat of the story: difficult, yes, and usually paid dirt cheap. Isn't that cool?

Of course, many will wrap themselves in the knowledge of their : being a veterans, being above the crowd, being specialized, catering only to the higher spheres of their turf, etc. "Après moi le déluge" is the big, big noise behind. But the article mentioned above is showing a tree whereas what is needed is a wider understanding of the forest.

Promoters of precarity are not all billionaires, but they all share a common trait: they call precarity by another name: cool. When Japanophiles visit Japan for instance, they used to (when the Yen was cheap) swoon at how cheap you could have quality food everywhere in a clean decent, and courteous environment. It is not totally their fault that they can't see beyond the cheap bowl of rice with beef topples that the guy behind the counter serving them has no future, unless you think marrying, having children, mixing work with leisure ans socializing is uncool.

What's wrong with us is no different and the autor is giving no names but unless you have been stuck in a dark hole for a while, names of people and organizations pop up in your mind while you read the article. It doesn't feel good but does it have to for the sake of coolness?

What's wrong with us may be perceived indeed as a matter of recovering up the dropped ball, but I am not persuaded by this position. Recovering a drop ball starts from the view that a ball there was, that was let to drop. But were there a ball prior to this first, besides closed wall associations? Was there a visible discourse? This, I wonder.

When you watch the stage of the next cool industry gathering and feverishly tweet away the juicy morsels that are usually bits of cool and dictatorial in your face statements anyone daring to question shall be zapped right away, you are just playing the show, stirring the pot with yet another dollop of cool, or leave.

Broader than translating and interpreting, the stage of freelancing discourse for instance that may be the forest where you tree dwells is polluted by so many blogs and speakers that tell you 10 ways how to boil water that we should all be dropped dead by the dire stupidity of it all.

Yet, we survive. And the question indeed is what's wrong with us. Blindness with a mix of fear. One answer is to be designed into action rather than introspection, that is, dispensing another style, another speech, another stance, and when possible, choose the home kitchen down the road rather than the chain store. Resistance to overall bullshit starts local.

Now, it's time for the lip service community to silently frown. Go ahead and enjoy.

Thank you readers

2012-01-02T18:04:00.001+09:00

There are major shrines of Tokyo located at a short walking distance from home. Whereas the adjacent streets are empty - today is National Holiday in Japan (right after January 1st!) - the closer you get to shrines, the thicker the crowd. In one small shrine, the throng is thick and occupies the whole street, waiting patiently to get inside, make a prayer and toss a coin or more. For tax-free shrines and temples, these times of the year are top cashflow inflow times. I crossed the path of that shrine twice today to confirm that most generations are represented. At this late time in Tokyo, the crowd was much younger than during daylight with families, sometimes over several generations who come early and are back home for dinner. The younger freer one do not care about the late time but they don't differ from the elders on many points:

- They do come each year and sustain tradition by doing so.
- They are as patient and enduring under the dry and cold wind. They were trained to be from kindergarden.
- They will come when (and if) they get married each year for the same purpose.

Traditions are a compass for life, whatever happens during it, like a sudden big jolt just yesterday, January 1st, a good reminder that earthquakes are just part of all this. I kind of understand these days how many Westerners (French first?) marvel at everything Japanese. They are longing for perfect if not robotized services, lack of violence, general good behavior, that is, restrained behavior, easy smiles and rare quarrels (in public). But they also marvel and long for traditions that have been thinned out back in their country. Or rather, they don't want to see that there are still traditions back there because the validity of those are often discussed or at least punned at, thanks to that endemic daily cynicism and sarcasm which are not as thick here as they are there. Never would anyone discuss the validity to go to the shrine here. It is just part of normality, that is, social life. Only the young teenagers busy getting ready for the various entrance exams starting soon (why do they have exam season when it's cold outside and influenza is looming?) are not to be seen. They do, or pretend to do homework at home. Ipads and Nintendo are taking care to allow for much distraction.

I almost forgot that this is a new year. Thank you to regular and accidental readers to be still around enduring this messy blog. Another year has already started.

The year of strategic visibility sharing for freelancers

2012-01-02T12:51:00.002+09:00

What flight of imagination is required to fancy, and even better, implement strategic sharing of visibility among freelancers? In another professional network I am involved with, I launched into the air an invitation to consider opening up on a reciprocal basis a category for "Recommended partners" in each other's web sites. Here, I am not specifically pointing to people involved in the same profession, but people I respect for what they do in domains we do not compete in. As for domains where competition is clear enough, I still do believe that under discussed conditions and strategy, there could be ways for reciprocal introductions. For the less delicate cases where we definitely don't play the same tune, it could be obvious - although selection is required - if you skip the counter arguments that :

1. Visitors clicking on the link will leave my web site!
2. What's the use of this anyway?

Here are a few argument bones to munch on:

1. If visitors didn't stumble on my web site by accident, I am confident that they will come back to further check what I have in store, because chances are they didn't stumble here out of the blue but with a purpose. Besides, having a category of recommended businesses tells something, hopefully not to me only, that "this guy is connected", which instills I believe some dose of soundness and tentative trust. Which is also why you don't want to share links with whatever other businesses just because you are "friends". Incidentally, that is where all SNS stumble.

2. It will be of some use, because of argument 1. In translation and interpretation alone, I have seen rare but some examples of cooperative web sites of freelancers. Although the management of reciprocal value is not easy to define, let alone implement, I do believe showing a common face together with a personal professional web site is the way to go, and a comforting one, granted you believe that there are better things to do than just "bowling alone".

Be assured that I do not raise the subject out of warm lofty idealism tuned on "if all the guys in the world would each hold their hands" ... epidemics would spread faster.

There is that intuition that the difficult step to allow and manage a common ground of visibility for strategic professional purpose among a reciprocally selected group of individuals is meaningful. If it is not, then the task is to create meanings.

As for the launch of the idea, it has so far gathered nothing in terms of understanding. Besides a massive lack of reaction, some are OK to be linked although they see it as one of my usual weird ideas, but can't fathom reciprocal linkage, this last one being the weirdest of ideas. Others start and end with the endemic "useless" argument. At least, engaging into a reflection of strategic sharing of visibility for freelancers would be a sign of progress.

Face-to-face rules

2011-12-30T11:22:00.004+09:00

"Most commentary on social media ignores an obvious truth—that the value of things is largely determined by their rarity. The more people tweet, the less attention people will pay to any individual tweet. The more people “friend” even passing acquaintances, the less meaning such connections have." (From The Economist)

Here at least, the last and first week of each year are intensive time of face-to-face meetings and parties. The subways in Tokyo until yesterday at least were pretty much crowded during business hours, that is more than the average. Many clients who have the opportunity to ride a subway in Tokyo to move between appointments are usually surprised to see so many people boarding even past morning rush hours, and until the receding wave of early evenings. Face-to-face meetings rule, what with corporations unleashing a heavier than ever stream of conferences and workshops in conference dedicated brand new buildings. Many have been built over the recent years where I live in a key business district of Tokyo.

This year, I donned the perfect jacket for a 15 minutes meeting with a client's contact for the strategic purpose to thank you for this year and expect for the best next year. Many people boarding the crowded subways are touring clients for the same purpose, and will do the same next week delivering best wishes face-to-face to people, that is, corporations that matter.

This activity comes on top of writing best wishes cards to be delivered on January 1st, first time. Meeting face-to-face is, seen on the thermometer of relationship value, a sure sign of value. A convenient email can do but doesn't have any value. I will send email though, but personalized, to avoid the .bcc infection. Trying to skip the convenient automatic procedures requires time that is money, but there is time well invested that doesn't come down to a mere matter of well invested time. There are a very few business people around I want to meet for pleasure, and this can only happen face-to-face.

Leaving and being left behind

2011-12-29T11:44:00.001+09:00

"It could happen to you" sounds more than far away, a lunatic perspective or more. There is that article in the New York Times that gives a terrible view and historical perspective of the fate of "collaborators" to the US army in Irak, including but not limited to interpreters. The historical perspective is important at a time of quick flippings of 140 signs or less of "definitive" utterances on what is cool and highly forgettable at the same time. Then there is the web site "The List project to resettle Iraqi Allies", and the link to a 2010 detailed and frightening report on - at the time - soon to come rehashed horror story: Tragedy on the Horizon - A History of Just and Unjust Withdrawal. I don't know if a quick read is enough. Could we one day also cover topics that do not please over at #IntJC?

A quick Japan eco briefing for beginners only

2011-12-26T06:39:00.001+09:00

The reference to the dedication was the trigger to consider buying U.S. journalist Mark Pendergrast's short book "Japan's Tipping Point: Crucial Choices in the Post-Fukushima World". The article in the Japan Times written by a foreign professor here in Tokyo is an apt plea to read it.

"It begins and ends with Chiaki Kitada, Pendergast's research assistant and translator during his visit. It opens with a dedication to Kitada and closes with her words of resilience and encouragement: "The kind of Japanese collective creativity in the face of daunting challenges seen after World War II did not appear overnight; nor did that capacity simply vanish."

The ebook could be ready to go and read through in a minute, but I decided to first read the sample, and yes, it was there, the dedication before the preface. That Ms. Kitada who I don't know is a fixer, liaison interpreter, helper, discreet leader and mediator was a sure way to generate interest. But one sentence by the reviewer inhibited the click to the Buy button.

From the sample pages, Mr. Pendergast shows right away as veteran writer with a knack to make feel the reader at home. You want to have a beer with him to start with. He doesn't boast to know where he is treading into. Quite the opposite.

"It turned out that I was incredibly naive about the Japanese situation ..."

This is encouraging when you consider all the next-day specialists of Japan who from Day 2 after landing deploy a parabola antenna like blog to start dispatching about the appropriate method to roll sushi.

In fact, the reason why I froze is due to the Japan Times article author who claims that "what will surprise readers who are long-time residents of Japan is how much he gets right in such a short time."

Therefore, if you are not a long time resident, go for it. If you are, it is great time to stop considering reading reports from the fast travelers, not that they are systematically wrong and that I feel jealous (I don't), but because you may already know that, in order of appearance :

- He soon finds out that surface and substance in Japan are often at odds.

- Throughout his travels, Pendergrast uncovers ironies and absurdities that mar policymaking in the world's third-largest national economy.

- his disappointment builds quickly ...

- Pendergrast learns about the cozy relationship that central government bureaucrats have with the nation's power utilities

- he is told that change will come slowly — if at all.

- ... over and over, Pendergrast is taken aback by Japan's failure to develop its potential

- "I fear that Japanese leaders and bureaucrats will continue to give lip service to eco-cities and eco-lives, or the new buzzword, smart-communities, smart-services. "

and the invariable but genuine, sincere and innocent lip service:

- Yet Japan is also one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with friendly, resilient people who can, when motivated, pull together to accomplish incredible things.

I left M. Pendergrast entering the Foreign Press Club building in Yurakucho district with a remark that due to the crisis, most current members are no longer foreigners. That is where the free sample ends, short of the first meeting with his liaison interpreter.

As I am writing this in the early hours in Tokyo, I am reminded with the heater now turned full blast how inefficient and energy wasting homes in Japan are, a fact that no new robot able to play the violin can help with. Everything that Mr. Pendergrast discovered must be known by long time residents although you have as elsewhere long time dreamer residents.

If you are not one of these, chances are Mr. Pendergrast, despite the standard swooning at resilience (weren't people in Louisiana showing resilience after Katrina? didn't people in Indonesia after the tsunami raised back? in each case with public authorities showing incompetence), and the inevitable cooing at beauty around, that his short book is probably a good read. And if you do read it, please tell me what he swoons about his liaison interpreter.

Many hats and a headache

2011-12-25T05:29:00.000+09:00

Self-definition on the professional stage when you wear several hats, not only interpreting, is a source of existential headache. This is a subject sensible enough that I will come back to it more than once. Over at Freelancing Matters, an as usual too short and superficial article (sure, length is not their agenda) is tackling the subject but avoiding the core issue. Why can't I carry a unique business card? Why is it that when having to answer the question "And what is your profession?" I start fumbling and loosing ground, or speaking too much in pleading fashion?The linked article is in effect not raising the reasons why. It took years to reckon that the reason why is that corporate life where you are attributed a business card with a job naming is the massive, totemic view of what it is about professional life (which excludes everything that is not white collar). No matter how many individuals are said to be reaching out and shift, or start right away, to freelancing, the mantra and language attached are still and always corporate speech and view of the world where unicity matters. A single job as a result of a solid one track training are the expected normality, and it doesn't matter that most people around you may know do not fit fixity. Suffice to notice the difficulties organisers of events around freelancing are facing with finding speakers that are freelancers. Single profession events are easier to set up as they cater to unicity. Around here, I haven't heard about someone in interpreting who is not also into translation and or language related teaching. At least, you may argue that this tryptic shows coherence, and does so much that three titles can fit a single business card and make the holder feel well grounded where single views matter.If explaining what one does workwise is as fearsome as public speaking, the obvious area to work on is speech and the serenity to earn from standing up for oneself. This working on telling one's profession current story casualy should benefit not to be performed alone. How many readers are part of what kind of professional associations allowing to nurture such speech through dialog?

Less accumulation, more communication

2011-12-21T10:24:00.000+09:00

Someone contacted me over Viadeo (a LinkedIn SNS with another name) to be part of each others' list of contacts. This gentleman already has +4000 contacts. His resume is impressive. Why not say, OK? Why say OK? Putting priority to communication is not only a way to pruning the list of contacts, but also for instance to start again SNS based on personal values. I sent back a message explaining that I was not into accumulation but communication and I would gladly and briefly have a courteous call via Skype for a short professional exchange as it could happen at a party. Couldn't it happen online too?

So far, this approach has shown to be a sure way to never hear from the person again. No sour feeling involved though as it is exactly what I was anticipating. It is especially ironic when that person is a coach in communication or something equivalent to not hear from that person twice. However, what is remembered is that rare opportunity to have a courteous exchange for the purpose to have exactly that, a courteous exchange. These rare exchanges can be interesting when they happen. They can be opportunities to practice courteous exchanges just for the sake of it. It is not a bad investment in professional communication.

Off-topic: Legal Alien

2011-12-21T08:38:00.001+09:00

"The government claims that centralized management of data on foreign residents will allow easier access to all personal information of the cardholder, such as type of visa, home address and work address, and in return enable officials to more conveniently provide services for legal aliens."

Massive leakage will be made easier too. The current low level inefficiency is a form of protection, even for legal aliens.

"Permanent residents, meanwhile, will have to apply for a new residence card within three years from July 2012. Required materials necessary for an application have not been determined yet."

This comes from that article.

What will they need that they still don't have? The repeated asking for your birth date is already annoying enough. It's the last piece of data to change.

At least some years ago, they modified that mind-boggling question on the reentry card that was asking Reasons for reentry. Because I'm coming back home, you morons!

In the 90's, the authorities published a booklet in English explaining the process of immigration in Japan. There was a nice flow chart starting from entering the country, and leaving it, as a matter of fact.

S. who has been a legal alien for one year more than I (26) is at long last filing for permanent residence, meeting the tough requirement to write a letter explaining the reasons why he is filing for that visa. Having spent more than half his life here still makes this letter writing a challenge. Yesterday, we reviewed the obvious I wrote and fleetingly remember a long time ago when I applied. It sounded like Travail, Famille, Patrie (Work, Family, Homeland), without the Patrie, of course. The final response should come in 6 months I was told. A month later, I received the permanent visa, permanency with a grain of salt. I doubt S. will have to wait more.

Lessons and hints from #IntJC, The Interpreting Journal Club initiative

2011-12-19T21:15:00.000+09:00

Don't look for lip service, cool and the diktat of positive exultation here.

#IntJC has been an interesting affair, a success always back to the launch pad until the next session. How did this launch up? It's already a legend but a few saillant hints and lessons are protuding, in no special order.

- That the initiative matters to some is a sign of how professional communication among peers with an effort to level down hierarchy between veterans and younger ones is looked after by some. On top of that, it shows that it is feasible.

- Retweeting is not a sign of engagement, it is a pavlovian least effort clicking action with no engagement besides clicking the like button. It seems that the number of retweets is inversely proportional to the number of participants.

- If Chirpstory is any indicator, Tweeter is actively used to retweet and spread the word. Thank you as always. Facebook is anecdotal, or so it seems.

- Practical reasons not to participate: your 10 pm in Tokyo diktat is in my middle of the night, you moron! Sorry, the world is not flat (otherwise we would be jobless) and planet Earth is spheric and swirls (now, it's official!).

- Unpractical reasons not to participate: I am a beginner in interpreting (you are welcome too). I am not in conf sim (neither me). All these veterans scare me (same here, but they are nice, and on top of that, they share their experiences). I have nothing intelligent to say (my tweets are the stupidest). My working languages are rare (so what?). I am no native English speaker ( moi non plus!). I am not used to this (who is?). I have no formal training in interpreting (welcome, we are two!). I only do consec and community terping (may I call you Brother, or Sister?). I don't want to give away my name (do as you like ...). I will only read the transcripts (that's very nice. And spreading the word is even nicer). I am a trainer (I envy you! Come on board!). I am not doing it anymore (your experience count). This disregard to hierarchy makes me uneasy (practice deep breathing and come back later). I have another agenda (where sharing is not part of the picture, I know the story. Do as you like). One day maybe (my Prince will come ...). I don't want to engage (as an interpreter, engage, and grow, but as far as this initiative is concerned, there is no registration, no membership, no hook, nothing). What's the practical use of it anyway? (engage, think, deliver wisdom, feel you are not alone, find professional acquaintances, feel connected, almost nothing indeed ...). This is not serious (you mean not deep enough? that's the media and format we use but not serious doesn't apply. The final things to take home are food for thoughts, enlightenment, and a dose of strength to go on and grow).

- What can I do to help?

- Suggest topics.
- Introduce people who could be witness for a session on a special topic.
- Suggest ways to make things better and more valuable (don't ask for summary of transcripts and the like. Everybody is busy before and after).
- Spread the word: to other interpreters, to non-interpreters involved in the industry, to your current, prior trainers, to your fellow students, to your students, to your future students, to practitioners who have never studied (they are especially welcome), to those who don't do it fulltime, to those who have many caps (as many others).
- use multiple tools to spread the word: Tweeter, Facebook and the likes, your blogs, your school internal newspaper, your coffee machine corner, posters at conferences (that has already been the case!), an A4 paper with the basic of basics and the URL: http://sites.google.com/site/interpretjc/ or this shorter one : http://tinyurl.com/44od37w Don't make it sound as if there is some kind of groupism or hook involved. People hate that (me too!).

- What's next? Hopefully a Session 9 in January. Check the #IntJC site for news.

In the meantime, Best Wishes.

Stubs of future posts

2011-12-18T20:00:00.004+09:00

- Have you read the transcript of The Interpreting Journal Club session 8 on "Becoming a better simultaneous interpreter: what's the theory, how to practice?" It is dripping with hints and suggestions that apply way beyond sim terping. I am no sim terp. Yet, I learned a few tricks and more. Go read it, now. And spread the word.

- Make no noise. The strategy is obvious, but I was reading in the French daily Le Monde online an article on the withdrawal of the US army from Irak. What was stunning to me was that the article was not top news. Why? Well, you have in a sense part of the answer in the New York Times where the topic does come on top:

"For security reasons, the last soldiers made no time for goodbyes to Iraqis with whom they had become acquainted. To keep details of the final trip secret from insurgents, interpreters for the last unit to leave the base called local tribal sheiks and government leaders on Saturday morning and conveyed that business would go on as usual, not letting on that all the Americans would soon be gone."

What was the mantra about? Ah, yes, terp's neutrality. My ass. I do hope for the safety of these terps that they left with the last leaving unit.

- I am not over with "Business culture versus interpreting culture", that top article I have been playing the harpsichord over several posts already. All the background links are here.

This one is an eye opener: "If cultural perception is normality-based, as is indeed the postulate here, then the interpreted business meeting itself must be considered quite an abnormal affair for all the actors involved, with the possible exception of the interpreter."

It's about liaison interpreting, that format where you smell the after-shave and later sweat of your clients and the other side, your pheromones included. Terps in Irak must have experienced that. Therefore what? A massive part of the job of the liaison interpreter in business is to force upon that abnormal situation - the meeting - some dose of normality. This can't be reduced to matters of technics of note-taking. More on this sometimes in the future.

- There is that article in The Economist that annoys me a lot. Not much the content but the first sentence: "To learn a new language is to set yourself up for humiliation." And yes, humiliation is linked to a previous article by the same author, suggesting this matters much to him. Unfortunately, humiliation is not his concern. He rather lists up examples where he was exposed to humiliation in language usage context, and opens up in the comments the gates for a slew of readers' anecdotes on "how I blundered". I have been interested in humiliation for years, but not by anecdotes of feeling ashamed. Because going into interpreting is to set up yourself for humiliation too.

One relationship to this is to be found, yes, again, in the above article by John Martin Dodds not far from the beginning: "Liaison interpreting unfortunately has always been seen as less prestigious than its older counterpart and is not infrequently held in some contempt by practitioners of the conference mode."

I appreciate the bluntness of this. My lack of research is at fault but I wonder if, buried somewhere in the code of ethics of the AIIC and the like, there is any reference to something like :"Thou shall not shame other interpreters, under any circumstances."

Knowing that despising other interpreters is a secret industry sports practiced by so many (ok, butchers hate other butchers practicing in the same district, but this doesn't forgive that), a lofty well wishing rule banning bashing would be welcome, if it doesn't exist already.

At least, participants of The Interpreting Journal Club respect each other, whatever their personal level, circumstances and professional background. Come on board feeling safe at the future sessions in 2012.

Japanese market entry tips from the inside

2011-12-17T12:53:00.000+09:00

Don't ask interpreters. They don't know business, don't they? Or read this.

Interpreting via iPad

2011-12-17T11:46:00.003+09:00

A speakerphone in the iPad? A new buzz. It saved the day a few months ago. I had managed for a presentation, remote, with a French client in a major Japanese IT player in Tokyo. Both suggested different brands of PC based remote presentation services, big names in that industry. None worked. Firewall possible culprit. I unleashed my iPad I didn't bring for that purpose. I used my own wireless paid connexion to the Net (asking for Net access in too many über wired hightech corporations here seems to ask for water at a well. Only, there is a heavy lid on the well with a security man heavily armed around). We used Skype. The sound level was enough for me to interpreter keeping the tablet not far from the ears. Around, they could hear there was someone indeed live somewhere and that was enough although awkward in terms of quality of interaction. The ppt document could at least be beamed remote of the screen inside the room. Of course, I billed more for using my gears. Remote interpreting at the client's office will turn more of a snap.

Take Home a Terp for Multicultural Diners

2011-12-16T21:30:00.000+09:00

I was having expresso doppio not far from Tokyo station yesterday, reading this article over Businessweek. As another hat, I am doing high end speciality international errands and was waiting for a client hypothetical request to do the purchase. The positive feedback from +10,000 km away did came in, but in the meantime, I had time musing over this business model : Take Home a Terp for Multicultural Diners, not the diplomatic but the more lay down ones. Is it a potential market? Or is it Friday, and Christmas is closing in?

In some cases, it is necessary to have an interpreter

2011-12-16T21:07:00.001+09:00

"In some cases, it is necessary to have an interpreter. Politely inquire beforehand whether an interpreter should be present at a meeting. However, keep in mind that even interpreters may not always speak and understand English at a fully proficient level. Also, realize that in this strongly relationship-oriented culture, an independent interpreter hired by you for a meeting is viewed as an outsider by the Japanese side, so your counterparts may be reluctant to speak openly. At the same time, interpreters may feel no allegiance with you, so they may be telling you what they think you want to hear rather than what the other side said. It is highly recommended to use someone from within your company as a negotiation team member who can translate, or correct the translator on missed key points. If that is not an option, it is better to ask the Japanese side whether they can provide someone within their team to handle translations. When communicating in English, speak in short, simple sentences free of jargon and slang. Pausing as often as you can gives people a better chance to translate and understand what you said. Also, allow for frequent side discussions in Japanese."

I picked this extract from this free document online, part of a book on business negotiation patterns in various countries. It is an interesting albeit somewhat worn-out read. There are others that also deal on matters of using and choosing an interpreter and some sentences feel like copy-paste from other resources I may have close by the desk.

The common theme in all I have read over the years could be wrapped like this:

- these are businessmen viewpoints nourished by feedbacks from other businessmen and strongly infused if not polluted by American views of things.

- in all instances, you never read input from interpreters.

- interpreters are like pandas: you interview the zoo director, the panda feeder, the animal specialist, you don't interview the panda. Panda don't talk, just like interpreters who both chew on eucalyptus.

- that reluctance to speak on the Japanese side could be triggered by the presence of an interpreter who is an outsider is a brilliant stupidity, but as readers here are expected to be interpreters first, it is important to keep in mind that some new clients loaded with such reading may in effect believe this nonsense.

- if the interpreter doesn't feel allegiance, she should quit her job. But the very word "allegiance" is suspect. Yet, national preferences may come at play and I have seen cases of Japanese interpreters hired by the foreign side nodding at the Japanese stance, not in that way where nodding, whether you agree or not, is part of the local set of body language in dialog dynamics, but as a way of signifying that you are right and my client is wrong. This attitude can be seen on the other side as well. In liaison interpreting, it is a sure sign of non-linguistic incompetence.

- asking the other side to provide someone within their team to act as an interpreter is also a standard stupidity I have read time and again in books about how to do business with the Japanese. It is a gross strategic error.

- muteness of liaison interpreters has left the room full open for clients to talk in expert manners about what interpreting is and should be. This historical situation is still going on.

Your most emotional happy interpreting setting

2011-12-15T15:36:00.000+09:00

What is your most happy end, or beginning, interpreting setting? Now that Tokyo is in full Christmas gear, a commercial hoopla for lovers rather than kids, I am reminded of this one unique setting some years ago, being called to come at some out of nowhere location in a remote district of Tokyo very late at night, in a simple if not shabby and tiny hotel lobby, with the client calling that he would be late as he just arrived at the airport, a tempestuous night at that with wind blowing madly, an original meeting place that would reveal to have closed years ago, and at long last not far from midnight a short meeting between a young traveler and a smily old Japanese man, the young one, my client, asking his soon to be father-in-law, the hand of his daughter. What about your most happy terp experience?

Teaching liaison interpreting for business

2011-12-15T10:00:00.001+09:00

These are first reading notes from the article "Business culture versus interpreting culture" by John Martin Dodds of University of Trieste in Italy. I mentioned the article here already. There is much more to these preliminary notes and value for active liaison terps as well, including what I believe to be that majority with no formal training at all.

- Liaison interpreting courses require two teachers. It is costly.
- Teachers in early courses were translators.
- Reasons:

they may know more about business and about business interpreting
clients need experts in business talk, not Eurospeak. That is why translators with experience in business translation are more apt.
they do not look down at less paid stints compared with conf terps
they are OK working long hours and alone

- Clients prefer translators because:

not protected by professional associations -> clients have the high hand on fees and conditions
translator may have worked already for the client and has insider knowledge already

- Clients don't like:

to be told the rules of interaction
to have the terp deliver speech as long as the original

- Needs of the market are speed and efficiency
- What terp schools don't teach that is essential for liaison terp in business:

business talk, business ecosystems and dynamics
reduction strategies (including skipping and synthesis)
sharpen ability to recognize redundancies, that this information is already known, already said, is not that important
taking on responsibility to compress
adopt the firm belief that fulfilling client's expectations for speed and efficiency is essential
personal assistant and major d'homme like skills

- Enormous differences between what trained interpreters do, are taught and what (Western) business clients want

- Implications in terms of teaching:

Vicinity between terp and client raises importance of cultural factors -> teach/stress cultural difference awareness
Teach realities of business scenes (meetings, presentations, visits, etc.) and cultural differences within scenes
Teach how to manage (mediate = re-create) "normality" when these are different for each side (if cultural perception is normality-based, the interpreted business meeting must be considered as an abnormal affair with possible exception of the interpreter).

In the second part the article sort of veers away toward the sound bite culture (Western type) and implications for terp strategy and competence. If sound bite culture in business is characterized by sound and little meaning, and if terps translate meaning and not sound, a "maximum of meaning in a minimum of sound should be the interpreter's rule of thumb too, especially when there is little meaning and much sound in the source language utterances."

This is the 21st century business meeting normality, at least from an Americanized perspective. From a teaching point of view it "means training would-be liaison interpreters to process "talk" and not simply and mechanically to "follow" text. "

Vocalized tweets in shower mode may be the next training exercise.

The 2012 killer application: getting in touch

2011-12-14T20:33:00.000+09:00

Getting in touch is to be my 2012 killer application. It is the most rewarding act but not an easy one. People want to be listed as a contact in Linkedin or the likes. Some even want to be listed because they want to get in touch not with you but with someone in your contact list. I have started zapping contacts in my lists and set a condition to anyone wanting to get listed, which is to get in touch. It is proving bewildering, unsufferable, a joke to some. What's the fuss? Listing is free. Why be picky, choosy, proselyte for getting in touch? Besides, who knows? Exchanging links "may be useful sometimes in the future". The future can wait. Getting in touch is more fruitful now than later. For an example of how fruitful getting in touch can be, before the net, explore Jim Haynes story.

Don't jump in the Arno, come instead to session 8!

2011-12-12T13:51:00.000+09:00

Don't throw yourself by the window or jump in the Arno. Instead, read the Discussion Points for the coming session on Saturday and be part of it. Come to session 8.

Off topic: Personalizing social network usage

2011-12-11T10:25:00.000+09:00

This is off topic. I quit Viadeo the other day, a LinkedIn clone, and registered back loosing all my contacts in so doing, on purpose. The list is now growing back. I invite people I met in the past. Meeting may have been face to face or remote, deep or superficial, but personal. It is a way to gain control.

Some people are requesting to get listed again. I accept those people I have met in all forms of meeting. I don't accept people who just want to be listed, nor people using the generic system message to get in touch. The diktat of these systems is numbers and odds at meeting or missing potentially fruitful encounters. Bending the system by shunning the diktat is in fact putting some level of meaning in a system that pushes a mode of communication where everyone knows how superficial it is. Viadeo should be gratefull. I bought a few months of paid access to have the priviledge to see who looked at my profile. They should invite users to quit and come back with a bonus in exchange. Call it Spring Cleaning Campaign. Bending the system is the equivalent to personalize it in a way, to behave like an owner, an actor. New contacts will have to accept to meet, locally or remote. A diktat of sort.

I don't understand how you can live in such place

2011-12-09T13:51:00.000+09:00

I already mentioned Milton J. Bennett's intercultural sensitivity scale in a previous post. If reading Fons Trompenaars dried your interest at intercultural studies - as it did with me - Bennett should wet it back. It is fascinating and of utmost interest to liaison interpreting (check deep here : www.idrinstitute.org).

When doing the liaison interpreting agent, you don't only smell your neighbor's after shave as a result to close encounter with speakers, you also ride the osmotic membrane of close encounters with cultural differences. The encounter doesn't end when the meeting is over. As an escort, guide and possible chit chat player in pre and post discussions with your clients, another dimension of intercultural gap, or rather, friction between two different types of tectonic plates, may be at play and be part of the difficulties to manage and keep your balance.

Question 1: I wonder if sim terp are less/need not much be aware and impacted by cultural differences, away as they are in the booth enclosure.

I just pick this one sentence from a Bennett paper:

"Isolation in homogeneous groups fails to generate either the opportunity or the motivation to construct relevant categories for noticing and interpreting cultural difference."

Now, just imagine you left the meeting room with your clients and are invited to a TGF kind of place and mood to share a drink and decompress. Seldom in my experience is the case where no reflections if not sly words do not fly about "I don't get why they ....", "How can't they ...", etc. The worse I heard not so long ago being a "I could not live in this place", a paraphrase for "I don't understand how you can live in such place ....".

The good thing about clients who do not invite you for a drink and a debriefing is that they save you from these uncomfortable dialogues which can be at times in fact monologues. Of course, the majority of clients do know how to behave, and some are frequent visitors, although this does not guarantee that.

If you don't control yourself, you may end up cheering and jeering with that "homogeneous group" who usually, in my case and due to the market structure and culture, be of the same nationality or the same Western side of here.

It is even more complicated. You may not feel like them, nor do you feel like the other them. As a go-between, you are always between, although I have seen both types, including those leaning on the side of THEY, who also come with a full bag of prejudices although not displayed in the same manner.

As a go-between and when your clients are eager to hear your interpretation of the situation, it is easy to slip on their side and mood, or to slip on that other side which is delivering academic speech and considerations they may not care about. Keeping your Bennett to yourself may be a good recommendation. Of course, you can always do the actor and lean on the best investment which is always pleasing the client even after the interpreting job is over.

If, as a go-between, you are invited to intervene, no longer as a "pure" linguistic transmitter box, the only valid objective is to work not for the benefit of the exchange, but for the benefit of your clients, who are, when not an agent, whichever side is paying your service. Which also means and justify why the liaison interpreter mus ask prior to the show to the client what is her objectives, what is she looking forward to take home. As for neutrality and fairness, both can be dirty words, or a wishy-wishy joke at times crashing on the reality wall.

Question 2: I wonder if this means anything to sim terps.

By the end of the day though, protecting the self - your liaison interpreter skin - is I believe of utmost importance, whatever you have to pay for it in terms of consequences, including sourness with clients or worse (I am not including life threatening context, no war zone).

In the TGF like bar, smiling and nodding, and asking for another drink is a temporary escape. Pondering on the soundness of Bennett while sipping, and smiling as a result is a show of how you have grown up. I am aiming at just that.

Participate to #IntJC final 2011 session 8 on Dec 17

2011-12-09T08:44:00.001+09:00

We now have a firm topic for what will be the final session of the Tweeter based Interpreting Journal Club.

"Becoming a better simultaneous interpreter: what's the theory, how to practice?"

The live session date is December 17th at 10 pm Tokyo time.

Read the details here, and follow the Tweeter channel with the hashtag #IntJC, here for instance.

Spread the announcement large and far, using Tweeter, Facebook, your blogs, shouting in the street, telegrams, smoke signals, whatever.

But the smartest thing to do is to participate.

You are not doing simul? Nor do I. Despite this, why not get inspired and pick up hints that apply to your genre and domain of interpreting?

You are not available? Read the transcript in the archive later on.

You don't like these groups with rules and registration things? There is no group, no registration, no early birds discount, no log-in, nothing. You just board the train or just lurk.

Come to Session 8.

Spiraling down

2011-12-09T08:12:00.002+09:00

"it seems that there will always be a person or company willing to work for ever lower rates. "

Yes, always. The flip side of "going it alone" what with the marketing speak tainting individual speech are in full swing. Cool and lip service do not pay the rent.

The agency that currently holds the contract apparently pays their interpreters $12/hr, and the agency and contractors alike somehow eek out a living.

Exchange rate wise, that is less than what you get working at McDonald's in Tokyo.

What can be done? I personally know that I cannot participate at these rates.

1. Discuss about it to understand the ecosystem and dynamics at work. The challenge is to find colleagues to discuss with.

2. Change job.

For more dispair, read the full article here.

Is this a typo ... ?

2011-12-08T09:58:00.001+09:00

... or simply proof of my incompetence? I would vote for the second option.

Here is the problem. The following sentence is extracted from the first article in English featured in "Interpretazione e Mediazione" I referred to in a recent post. The file is in pdf format. Could anyone with native level English provide me, even privately, with an opinion on this part that appears on page 7?

" Business people have busy schedules and simply do not
need details, they do like interpreters therefore who are unable or unwilling to cut, summarize, compress, delete and indeed even take over
on occasions. "

I am wondering if this "they do like" is appropriate, and if there is a tongue in cheek meaning I am unable to grasp the humor of, or if this is a typo where "they don't like" would be the correct verbal form. I am confused (not so much) to ask.

Just doing it

2011-12-08T07:43:00.000+09:00

My friend Anna Maria has many hats although she has been at lost to definite these. She has no accreditation nor any diploma to feel proud and professionally concerned about what she has been doing over the years, a mix of teaching, liaison interpreting, business coordination and probably other caps not intensive, not practiced long term enough to be called a "profession". Se has just been doing it over the years yet she is ever fidgety about what to write on her business card as far as a profession is concerned. Freelancing and standing up for oneself as a freelancer with many hats is also standing up for a title displayed on a business card. Employed people don't have to think about their business card design and position naming. I have shared her uneasiness over the years. "Professional of no special profession" might be a proper position.

One difficulty to recruit (actually, no recruitment involved) more participants to #IntJC with a current multihats profile including interpreting, usually the liaison version, is not much that these profiles are rare. It is rather that these profiles just do it depending on the ups and downs of the market. But discussing about the trade and the art of doing it are no subjects of interest. This reluctance to talk and think may stem from an inferiority complex toward the queens and kings of in-booth practice clad with training and diploma from "real schools with real curriculum". How can you start feeling part of a something bigger than yourself when there is no representative professional group or association around the corner that generate a "hey! that's about me!"?

Yet I don't think self-depreciation is at the core of the reluctance to speak. Most of the time, they just don't care, they just do it. It applies to Anna Maria and a few other friends around and many met over the years whose common trait have been to shun at "talking shops". I keep asides for once the stupidest but well ingrained and endemic reluctance to discuss "because we are competitors" argument. I would rather just mention another dimension with the few people I have known "just doing it": in many instances, lack of constant work, uncertainties about the future, including the near one, difficulties to separate professional and personal domains (interpreting here in Japan is massively female and the number of singles practitioners in the profession must be staggering) are among other factors that inhibit the mind to consider the intellectual practice of thinking about one's practice with a broader perspective.

Talking about freelancing, where do we start?

2011-12-07T16:50:00.000+09:00

I understand that conferences about freelancing would invite speakers ready to deliver numbered advises that feel good, like, 7 ways to self-promote online, 5 ways to manage time or 9 ways to boil water. The problem I see with so many speakers is that although they may qualify as freelancers, they usually are so much involved with providing consultation to corporations that they are drown into corporate speech and worldview. It is true that most freelancers interface with corporations as clients, but how does corporate mantra inform the freelancers about her position in the professional ecosystem? Freelancing mantra is in demand and goggling at the corporate altar as a model doesn't help nurturing it. Freelancers should speak about freelancing first, which is not exclusively matters at the level of interface with corporations. Sure, when cool utterly pollutes the discussion, it is almost impossible to grow up in terms of better understanding what is so specific about freelancing.

The image above generated this post and the decision to quit following yet another superficial take at freelancing. The link suggested lands too onto the land of quick shot cool with the stupid cheap stock picture. But above all is the question of why an initiative aimed at freelancing would refer to an article that pertains to the corporate world. I see this as yet another symptom of that still far away discourse on freelancing that matters to freelancing, to start with.

Managing your accessibility and meeting for the purpose to meet

2011-12-07T08:26:00.004+09:00

I am trying to get in touch with the two interpreters mentioned in this article. I have located one over Facebook and another one over LinkedIn. I stopped using Facebook a while ago. Not that I believe it is an efficient method to lessen my degree of traceability to the authorities worldwide. When you expose yourself through public web sites, blogs and the like, you can't hide much. I am over LinkedIn but see no reasons to pay the fees to be allowed to get in touch with people I don't know. I don't understand why I should besides fatting that company's cash box. When you get yourself into silos, you are siloed, and it may go against your original strategy to be accessible. Everybody is on Facebook these days, excepted those who are not. Striving to keep a free channel of accessibility when you want to be accessible is an important side of personal public visibility strategy. So I know they are here, but I have not found any open way to get in touch.

Someone in my network over a LinkedIn clone is using this service to boast how many Tweets he delivered over the week, how many retweets, new followers and the like he gathered. It's good for the ego and looks like this:

"My week on twitter: 349 retweets received, 9 new listings, 270 new followers, 106 mentions. "

I could not help but find this weird and childish. The most valuable yardsticks to me is the potential consequences of these connexions and references. It could read like this:

- I talked with X contacts over Skype, including Y I never talked to so far.

- I had lunch 2 times with people from my network I got connected over Tweeter (or whatever social network).

The yardstick is one-on-one meetings. In three hours time, I will have lunch in Tokyo with R. who I have never met face to face. Some years ago, she was one of my points of contact at a company's China office managing a pool of over-the-phone interpreters. We had some opportunities to briefly talk when I was offered sessions. As many people do, she must have sent me an invitation to get in touch over LinkedIn, then I knew that she changed job, then recently that she was back in Tokyo working for a headhunting agency. So I suggested we have coffee or lunch. I promised her I was not looking for a position, a remark she found funny. My purpose to meet her is the secret ingredient, factor, motivator or whatever it can be called I find lacking in all these network where your population of unknown followers or followed people grow : I want to meet just to meet, that is, enact sociability in real life. No courtship intended, no products that I want to sell or buy, no intention to beg, just allowing the utilitarian odds that this encounter may or may be not "valuable" sometimes in the future, and in the meantime have agreeable exchanges of views. There is at least one thing I am looking after though : people's stories, and especially people's professional stories, the narrative of which is always a source of small wonders and puzzlement.

Something I was almost forgetting to highlight in flashing red is that the lunch suggestion is to be transformed because on the other side, the invited people flashed back a Yes. It is a very big achievement if you ask about my experience trying and get in touch with my mostly unknown "friends".

Which goes back to the original statement. I wish to get in touch with one or both of the mentioned interpreters in the article linked above. The intention is to highlight the case of threat over revenues they are involved in one of the future #IntJC Interpreting Journal Club session, where real people have real professional discussions as a consequence of reaching out, that is, managing their accessibility. If you know them or can convey the link to this post, please, do it.

#IntJC Session 7 transcription online. Now, come to Session 8.

2011-12-04T11:45:00.000+09:00

A very good session of the Interpreting Journal Club over Twitter yesterday on consecutive state and fate. Have a look at the transcription here : http://t.co/6PDVXxeb . It looks hectic and messy, but the exchange is rich with snippets of advices, real professional life happenings and many ideas to chew the fat of. You will miss these if you simply zoom through the exchange.

If you are concerned and missed this one, put a tag on December 17th for a tentative Session 8 to be confirmed. Everything you ever wanted to know about #IntJC is available here, including all the past sessions' transcripts.

It's a good idea to spread the word clicking on the adequate buttons down there toward Twitter, Facebook and the likes. It's a better idea and self-fortifying move to participate. No hook, no registration or required membership. Come freely to the next #IntJC session, that should be the last for this year.

LI, group dynamics and Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity

2011-12-02T11:07:00.003+09:00

This title alone sounds pompous enough. It is just a hypothesis I want to keep note of for the future. This is nurtured by a recent difficult experience in a rather long term interpreting job as a quasi in-house interpreter pushed into mostly translation work. In order to release accumulated stress, I have decided to try and loosely link various disparate themes of personal interest without forcing these into an artificial common ground that exists in my mind only. It may be still that the common ground I am suspecting is vaporware built on airy imagination. The more I see it though, the more I feel there is something behind that pertains more specifically to liaison interpreting.

I have not read much in depth about the matter of what is at play in liaison interpreting beyond "language competences". When called for listing up, you are usually served with such standards like good listeners, good human contact, able to resolve (to some extend) cultural gaps, and a few others.

In The holy book "Liaison Interpreting" by Adolpho Gentile and other authors, I am reading again on page 18 a list of factors that distinguish liaison interpreting from conference interpreting:

1 the physical proximity of the interpreter and clients;
2 an information gap between the clients;
3 a likely status differential between the clients;
4 the necessity to interpret into both language directions;
5 working as an individual and not as part of a team

Various things I didn't much noticed when I read this essential book some years ago:

1 not only physical proximity, but the duration of this proximity has a major impact on the chemistry of relationship between the client and her interpreter.

2 bridging the gap is one part of the LI terp's job, granted the client asks good questions.

3 the status differential doesn't apply in business LI which is my main concern, but the book covers LI over a broad scope of situations, many that pertains to "community interpreting". However, the plural attached to "clients" somewhat annoys me. There is a plural as long as you are hired by a third party and strive to keep "neutrality". When you get hired by one side of the meeting pair, which has been my usual experience, serving the communication flow rather that your hiring client is a well wishing ethical requisite you have to take with a grain of salt. Your client is not hiring you to lean on both side with equal neutrality. But this is another story.

4. delivering both side is obvious, working full time alone a standard situation.

5 this last point I now feel amazing and at the center of what I want to loosely develop here. It probably veers away from what the author meant, that the terp doesn't work as part of an interpreters' team. This may or may be not the case. But this lat point unlocked a different perspective that pertains to the terp as an individual facing and being impacted by a group dynamics she is forceably pushed into by the mere fact of physical, and mental, proximity with the client.

My point is that interaction over time and client's expectation impact heavily on the feasibility to work as an individual and not as part of a team. The longer you are "together", the deeper the chemistry of group dynamics sets in, both on the terp ways of interacting with the client, and the client's expectation that the terp plays it as "one of us". The holy scriptures may call for the utmost respect to neutrality, but life as a terp tells a different story. Are war terps neutral? Or put it differently, can they? A topic for another time.

Let's now move to an example of interaction I have met and been part of time and again over the years. This does not happen systematically but often enough that it tells of a broader story that offers a link, maybe artificial, to that Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity. The situation I am referring to is what happens between interpreting sessions,. In many cases, the liaison interpreter moves with clients, these being a single individual or more, between locations, between meetings, etc. Interaction between the terp and clients during these "off-time" encounters are of various density and content. They are human relations in action, and may cover many subjects where the client shows gratefulness for the terp service, may be curious about the terp as an individual, or talk about matters of culture differences, or at least perceived as such.

When the terp combines with a single individual client, courtesy and, at least with many cases of Western people, a kind of "intimacy" may be swiftly building. Inter-session times are a trial for the terp that needs, for sheer strategical purpose, to show a good figure (fare la bella figura) as in any such type of interaction where the perception of trust is an extremely valuable factor. Without getting into the details and considerations, the opposite situation may happen. After all, both sides are humans and humans don't necessarily click when they meet. Suffice to mention that such situations are painful to say the least, and detrimental to the terp's mental health first.

Now, post or inter-session schmoozing where the terp is sailing together with the client is of specific concern. Typically, the client is not alone, and the terp is facing and physically part of a team of people she was stranger to before the first encounter. There exists between those individuals a rich group dynamic and the terp may be invited to be part of it, or kept as an external element depending on various circumstances and individual characters. But that "not working as part of a team" is a dangerous extrapolation because, does the terp have a choice anyway? Now, let's figure this standard situation: the session is over, after a business meeting that may have turned positive, neutral or not so favorable. Anything can happen. The session will certainly feed the interaction between the clients the terp is cruising with or having coffee somewhere. The chemistry at play can be many folds. The terp can be brought into the interplay, asked for opinions, counsels or else. She can be kept at bay as mostly a listener of something that is "not part of her business".

Something big is at play here, which is both communication strategy from the terps side, and/or expression of self-character where a more extravert terp will gleefully join the brew being cooked, or be cautious, again for strategy or personal inclination and trait of character. In long term mission however, just like traveling together to the moon, the terp is thought to be part of the team, and showing a lack of enthusiasm by keeping on the side while jokes and strong emotions fill the place as they do in some instance is a sure way to get ostracized. The clever service provider will at least pretend to be "a part of us".

One ingredient that may sour or on the opposite whip up the terp's milk is related to discrepancies in intercultural sensitivity. The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) was developed by his creator, Dr. Milton Bennett and you can read his wrapping up paper here. It is a must read. A summary of the Bennett scale is also available over Wikipedia. I should print it poster size and put on the wall, in full sight when leaving home, and another poster outside to bump into when coming back. Interpreters should carry a version in their pocket, as a reminder.

More than often, clients speech on what happen during the previous session is pregnant with utterances that can be directly pegged to that second stage of the Barrett scale. I am quoting the Wikipedia page here:

Defense against Difference
- One’s own culture is experienced as the most “evolved” or best way to live. This position is characterized by dualistic us/them thinking and frequently accompanied by overt negative stereotyping. People at this position are more openly threatened by cultural difference and more likely to be acting aggressively against it. A variation at this position is seen in reversal where one’s own culture is devalued and another culture is romanticized as superior.

The interpreter who is often at the forefront of cultures and their gap has not only to manage her possible lingering discomfort with things different, but also face a possible barrage of of typically over-ethnocenric remarks, a slew of "I really can't get how they ...", and replace the dots with anything different with "us". Terps can get aspired into this vortex that will leave later on a sour taste to their milk once they are disengaged with the mission and the interaction. Terps can feel strong discomfort because the theater on display may clash with undigested lumps of ethnocentric attitude while thinking of themselves as having reached a "higher level". As Dr. Milton Bennett so rightly noticed and warns about the third stage "Minimization of Difference":

"People at this position are likely to assume that they are no longer ethnocentric, and they tend to overestimate their tolerance while underestimating the effect (e.g. “privilege”) of their own culture."

In-house freelancing, the worst, or at least the most lively situation where the second stage of the Barrett scale is in full fireplay mode, when teams come back from always lively, or always boring (depending on the mood of the day) meetings with THEM.

So, I have seen all good people like these:

- A brilliant team leader with expanded experience in many countries unleashing to you an exquisite: "I don't understand how you can live in this place!" To worsen the case, the interpreter has also to cope with that mixing of professional laced with personal hints at private issues that should not come on the surface first. You would hardly in any sober business situation hear from one of THEM matter of flawed marital status as I have often witnessed, and participated to, in cultures where the private/professional membrane tends to be according to the individual a little porous. Only in one bewildering case did I participate in a meeting where the top of THEM, a frail gentleman, displayed pictures of his innards having been extracted for what was probably cancer surgery. US, my clients, were aghast and asked me later still shaking during an intercession : "Do THEY often show these things here?" The setting was not medical at all.

- True to Bennett is the super competent terp living away for more than 30 years perfectly matching that "reversal where one’s own culture is devalued and another culture is romanticized as superior."

- Something new I want to pinpoint here without animosity but still lingering malaise is my having witnessed a very special bonding of true bilinguals comparing their superiority to the learned versions of them. Truly amazing, but that was before reading Bennett.

- Stage 2 is in full display all over the world I bet within expatriates communities. Literature of old has many stories of group abroad schmoozing mostly exclusively among themselves, clad in a generic language of diplomatic praise of THEM ("Our Japanese friends" - but you can replace the nationality by whichever you want). On the opposite is usually the rather lonely individual wanting to fit in that OTHER landscape, striving to go beyond Bennett second stage. I know this personally.

The personal and professional also mix in the mind of the terp that may be called to bond with a dynamics she is physically not part for the time of the mission. The mind may not be inclined to follow the physical situation. It may generate various stage of malaise depending on the individual, and at times impact professional status in good or bad ways. With some others, the bonding is perceived and lived with joy as a welcome break with professional loneliness. Usually, when bonding with the team you don't belong is implicitly a must-do and you are not inclined to deliver this, you are not given choice besides being ostracized and the assurance to be hired next time. If you are not comfortable with this, the situation may exacerbate non-assumed parts of the self. You may prefer short over long terp missions where bonding is replaced by a gentleman and reciprocal courteous attitude.

Re-reading Bennett helps to cope with adverse circumstances, just as listening to progressive rock band Yes' song "I've Seen All Good People". The intro lyrics is a favorite of mine and open to interpretation too:

"I've seen all good people turn their heads each day
so satisfied I'm on my way."

Enjoy a superb rendering of the song over Youtube here and forget about the previous musing. At point 3:00 into the song, when the drum really gets into perspective with keyboard lifting off and that one single major bass note (3:01), you may feel the goose bumps as I always do.

Fini.

#IntJC Session 7: consecutive is dead, no elegies please

2011-11-26T10:45:00.004+09:00

#IntJC Session 7 on December 3, from 10 pm Tokyo time over Twitter will probe the corpse of consecutive with a topic named : "Consecutive is dead, long live consecutive!" Join the discussion, but come empty hands, no flowers, no elegies. The corpse may be still alive and well.

#IntJC is an open virtual worldwide agora experiment to all who are involved or interested in language interpreting as a profession (a plural would be more appropriate). And yes, there is no registration, no club, no membership.

Simultaneous is in demand around the tiny location here. Since the 3.11 disaster, I have received more than one requests from TV crews (they are getting ready "now" with the "First anniversary of Fukushima" next year ...) for a quick fix in simultaneous. Too bad I can't deliver. I am limping on the single consecutive/liaison/dialogic/3-cornered foot - you know, the one with a lag between speech and the rendering of it into another language - a dead member at that, or so say some.

Speed being the limit, this perception that consecutive is dead is sure to gain strength. Due to time shortage, things must be delivered at full speed, and now in short bursts (is it coming or influencing speech - any kind of speech - in the future?), 140 signs max style, just as with #IntJC.

It may be time to rehearse and train Twitter based as I wrote some times ago. A perfect argument to move schools and training sessions on top of the virtual village. But I digress.

Come to Session 7, you are welcome. Read about it here. #IntJC is an agora, a kind of "café du commerce". Thanks to the low end technology, it sounds and feels a little bit messy and hectic. It doesn't intend to replace standard discussions and conferences. It is a tiny but meaningful add-on. Some participants have no agora in their neighborhoods to talk shop, professional shop that is. #IntJC is a standing virtual bar to talk shop, in short burst, with long after taste and pregnant with hints at something else, including getting in touch with interpreters of all stands far, far away. Hopefully, it is a seeding innovation to something else.

Session 6 has shown a new development, one we longed for, the participation of younger interpreters in larger numbers. There is already a strong core of über-high-end interpreters over #IntJC helping keep the pot hot with topic ideas and spreading the word around in their blogs, Tweeter channels and who knows where, all on a self-managed individual basis. It is heart warming. The target to end this year with an ultimate session 8 should be met. Then, it will be time to look back in the mirror and forward in the view finder.

There are stakeholders that are still not joining #IntJC. Maybe they are lurking though as you can follow in stealth mode the sessions live, or read the transcripts. They may be users of interpreters, young people thinking about getting into training, schools, providers of tech solutions, trainers in search of hints on what and how to teach. You are all welcome to join the conversation. Come to session 7 on December 3.

Coming to terms with many hats

2011-11-24T10:07:00.000+09:00

How many interpreters also do translation? Or let's rephrase this:

- How many translators also do interpreting?
- How many of these also teach interpreting or translation?
- How many also have professional activities that are not related with the terp/trans combination?
- How many are confident that all their hats do not necessarily stack up into a neat tower of apparently coherent professional whole?

Or let's put this ultimately that way: how many of you readers are hiding some professional facts in your resume for the sake of showing coherence?

I am less interested in the figures than in the background noise that generates the difficulty to assume many hats of various shapes. A few personal events come to mind.

- The head of the MBA I did years ago in Tokyo would speak about flexibility and suggest you keep your jaws locked to the corporate position I had. Talk about coherence, indeed.

- In the lovely documentary on Jim Hayne's Sunday Dinners in Paris, people are asked to tell what they are (fare in Italian = do, faire, which is so much appropriate ...) . One diner starts listing up that she teaches English, do belly dancing and some other things I can't remember (B. please, give me the DVD back!). The first time I saw the documentary, I laughed, or rather I sneered at that very scene. The second time I still laughed. The third time (I have watched it a dozen), I started thinking about the reason why I was laughing, and sneering. What was so funny?

- I met an ex-corporate guy in Tokyo the other month switching into professional independence ("freelancing" still sucks and sound cheap depending on where you live). He told me I had to separate my offer of business consulting/support for market entry in Japan, and my liaison interpreting service. "I would never think to ask an interpreter to provide consultation."

I could go on for some more but the common stream here is that so many things in explaining what we do or are, and how we stand or not for ourselves are the result of the totalitarianism of corporate speech and corporate yard stick seeping everywhere. In a standard resume, the usual effort is to show how you were responsible from an early age - I managed the school festival ticketing system at kindergarten and beyond - and run the bar in the campus - and how you have run so far on a single track - my career started naturally in the marketing department - as head of - at a big startup in wine and liquors. Secretly, yes I did some bouts of journalism but flexibility is very well, for others and for counseling the youth.

The UK just had a national freelancers day. How lucky they are. Yet, still too many presentations are irradiated by corporate views and speech, where holding many hats is just inappropriate. An initiative like that freelancers day is simply superb, no doubt, but there is still much room to develop a self-justification speech and rhetoric that are ever more weaned out of corporate mantra. It starts with weaning out at the individual level. Next time I watch that scene, I will not laugh at English speaking and belly dancing. I will clap hands (therefore, B. second time, give me that DVD back!).

Footnote: The initiative of the Interpreting Journal Club #IntJC was inspired by Jim Haynes' Sunday Dinners in Paris. No salads and roasted chicken, only food for thought, but the room is definitely an international gathering. Check for yourself here.

Sans engagement, of course

2011-11-21T10:44:00.000+09:00

I left unaware the door open at Viadeo - same as LinkedIn only it's called by another name and can't boast to be number one. In effect, which I am discovering, anyone who requests to be listed in my contact list is automatically accepted. Now the big next step in social network is the socialization. I invite those who got in and left their virtual business card to just do it, reach out and touch someone as the jingle said a long time ago, to get in touch, "without commitment" or "sans engagement".

Commitment makes your hair raise out of fear so much that "sans engagement" is planted as a prelude in the grass like a warning on a French lawn. My friend R. in Switzerland just mailed me about someone in her town with whom I happen to have some common ground related to Japanese craftsmanship. She has learned her French and has proposed to suggest each of us get in touch "without commitment" to chew the fat on potential (the F. word starts with B.) business venturing (oh! mon Dieu!). There are tools for that, the antediluvian phone, or the modern Skype or Google whatever. So let's get in touch.

I assume that with interpreters - I am talking about the country where I live here - "sans engagement" is too lame and sweet. The appropriate stance should read like a warning on the above mentioned French lawn: do not walk on it unless you are invited, and introduced. Thankfully, #IntJC is showing that a level of communication, worldwide and "sans engagement" is possible. If you still don't know what the #IntJC initiative is and you are reading this blog, chances are you may be concerned and interested, without commitment, bien sûr. The secret ingredient to this is (another F. word that starts with a W.) the will to engage, sans engagement, in chewing the fat, talking shop, and more if affinities.

The recent session numbered 6 at #IntJC over Twitter was heart soothing. It felt good and relieving at being part of it, a worlwide event. In the act of talking shop "sans engagement" pop up here and there bits of "your life as an interpreter in that far away country", but live. It is both a discovery, like a geography book, Venezuela, Argentina, sound so far from here and yet "en direct"! It is also a humbling experience.

#IntJC sessions are chat based. They won't stand as a menace to any other more structured and institutionalized form of professional interaction. Being chat based means that the result looks and is hectic and somewhat hard to follow, especially when you simply read the script. Why is it so meaningful to many participants is a subject for another post. This chat opportunity is an international agora, a stop at the café for a drink with unknown people sharing a common professional matter.

Scripts are usually pregnant with bits and hints of concern and potential topics for future sessions. The recent session shows for instance a concern about knowing fees on the market. The problem is that your market is not my market and just considering figures devoid of country economics factor is a sure way to raise blood tension and itch ulcers.

But why is market fundamentals such as fees, or more precisely, fees brackets, a fleeting knowledge. Aren't there way to grab real figures just by, let's say, roaming the Net and pick the suggested fees displayed by agencies? Many are displaying figures so that you get an idea of what is considered to be current market fundamental brackets.

Obviously, the best source for fees information should be fellow practitioners. The question then is why is it so difficult to ask, besides the fact that it is matter of money. Fees issues, how to monitor these are hints at a potential future session of #IntJC, sans engagement, of course. Get involved.

The problem of source material in business interpreting training

2011-11-21T08:15:00.000+09:00

It has been a conundrum from the early days when I got involved in LBI (liaison interpreting for business training). Lacking formal training oneself is but one among many other issues that have been clarified over time, through painfully slow awareness of local market structure and what characterizes the profession seldom referred to as "liaison interpreting" in business settings. I link this slow awareness to the endemic fear of interpreters to willingly get involved in professional discussion among peers, and with Japanese practitioners who are the majority in most language pairs where Japanese is involved, to the added importance if not worship of rank and hierarchy.

One itching issue at training and self-training levels is the matter of training material. Raw content that effectively reflects the possible situations of LIB in so many configurations is that you don't find recordings of business meetings video online or anywhere else for obvious confidentiality matters.

LI is characterized by the constant flipping between two languages and the usual loose format and unexpected developments. After all, it is one interpreting situation where dialog is the main dish, and seldom in my experience formal speeches. The most formal situation is the presentation in Power Point Format, that is both the document format and the speech based on it which is heavily impacted by the very architecture of speech that Power Point imprints in the presenter's style. Business cultures obviously also heavily impact styles, forms and demeanor. Chances that a Japanese presenter cracks a joke to start with a presentation are low. Beware of the French, and the US businessmen though.

Finding Power Point material online is seldom an issue though. You can choose among hundreds of business presentation documents, even at times marked as confidential (!). But the recording of course is nowhere to find. Financial results presentation are readily available, at least in Japanese, in audio and quite often in video as well. Why not in French by the way? Although valuable, these are not liaison interpreting in business as I know it. LIB usual takes place for me in meeting rooms for presentations, negotiations, follow-up briefings, etc. The human factor is massive in the sense that everyone on stage is visible to others and plays a social role prescribed by culture and business culture of origin, what with personal character trends. LI, and LIB are contextually warmed by human heat and power play due to physical closeness of people on the stage. The context where your client's aftershave can be a sensible prop with a meaning attached is typical to BI, as the intense listening and viewing of the interpreter doing her job. What do others wear in booths (Obsession?) is of no matter to this blog.

So how do you do to devise an LBI course in such conditions? Ideally you work in pair, with a colleague eager as you are to act, as a presenter. I have not heard of any school around here providing courses in tandem. The tandem is usually half-human, the coach, and half technical, the digitized content. A one-man show limits the scope of what is possible to do, not that the coach could not deliver on both ways, but in so doing, in culturally narrow context like Japan, the non-native performing as a native, unless her job is to be a TV public character, generates issues I will keep out of the scope here.

Recently, after a few years of "acting" from French and expecting consecutive Japanese in return, I have added a dose of sight translation as an almost regular feature to the course. Most students are not interpreters nor do they look forward to enter the market. A few are freelancers with many hats, just like their teacher. In a school officially dispensing the glory of French culture, and where the leitmotiv is "learning French as a hobby", running a course on LIB is both a miracle and a small victory.

Some students are however also acting as in-house interpreters at the company they work in (it is a night course I teach). Some who do not are nonetheless exceptionally talented and could be used as liaison consecutive interpreters on the spot.

The students have access to the document about a week prior to the course. As so many are professionals in other settings of the working society, they seldom have much time to prepare. I have to take this factor into account too. The course is non-intensive on purpose, which does not mean lazy. As a result, it may also not be dense enough to those learners looking for a heavy dose of interaction, a fact I am painfully aware of. Most who have experienced learning at other interpreting schools in Tokyo have had to suffer the opposite situation of harsh and non-encouraging environments. Bashing for lower than expected level at their B language seems to be a standard issue I have heard many testimonies of. The well established school loathe at less than stellar students coached indeed by stellar interpreters, and at the same time, they make their business on luring most anyone ready to pay for the tuition. And they don't do LIB which is offered nowhere else in Japan.

I place encouragement of students at the core of my offering. None of them are aiming at the high-end market, and most are simply aiming at better understanding and speaking their B language, a proud objective that deserves praises and well wishes with strategies on how to get better.

No Power Point presentation document and no acting can replace the real experience. But more could be done with, yes, more financial involvement from schools, and a thinking out of the box attitude. A course in duo is the first approach to reinforce teaching, but there are more potential developments. Even if the coach enjoys acting, inviting real business person to deliver presentations would enliven the course for sure. Elsewhere where self-expression is not overly constrained, having the students act as listeners who ask questions, from their A language of course, is another way to go. A few years ago, I had a class, more playful than usual, where many students would enjoy the more relaxing act of asking questions to the presenter. I wish I could hear about experiences and suggestions on how to make courses more closely reflect examples of reality.

I leave aside one other aspect of BIL ideal teaching which is the Business matter. Students with a corporate life have no difficulties understanding what business dynamics is all about. However, they seldom have a reflective view of the pool they are swimming inside daily unless they are at a very high echelon. On the opposite, younger students of BIL may have no contact and tangible experience with the business world. They learn the hard way, as if this could not be soothed. It could though, at least at a theoretical level.

In the previous post, I referred and linked to an abstract of an article pertaining to LIB. Author John Martin Dodds at the University of Trieste in Italy where a curriculum in LI and LIB is apparently offered, develops arguments I have been keenly aware off at a distance, including this perfectly stated stinging sentence that "Liaison interpreting unfortunately has always been seen as less prestigious than its older counterpart [simultaneous in conference settings] and is not infrequently held in some contempt by practitioners of the conference mode. " I shall disagree about which is the older counterpart of whom but I leave it for another musing aloud in writing.

The author refers to the lack of real business world input in interpreting schools :

"It is probably the same old lament that is heard in all professions, that a graduate in economics is simply not properly instructed about the business world and the engineering graduate would not know how to go about constructing a building, bridge or road. So too is the novice interpreter often at a loss when entering a business meeting room for the very first time. The problem quite simply is that liaison interpreting courses are generally used to teach language and interpreting techniques like note-taking. Few if any students in Italy really know what an AGM is or how it is run, even in their own country and in Italian, let alone abroad in a foreign language. Much more time and attention have to be given to these cultural aspects, both their similarities and differences, their cultural overlap and divergences, so that interpreting graduates are not totally disarmed when they enter the job market and are forced to learn the hard way."

I just read in the NYT today an article lamenting about the same stuff in regard to new laywers (What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering). The obvious answer is to give its "much more time", but time to deliver what? Answers are lacking and should be dealt with at the same level at securing source material to practice the real thing in a school environment. I have and still am learning it th harsh way. There are other ways to make this less harsh and empower the practitioner, professional or not.

Interpretazione e mediazione: un’opposizione inconciliabile?

2011-11-18T20:26:00.001+09:00

It's here! It's here! At long last! I put my order right away today to read the papers of that Trieste conference of 2009 "Mediation at Work. Learning to Liaise in Business". The order page at the editing company is here, and a link to the table of content and a chunk of an article is here, in pdf. Some of the content is in Italian and Spanish, but most in English. I can't wait (until Christmas?) to read about my version of the job of interpreting, a plural of many.

Liaison interpreting has been dwarfed by conference interpreting although it was here before anything else. The practitioners of liaison interpreting are the first to blame. The lack of serious teaching in most case is the core culprit. Or is it? Just this abstract of John Martin Dodds on "Business culture versus interpreting culture" makes me jump and balk all over the place.

Business culture versus interpreting culture
John Martin Dodds Università di Trieste

ABSTRACT – There is considerable discrepancy between the needs and best practices of business and those of the business interpreter. Indeed, debriefing through turn-taking to the rendering of all the ideas expressed by the speaker, as advocated for in the literature (Gentile, Ozolins and Vasilakakos, 1996, et al.), is often utopian and anathema to clients whose cultural mindset is determined by speed, concision and efficiency. Anglo-Saxon business-speak today is characterized by sound-bites, jargon and buzz-words. Yet, reduction strategies are rarely taught in the classroom, redundancy of words yes, but not so much redundancy of ideas. Business “twitters” on at an ever- increasing pace, interpreting theory/practice and the teaching thereof lag behind in reflecting these new market trends.

You know about that silly enthusiasm when you say "they talk about me on TV!"? It just feel like this. At long last, something new to read (besides this clueless blog) on liaison interpreting after Gentile, Ozolins and Vasilakakos, 1996, et al.

Interpretazione e mediazione: un’opposizione inconciliabile? Reconcilable it is. Liaison interpreting to my sense is a plural, too.

#IntJC still cooking

2011-11-12T10:36:00.003+09:00

November 19 will be session 6 of #IntJC, the Twitter Journal Club on Interpreting.

Read about it from the initiative site here.

We will still have another two meetings into December before calling it quit for 2011 and think about next year.

As with so many initiatives, the launch benefited from curiosity and enthusiasm, buckets of retweets and tidbits of buzz and clicks on like buttons, but the dust quickly settled down.

Everyone is busy. Me too. This sudden surge and sudden - relative - collapse is a standard pattern. Stews need time to cook. That's where fast food has an edge.

In a home party I was invited to some times ago in Tokyo, I announced ahead of time that I would cook, bringing in food and wares and preparing various salads in the friend's kitchen. I see one single condition to cook, which is the will to do it (#Cooking anyone?).

And the second single condition is the wish to please the eaters. While I was tending white slender asparagus, an invitee I knew in the past and met again that time after many long years snooped into the kitchen and unleashed a "Thanks God, I have been able to avoid THIS!" This being cooking, that looks so low on self-esteem scale. It's hard loving eaters who inadvertently bash the cook and enjoy a second service.

How does this relate to #IntJC? Dedication, the hardest stuff. We will see what will happen.

You can see it for yourself soon, next week on Saturday. If you are in town November 19th from 10 pm Tokyo time, somewhere around the world, with an access to the Internet, come and dine with strangers, over Twitter. Chances are you are reading this because you are involved with language interpreting, as a student, a practitioner, a trainer, a future student, a future practitioner, or because you are looking for an interpreter pr just interested.

Session 6 of Nov 19 is about conference interpreting. I am not into this myself, but there is always something to take away and munch later on through #IntJC session scripts. Go to the Archive section and read some past meeting records. They read, and "sound" like noisy TGF standing bars from 6 pm with a crowd. They feel much more meaningful once you enter the conversation. There are no credential needed to be part of it except some time on hand and the will to participate. Come to session 6.

Three somewhat unrelated thoughts, maybe

2011-11-09T09:51:00.000+09:00

I am reading Network Power - The social dynamics of globalization, by David Sing Grewal. It is an important read if you are active in mobilizing social will to do networking , like the #IntJC.

I read the AIIT report on their members' market analysis, which is not the world market(s), which may not reflect your market. For conference interpreter, liasing is not even a mere 2%. I assume the market here to by liaison for more than 60%.

About the military terps left behind, as if it were news. One disadvantage is thst they are not considered as specialist, as professionals, that is, those recruited locally that happened to speak the visiting army lingo. They were eager to find a job, to "earn their bread". How many that are exfiltrated find a job if any related with what they were doing on the theater of war? They are not respected at a multiple levels. As in other circumstances, but here with potential lethal consequences, they are collateral victims and discardable resources of war. The fact is that they too are lonesome service providers. They are not networked, at a self-initiative level. They don't have their AIIC.

I am writing this on an iPad, not soon to replace a real computer. Links will come later.

Sorry, the hardest word

2011-10-19T07:39:00.000+09:00

I wrote sometimes ago about "Sorry is the hardest word", a song that could not have been written in Japan. How many times to you sing the song daily here? You quickly loose count as "sorry" comes repeated and heard by the dozen as an automaton to smoother daily communication where the care to avoid tension and clash is of great concern.

When you cross over the fuzzy limit between liaison interpreter and consultant as I am doing more and more these days, the consulting side takes the lead, and explaining "what to do" in strategical terms, not as a course in ethnology, is of great importance.

Coming from the West, justifications come easier than sorry, and when blunders, business conventions blunders do happen, suggesting that there is a need to mend things for business and diplomatic sake is not an easy task.

Behind the fallacy of world flatness and the smoothness and look alike of men in black suits as seen in cool business magazines, business conventions, matters of fact are not the same, or more precisely, the degree of importance in gestures, timing and speech are moving over different scales.

Moreover, it is my take after some years here that the Japanese side overall has less leeway by the end of the day to accept that things and takes on things are different. This is most probably the result of lack of multiculturalism.

Difference is a matter of fact. Understanding differences without placating an automatic judgement of value is the point to measure. Where formalism with clearly identified figures of speech and demeanor strongly rule as they do here, room for acceptance of things different is a cramped one.

But what matters in the end are acts toward making things smooth again, or coming to a gentleman clean ending.

Looking for someone to help with ....

2011-10-12T08:21:00.000+09:00

"I am looking for someone to help with translation" = I am looking for a translator. So why don't you ask for one?

You certainly don't say:

I am looking for someone to help in matter of beef cutting. You ask for a butcher.

I am looking for someone to help with serious legal mess. You ask for a lawyer.

I am looking for someone to help with the shrubs overgrowth in the garden. You are looking for a gardener.

I am looking for someone to help with facilitating in the context of communication between people with languages that appear to show strong differences, not only in pronunciation but in sentence structure, dynamics of relationship, what with gestures that definitely hinder the possibility of each other to understand reciprocally in a tangible way.

OK, so you are not looking for a beekeeper here.

When the local newspaper comes home

2011-10-05T09:19:00.000+09:00

A long time ago, my father who started working in one of the most select hotel in Paris came back almost each evening with a bag full of newspapers, magazines and books left behind by travelers. For years while in the university, I could read at home, almost daily and for free the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek or Time magazine, a slew of business weeklies including The Economist, cheap books I can't remember any title of, some rare porn magazines, and hot manga from Japan.

But the most fascinating stuff was those local newspapers picked at the entrance of the airplane and left alone in an empty somewhat dirty room far away from home. The travel factor, that those were carried over through a usually long trip to end on a disheveled bed was full of mystery and adventures. Some would come from localities bigger than villages, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Some would have landed from minor locations too. Flipping the pages, everything was fascinating, included the ads and restaurant reviews of cities and districts unknown, what with the sheer formats, layout and even paper texture. This read and felt distant and very close at the same time. It was like being there from far away. The delight was in the contrast.

Shifting to the Internet quite later on changed the scope of vision that shrunk down to the more visible titles. Except for the occasional serendipitous link to some online local newspaper, the very idea to look for local newspapers online seldom strikes home. A package with a book arrived yesterday. It was wrapped thick under pages of a Chicago sports newspaper. I would not have spend a single look on it displayed over a screen. The subject of sport is of total indifference to me. But I flipped it through, reading a few titles, looking at some baseball or American football champions being the talk of that town, and some ads for insurance or second hand cars. The format too, a towering slim rectangle never seen anywhere, maybe designed for reading in crowded buses or subways. The local newspaper is a conduit to wonder about other people's daily life. A wrapped up book coming from abroad is a reminder of that.

Mastering English first

2011-09-30T09:00:00.002+09:00

I am about to talk with a mother I know nothing about who found me on the Internet because a daughter in junior high school is in love with Japanese language and wants to master "all the Asian languages in the world". That makes for a lot of languages. And of course, she wants to be an interpreter.

I am not competent at talking about a job I don't practice, if interpreting is what you do from a booth. But I have a few ideas and suggestions to provide, a few hints to try and balance enthusiasm with realities which are not all simple "market realities". Getting ready for the chat to come in a few hours, I am waxing a recommendation to split her wish to be an interpreter and the language that fuels that dream of her. But before that, there is one single recommendation I will tell her to pass to her daughter: master English first.

And by "mastering", I simply mean to turn English into a workable tool of high level communication and a key to access the wealth of information around. There are wealth of information in many other languages for sure, so let's not argue on the obvious.

If mastering was more than just that, I would stop writing this blog in (imperfect) English right away. In the first university years in Paris, English courses came second after Japanese. Learning English (the same courses catered to various tracks) was for many a buffer, a temporizing mean to sit in a classroom while waiting to find an answer to the core question that was: did I choose the right majoring track? Reading in English was not to the taste of many. One would look at you with a mix of envy and boredom, you carrying a book in English. "Wouah! You read English books! I should do it too" was not an uncommon remark. So make English a tool you can use for practical matters, and surely more, to open up other worlds of thinking and being. Which comes back to the parallel need to master her own mother tongue, bien sûr.

As for the validity of Japanese, it is a long story covered here a while ago. All the non-Japanese interpreters I have met over the years (less than 10 I assume) have all fit in a historical framework that created marginal opportunities for them to work in a marginal small pocket of a market mostly closed, to non-natives. It doesn't mean that they do not or did not thrive on it. But their status has been an oddity. Being an oddity certainly should not matter. However, the oddity factor, what with a very different current historical framework, has made the soup taste quite different these days. Market wise, there are other options. Enthusiasm wise, she should go for it, for pleasure and intellectual enlightenment.

#IntJC Session 3 on Interpreting and Technology

2011-09-28T20:25:00.000+09:00

Come to Session 3 of the Twitter based Interpreting Journal Club on October 8, from 10 pm Tokyo time. The topic is Interpreting and Technology. The support content is a video. Read the details here. Dispatch the news. Merci.

Interpreting Journal Club is a Twitter chat based initiative to mingle and discuss about our professions at large. It is open to all interested parties worldwide. No reservation, no registration, no membership. Come freely and participate.

Further developments for #IntJC

2011-09-25T09:52:00.001+09:00

If you happen to read this for the first time, #IntJC is a Twitter based chat initiative where people involved or interested in language interpreting gather at regular time worldwide over the Internet to discuss in text chat mode on a specific subject supported by an article or other media content prepared ahead of time. #IntJC is an inclusive endeavor. You are all welcome. The only qualification to participate is to have interest in the subjects and willing to reach out with other fellow interpreters, trainers, students, etc. to think aloud on matters that matter to us at large.
There is no membership, no registration and no reservation. English is the idiom used for communication.

Read the full story here.

The record of session 2 on Stress and Interpreting is on display here.

Tentative schedule for session 3 is October 8. The subject is pending your proposals. You are invited to freely come up with a content suggestion for preparation and later on a set of 5 to 7 discussion points, questions that help guide the online discussion.

Let's broaden the content definition: it can be an article, academic or not, but also an audio (podcast, etc.) or video resource. The only condition is that it is freely available over the Internet (and in English, sorry abut that). We should avoid light matters though.

I am about to build a tool for pooling future participants on specific themes for discussion. Read about this here.

One technical concern, the free service used to record the first two sessions, Keepstream, is closing shop end of September. Any suggestion of an alternative service is welcome.

Descriptors of liaison interpreting

2011-09-22T08:39:00.000+09:00

This could be the longest and most detailed description of liaison interpreting I have read so far on an agency web site. It comes from Global Connects in the UK. It's a very good job and could go further down into the details, but the page may be enough for prospective users of the service.

Descriptors of liaison interpreting have long been an issue, first when introducing oneself in terms of "what I have been doing professionally (among other things)". One difficulty, and there is no reason to be shy, has been related with the poor image and self image of interpreters not practicing in simultaneous mode. Technically speaking, simultaneous applies to small meeting rooms too as long as the material is available, but the dynamics of conversations may not support the use of simul.

The poor image doesn't much originate from clients. So many do not know what interpreting is all about. Unfortunately, so many have a strong idea on what it is. The poor image originates mostly out of the competition between people practicing the stuff.

That poor image I am referring too is the perceived handicap that not performing in simultaneous mode is a sign of lesser competence. I have been struggling with that malaise inducing thought for years on. Trying and describe the job in its various facets through this blog has been a kind of self-therapy, although the original encounter with shame still lingers in the background. I have met with many students over the year showing signs of the same malaise while not being "deeply" involved with interpretation, and perfectly unaware of the realities of the market (Japanese-French). A long time client of mine just came the other with potential stints idea and a long description of the future situation. I suggested that simultaneous might foot the bill better (he knows what it is), to which he sprang back requiring consecutive/liaison mode by all means. This could have been an exception.

There is another facet to liaison interpreting, in the sense that descriptors have been few, and you rarely read the expression in the academic works lately. I am not suggesting I know what is published worldwide, but "community interpreting" seems to lead the description wagon. That is why bumping onto the above web page feels good.

It is unfortunate that "Liaison Interpreting: A Handbook" by Adolfo Gentile has been out of print and a rarity in the second hand market now coming, when you find a copy, with a super hefty price tag. The other one with "Liaison Interpreting" in the title I could not find cheap is dated 1999 and was published in South Africa. It also features the word "community" in the title and has reached the sky at +$300. I should put my copy of the Gentile book in a vault.

The publishers if still around could consider selling it again in ebook format. It is still meaningful and help raise awareness.

A great way to talk shop

2011-09-21T08:09:00.001+09:00

@InterpDiaries is historically behind the inviting catch phrase to suggest anyone involved or interested in the many modes and forms of language interpreting to join #IntJC (no registration, no membership, don't stiffen!) : "It's a great way to talk shop with fellow interpreters ... ".

I have been pondering and flipping this "a great way to talk shop" like a coin since it appeared in the #IntJC stream over Twitter. It is right on spot. Don't bring the handkerchief but read the following at face value: the following day of the first #IntJC session, riding the subway toward Kichijoji, a favorite district in Tokyo (when you come, ring me and I'll show you), I was under a rare spell of gloom, not at the success of that first session of course, not at the ease in retrospect at how these things can happen these days, but in contrast to various previous and failed trials at launching ways to "talk shop", talk about professional matters with peers. To me, a peer is anyone who accepts to lower the defense and try talking candidly about professional matters. It has nothing to do with levels of competence otherwise I would be out.

A tentative launch of a gathering (don't call it an "association") of Japanese French interpreters in Tokyo some years ago made a fantastic flop, despite backing from an embassy. It helped make a final hard and harsh sense of the professional ecosystem innards, the intimate dynamics of what makes things the way they are. It helped see the core argumentation backing the stiff and endemic refusal to envisage "talking shop": "but we are competitors my dear!", what with the sect like hierarchy and ingrained nastiness proven time and again. This is over.

Another broader initiative has seen ups and downs and is in tepid mode despite flashes of good things. It has helped though, beyond interpreting, to grasp how creative (some) freelancers or independent professionals can be when it comes to line up arguments to justify "not considering the potential values to start and talk shop". Cultural traits are not factors to disregard in the results, what with the crookedness of what is hardly hidden behind the beatific concept of "national community" abroad. This, I have come to understand like an entomologist specialized in beehives dynamics.

The purpose behind all these awkward for sure trials has always been to create spaces to "talk shop" in a less hierarchical, more democratic, flattened way, that the urge to signify "I am better than you" reactions effectively hinder. The fuel of course has always been the mere frustration not to be able to "talk shop".

The first factor on the speed and ease at which #IntJC was launched may be the very lack of registration, membership or any systemic constraint. I don't see it as too early to talk about success while the second session has yet to come (next Saturday), and there is no visibility in terms of how long this will go on.

One source of inspiration has been Jim Haynes in Paris, to which gathering I never went to (just learned about it this year). I won't expand on this person tremendous low key achievement. Just read the web site, buy the DVD, etc. +30 years of weekly socializing dinners in Paris. Facebook sounds like a joke in comparison. Constancy is fabulous.

Being allowed to talk shop is fabulous too. It may answer an untold need, or at least longing with some people to just do it: talk shop, in seriously fun fashion. I want to highlight the "seriousness" of the "fun", because I see seriousness as a key element to nurture elation out of talking shop and professional matters. Next Saturday, let's talk shop and investigate, ponder and flip the coin of Stress and Interpreting. Things will happen out of it, meeting peers, getting enlightened, inspired, hopefully not bored, finding jobs, changing directions, envisioning missions and new initiatives, whatever.

#IntJCES anyone?

2011-09-21T06:22:00.000+09:00

There is a growing trail of fellow interpreters advertising in Spanish the coming session 2 of #IntJC on Stress and Interpreting, next Saturday from 10 pm Tokyo time. This is wonderful, and powerful. I don't think it is too early to throw the suggestion on the table, but if anyone is game to create a parallel #IntJCES, in Spanish, because it feels comfy to you, you are welcome and I will give you admin access to the #IntJC web site and blog. Why not after all? #IntJC is not a trademark. I don't own it and there is life beyond English, as you know it.

Knocking down the community

2011-09-18T09:25:00.001+09:00

I cannot write about the new book of Shumona Sinha because I haven't read it yet, but I have read a series of articles about the book and its author. Assommons les pauvres! - let's knock down the poor people - is a fiction based on the author's experience as an interpreter working between the French administration and asylum seekers from her native India she left 10 years ago to live in Paris. Her's is not a poor expatriation move but a transition over a path of love for the French language and literature with sponsorship to cross the continents. The book is about an unnamed interpreter working at the French administration screening refugee status candidates, knocking one day at random a homeless and ending up as a consequence in the police box. It seems that the author has no experience in crashing a bottle of wine on the head of just about anyone around poor enough, but she went through inter-mediation of dialog between civil servants and poor immigrants of her own country and language. She effectively lose her job as a consequence of the book. One understands that another intermediary in this case was the agency that has been providing interpreters for the state.

In the many articles and interviews published these days, journalists happily mix "traducteur" with "interprète", and the verbs attached, but who cares. The book is seemingly about the malaise of being an interpreter between less lucky than you coming from the same country and same language community, in rags, misery and with narratives laden with exaggerations or hot red lies the interpreter well much better understands than the interrogator, in what is implied, implicit and cannot be interpreted without breaking the fallacy of neutrality. I remember an interpreter in my network outside Japan telling me how showing compassion to the "client" in legal interpreting was an immediate cause of dismissing, but what about hating the "client" you feel too much relationship with? Or what about just hatting the client?

#IntJC Session 2 on Stress and Interpretation, in 1 week

2011-09-17T09:23:00.012+09:00

#IntJC real time discussion (chat mode) Session 2 via Twitter on Stress and Interpretation will take place in one week time, on Saturday 24th, at 10 pm Tokyo time. Everything you want to know about this initiative and how it works is to be found on this web site.

#IntJC is not a club despite the "Club" in Journal Club (JC). Have no fear and feel no stress to consider participating or just watching. At #IntJC, there is:

- no registration
- no membership
- no restriction in experience, competence and mode of interpretation, levels and whatever. Beginners and seasoned, full and part timers, students and teachers, researchers and interpreters at times, by accident, and everyone just interested or curious are all welcome.

#IntJC is :

- open to the world. You access via Twitter or any front-end solution to manage Twitter. For lurkers, you don't even need to open an account over Twitter (free). Just go here over TweetChat and lurk.
- a mean to exchange about our professions (noticed the plural?) in a simple manner. You can even use a smartphone although typing on the tiny keyboard may be challenging. You can seat on your favorite chair, in a café, an airplane, a train or the wooden deck of a luxury cruising ship in the middle of the Adriatic with wifi connection (Pacific applies too).
- is an open window to learn a few bits and tricks about what others have been thinking and doing in, with and about interpretation in various countries of the world and market categories.
- is a possible way to think deeper about, or discover issues you might not have been aware of, and maybe solutions to matters you have been too aware of that pertain to your professional or learning track record.
- is a way to get in touch with peers. Everything happens on an individual, proactive basis, starting with participating, so come on board.

#IntJC channel is always open. You can even test it and say hello right now if you are unsure about how it (simply) works. Just type in Twitter, including the hashtag #IntJC in your text.

Now, come to #IntJC Session 2.

Please, retweet, link, pitch and spread the word. Thanks.

The wrong societal reading

2011-09-15T08:54:00.002+09:00

To continue on the matter of rock bottom, this post I saw recommended is giving the wrong societal reading to what is at the core of the matter. The authors point a critical finger to some unnamed online service offering behind the cool marketing pitch rock-bottom price for bits of translation and interpretation delivered faster than a Whooper.

Is it self-exploitation? Yes, absolutely, albeit that exploiters and exploited are on the same side. They speak the same language.

They belong to this (watch the video) as seen on the New York Times. And if you don't feel nauseous, stop reading.

I can't remember the exact name of such service but there are dozens of look-alike around. I was even invited to participate to the creation of such sweat-house a few years ago. As is usually the case with prostitution, critics forget to blame the clients but focus instead on the slaves doing the job.

As is usual with the societal reading of such situations, it is flawed. The very idea of exploitation on the side of the service creator is absent. Facebook inventor never had any political education. He was no student in the 60's. He and they usually belong to the same generations. The exploited usually have not the slightest political awareness. That's the way we want them. MTVized. They gladly get pennies for the fame and the good feeling to be part of it. People in the thirties and under I know here - not the salarymen types - don't care about discussing matters like strategies to protect markets. They suggest figures of earnings they are content with I usually found appalling compared to what I could make at the same age. And they don't complain. They see it as "normal". And they have no reading framework to understand how the ecosystem work. And worst of all, they usually don't want to think about ecosystems.

The authors forget that the threat doesn't belong to their generation. Those younger generations get in the pitch mood of the service providers at the snap of a finger. Precarity was in their cradle with Toy's R US made in China bear from day one. Probably few know the word "precarity". It is in the DNA they came with.

From this point of view, are our (and I am feeling lately to belong less and less) professions threaten? Yes, unless you cater for higher needs where the base can't compete. So the point is to determine where the higher needs are, specialize, and stop reading funny articles about Google Translate renditions. Gazillions of corporations are using it on a daily basis. Language and risk management is none of their concern.

Fees self-negotiation

2011-09-14T08:13:00.000+09:00

The Fukushima tragedy (which is also not to be forgotten an enormous societal scandal) has been a source of stints for media fixers, part coordinators, negotiators and interpreters, to name but a few of what media fixing can be. Now that "six months after Fukushima" has gone, you can safely bet on the year end news of the world wrap ups, and more certainly on "the first anniversary of the Fukushima drama". I am not into this game for several reasons, one being the quite often appallingly low money offered. All the arguments that explain why low is low won't change a thing in the fact that accepting low is not an investment in getting more one day in the future. If investment there is, it is in the conscious application of stretchwork strategy to gain experience over money. You cannot bet on the same client coming up next time if any and reckoning that you deserve more because you've demonstrated competence. If competence there is, the rock-bottom price under which one should say no is the rock-bottom price at which one has self-negotiated in advance and decided that "this is my limit". It took me years to agree with this stance, and this process could have been accelerated granted the networking and exchange among players to discuss "what matters to us" had been around. It was not. #IntJC could be also a vehicle for that purpose, but I digress.

As with the fierce refusal to consider professional social networking I have noticed over the years here with freelancers - and not only in interpreting - independent professionals have a knack to come up with counterarguments richer in varieties than what a prospect could come up with to try and persuade that the under rock-bottom price offered is still of value. Friends over the years have come up with the recommendation not to accept "too low a price", but seldom with sufficient arguments, the most feeble one being "by accepting low, you are breaking the market". Me think that one individual has no such power, unless you take the butterfly flicker and tornado relationship as the basis of the argument.

If you try and set aside terrible situations, rock-bottom is not related with paying the rent, but with self-esteem. And in these days where outsourcing, meaning finding the cheapest, rules, be sure that there's always somebody's rock-bottom lower than yours. Which is why forsaken extreme circumstances which are the one players are prone to come with and stiffen the capacity to think (and if there were a war?), pegging rock-bottom level to self-respect is the balance to nurture and discussing the matter with others to investigate it deeper is an ideal (idealized) way to nurture comfort and self-respect. And yes, the rock is not fixed like a mountain. It can also goes up.

#IntJC Session 2 all set

2011-09-13T22:21:00.000+09:00

Discussion points for #IntJC Session 2 are now available over the dedicated web site here. Please read and spread the word.

#IntJC Come to Session 2

2011-09-12T08:54:00.000+09:00

Everything you wanted to know about #IntJC Session 2 is now online here. Read, dispatch via your social networks and blogs, and participate.

#IntJC is an all inclusive initiative, not an exclusive club. All interpreters at all levels and experience are welcome. No registration, no membership. Come to Session 2 on Sept 24, 10 pm Tokyo time over Twitter.

#IntJC short debriefing

2011-09-11T08:24:00.001+09:00

Yesterday, Saturday 10th, was the inaugural #IntJC session. Thank you to All. The web site was updated with links to transcripts and a call for Session 2, tentative date Sept. 24. Have a look here.

A few thoughts and remarks:

- This vehicle of communication is interesting : easy to implement, looking messy, not appropriate for "deep" exchanges, yet meaningful. It's a text Agora of sort, a piazza in the middle of the village.
- If you read the script, you will notice there are bits of gems here and there for further subjects and more. The next tentative subject - Stress and interpreters - was suggested in the heat of the exchange.
- There is an art of timing the launch of each questions. I don't master it.
- One hour is the suggested duration but this one took over 1 hour and 20 minutes. Why not?
- Over Twitter Journal Club, they have a voting system for text selection. We may have that in the future.
- The shortest delay until next refresh on Tweeter Chat is 5 seconds. Is there an alternative to accelerate?
- There is a grammar and style, and a few functions, using Twitter, within 140 signs, and also an extension mode seemingly with Tweeter Deck (only?). Must better understand this.
- The transcript record service I used announces 15 participants. No idea of course on how many people simply lurked. Next time, say hello and a brief self-intro even if lurking, even if the session already started. It's a good way to test the vehicle.
- Provide suggestions to make things better over Twitter with hashtag #IntJC, or in private if you prefer.
- Come to Session 2.

Chaperoning in liaison interpreting

2011-09-10T13:01:00.000+09:00

Where do I sit, what do I tell them, how shall I behave? I have witnessed many times the newcomer in Japan for business fretting about social codes. Some rare cases do not fret though and tramp the tatami floor with a totemic vision that business interaction is global (you spread the arms wide when you say this, but beware of the ceramics around). You may have read "The world is flat", one of those rare books I literally tossed into the trash box. It is because of the hilly topography of the world that we find jobs in the wrinkles.

Another scene, related. The business party. Unless you are a royalty, a politician, an ambassador, the multicultural parties I have seen in Tokyo are interesting to observe when the situation allows, from the viewpoint of cluster generation and human fluidity in a confined environment. I was invited at a corporate party lately. The guests were clustered on purpose at round tables with a number, a good idea in terms of logistic as the premise was cramped. The few Westerners in the crowd were attributed the same table although they happened to all speak Japanese.

I won't elaborate on the strategy of the organizers and what story it tells culture wise, but the chance are high that you end up clustered until it's time to go home. Most of the guests around were doing so, stand still. It was Japan after all.

Now imagine that you are a liaison interpreter with your client who is not looking forward to talk with lookalikes on matters of hurricanes in the Northern hemisphere, but wants to walk the room. If she is the queen of the night, the cruising will be helped by the fact that many harbors in the room expects a short mooring and exchange of nice words. If the client is no king, should the interpreter take or not take the lead? And what are the competences the interpreter must carry on that will make her the good if not perfect chaperon?

How do you learn to behave like an unofficial butler when you have to? Isn't chaperoning one among other competences to nurture just in case? How do you go with it when your socializing experience is slim and you can't refrain from the automatic : "I don't like parties"? I used to utter that very tune. Asking the questions may be the first step to ponder about the answers.

Taking the lead with utter care not to trespass a fluid and fleeting limit may be a specificity of liaison interpreting.

Just a freelancer

2011-09-09T07:48:00.002+09:00

The piece by translator Corinne McKay on the hiring of a professional photographer to get professional promotional pictures of the self for web site and social networks profile pages usage is a reminder that freelancing is misunderstood by freelancers themselves. I am one of them so I don't boast here I knew it. I didn't and I am still learning.

The purpose of the French-Japanese social network Freelance France Japon I launched 3 years ago was to create a space for professional communication and exchange among independent professionals in various domains. It has been a living example of how matters that are specific to the social being and presentation of the self as an "independent professional" are not only often least understood by their actors, but generate more that often irate reactions to the suggestion of discussing about such trivia, or to put it in more crude light, "What's the fuss with professional pictures?".

You can add the same annoyed reactions with professional looking business cards or professional looking attires. The piece I wrote the other day about dressing to interpret was met by one typical pavlovian definitive comment on the waste of time to think about such topic.

The piece by Ms. McKay is a pandora box to keep open and looked at inside out. It has also been met by what looks like a different but in fact similar comment of someone who writes:

"It still baffles me that even some of the experienced folks have profile pictures (on Proz or similar sites) that seem to come straight out of their webcams. "

Being baffled or scoffing at the vanity of pondering about such trifles is in the same vein of people who know. I for one know that I didn't know, about attire, about business cards, about professional pictures, or to wrap up things, about what it means to stand by yourself as an independent professional.

"I am still baffled" means in fact that I can't understand why others do not apply what I see as obvious. I started to get enlighten, very late in the course of time, about such matters when I launched into pondering in earnest the reasons why of this. My first hiring of a professional cameraman for a shot to use all over the professional and social places only took place last year, after +30 years of almost non-stop various stints at freelancing.

Things are moving though but when it comes to freelancing, lameness is still the rule when it comes to thematics raised by the famous freelancing centered blogs and organization still focused on the kind of "how to make 6 figures revenues clad in pajama in front of your PC". As long as you don't put the camera on, the attire might be OK.

One of the other thing that creating a professional community has revealed is how independent professionals are ill at ease and loathing at discussing most any subjects that relate to the core matter of standing by the (professional) self. In a sense, we are our own enemy.

The step beyond gawking at the whys of seasoned professionals using the cheap and lame picture is to stop gawking and earnestly asking why. One of the (obvious) answer I found is first that unless you are in a profession that will groom you into "behaving properly" like a medics or a lawyer, society will hardly help you understand the power game rules. These rules are massively defined by the corporate world.

Just to cite one example, think about the business card. If you work in a corporation, the company will take care of you in giving away some tools that are keys to professional social standing and definitions of who you are as a corporate animal, starting with the corporate business card. No need to think about design, about naming your position, a welcome situation when you totally suck at it, as I do. Not so much need to think about appropriate attire. If you don't know, the theater and catwalk of daily office work will teach you things in osmotic fashion. That is why incidentally freelance interpreters going independent after a long enough stint as in-house interpreters have an edge over freelancers who started from day one alone. They know better how to behave. Once you are freelancing, the other side is still the corporate world.

I could go on for more but the fact is that the Internet has unleashed opportunities to learn a few tricks, but not to raise awareness which is still a matter of personal development, or being a member of a thriving professional community where a majority do not leave the room when you suggest discussing about professional demeanor, but are eager to analyze such core matter - including professional pictures - at deeper levels.

A last note, for men and the matter of looks and demeanor, I especially like the site "The Art of Manliness". It comes with a mix of tongue in cheek humor, funny pretentiousness and real down to earth suggestions. It is worth digging into past posts including comments. For the ladies, sorry, I have no pointers due to incompetence.

Who's never been bad?

2011-09-08T06:02:00.001+09:00

140 signs to paste a link to a press article pondering about bad interpreters in Sweden are sources of irritations to me at least. I can't refrain to think a "so what?". You approve, you condemn, you giggle, you blush because it reminds you of some personal experience, you feel compassionate, you what? That is why you must read Tolken over the blog "In my words" daring and tackle with what is bad about being bad with this piece "Bad interpreters or bad system?". It is a must read. Who's bad, who's never been? If you can't raise hands, I'll raise both for you, and me. Raising the voice is a risky job. Keeping it shut is safer, usually. When you open it, you take the risk to blunder, interpreter wise or else. You will blunder by the way. I still do, even with the cooking. Now, I fancy about more hands raising at long last.

There is another reason for the 140 signs generated irritation. It's not about Sweden only my dear. "It's no news", indeed. It's global news. If you follow keywords like "interpreting" over Google News, you read about the same thing in the US, the UK, to name a very few. It's the system stupid. No, it's the interpreter alone and a convenient culprit at that. The consequences of blunders are always a point on the scale of disaster between light and remediable, to tragic.

I just finished reading "Stories of technology failures and cognitive engineering successes". It is an interesting quick read, about failures in the cockpit, the surgery room, the nuclear plant control room, and what cognitive engineering can do to make things better. It largely doesn't apply here though. Not enough technology is involved yet that you can point at. It's the (operating) system, stupid!

Have you ever read pieces about terps in Irak and the likes suggesting linguistic incompetence as a lack of training in some famous Swiss school? I have, and more than one.

If confidentiality was passé, I could voice over a painful experience in details on the whys and hows of bad delivery, not to escape personal responsibilities, but to highlight a context, the system, that made things turn the way they did. Without any trial at diluting self-responsibility, complex blunders in complex settings are agents and factors of an ecosystem you simply can't ignore, at least to get better next time, granted the system evolves. There is much material to chew on for a future #IntJC session.

Valentino: not about interpreting

2011-09-06T20:34:00.000+09:00

It's not about the subject of this blog but I came to hear about the 2008 documentary "Valentino - the Last Emperor" through a blog about Italian language last week. Lucky one who knew it. I was floored and ordered the DVD after viewing the movie over a bad Chinese streaming service. It is less about fashion or the jet-set, but more about passion and perfection. Empowering and humbling at the same time.

Going over the board

2011-09-06T19:02:00.000+09:00

It is a different setting of liaison interpreting when you liaise for a recurrent client with whom friendship has bloomed over time. It is easy to be on friendly terms with most US customers because showing, or playing friendliness is part of the proper way of social behaving among grown-ups there. This does not apply everywhere. Politeness is not friendliness here, where you can see the formal patterns seam like the threads on a kimono. Industry does play a role in modulating the formalism though. If you work for the media, things may be more complicated because of the faked coolness, while working in standard industrial setting is much more easy to forecast in terms of patterns of communication that will be played, sticking to well known formal tunes. But even in "cool" industries, my experience tells me that formalism is just behind the no-necktie de rigueur.

With the French (ah! the French, you wonder if the Revolution was not a baseless rumor), you are now assailed with the "tutoiement de rigueur" and false coolness where hierarchy is in effect an essential factor that determines relationship.

So S. is my US client and we have known each other for a while, always in business settings, with a growing reciprocal level of trust. So much that I asked him first time ever about dress code, and whether necktie was in. Yes, dress matters in liaison more than in any formula, and there's a statement in the choice of garment and colors.

The answer read like this: "Californian/Italian casual business for me. My agent will be in a suit without a tie most likely. The ------- will be in street clothes. The ------- manager will either be in jeans/t-shirt or salaryman suit. For meeting and dinner tie not required but not out of place."

I didn't ask but wondered what Californian/Italian was - pizza on a surfboard (old fashion) or silicone geek? Later on, that mix looked to me as very advanced casual I would not think to wear ever. I did bring the necktie just in case, and every character of the drama to develop did come donning what S. had expected. The only guy in almost salaryman dress was I.

We had a full one hour time for a briefing, that is, luxury. What happened later on, business discussion, was not specialized in any fashion, but S. was extremely tense. I was not, and I actually helped by elaborating a little bit more on what he was saying, he approving as he can understand Japanese to some level.

Why do you go over the board in liaison and break the holy rule of not saying more or differently, but saying as it is said? Because S.' tension was counterproductive to what he was looking at in terms of yield out of the discussion, results that had higher chances to be obtained granted his side, himself including me, had not been showing tension, but on the contrary, warm caring. I wrapped his words with extended elaboration in duly aware warmth to counter his uneasiness. Should I have locked my pace and mood to his, it would have been a somewhat no ice-breaker meeting making things uneasy for all. We left happy although the yield of it all is not to be discussed.

Going over the board as a potential add-on is typically part of liaison interpreting. How to proceed and what are the dangers besides the obvious is one subject I would like to discuss about, out of this blog.

#IntJC All set

2011-09-05T15:42:00.000+09:00

I think we are now all set and ready for the Sat 10th first session of #IntJC. Everything you want to know or recheck is supposed to be covered here. The discussion points are available on the #IntJC blog here. If something is missing, please call back.

I am still unsure about the best way to keep record of the session chat. There are many solutions but not a perfect no-brainer. If you have real experience in a good, safe solution, please feedback.

As for this #IntJC trial, it is not the idea that is brilliant, but the endeavor to implement it that will be.

Ideas can be found all over the place, I just picked one, but what matters and is the hardest part is implementation. That is why #IntJC cannot be a one man show but the result of participation and inputs from many. It has already started. Thank you to all who reacted. See you over Twitter #IntJC on Sat 10.

Dress to interpret

2011-09-04T00:26:00.000+09:00

I haven't heard about the matter of dressing for liaison interpreting in business settings. Do interpreters behind booths windows wear Bermuda short in Summer? When in front and in the middle of businessmen, it may sound obvious that the interpreter should follow business codes, but whose codes? And also, what level of attire is adequate?

In a few weeks here in Tokyo, the weather should cool down enough that the cool-biz campaign will come to an end. I am looking forward to feel comfortable again in full metal jacket. Cool biz mostly means that no necktie is appropriate, but the no necktie season is short enough that it is not representative of business attire codes here. The other day, I was invited at a corporate presentation and party. I had no role to play except listening, smiling, and everything that relates to party dynamics. I was unsure about protocol and decided to wear a necktie after cooling off a good 30 minutes inside the corporate building while a piece of a typhoon was coming to town outside. Even before going upstairs, I noticed that the staff on-hand showing the way, all males for once, were all in no-necktie mode. I kept it though out of convenience and that eternal thrust in high conformity Japan to do as the Romans do but up to a limit. Mr. M who I have known for a while invited me to get rid of the necktie after I humbly joked (a local posture to play with) that I was sorry donning a tie. It was a posture to make clear that I didn't intend to leave it, but the invitation to undo was an invitation to conform.

When not in Summer, business dressing means necktie to match the other side - the Japanese - not my clients who may according to countries, domains and styles, not fit into the formal picture. I have seen many no-necktie American gentlemen in various industries but other nationalities as well. Sociologists have explained that dressing carries a message, a stance. How many times in the past have I noticed poorly dressed local male interpreters? By poorly dressed, I mean donning shabby looking attire with the sheepish attitude that comes together. There is a strong perception here that the interpreter being an intermediary does not really exist, and that a toned down attire, and a toned down attitude are what is proper. The opposite is not necessarily going Armani. Beware of systemic and rampant manicheism. I for one don't buy into this, and as a non-Japanese, my position and the way I am perceived puts me at odds with what is proper. Also, it is clear that attire does participate to the image you want to instill in the mind of your client first. Therefore, clothing, as well as attitudes, are parts of the competence set and deserve due consideration.

One disadvantage of freelancing in liaison interpreting at an early age is that chances are your experience with corporate dynamics is inadequate, to put it mildly. Your corporate clients naturally expect that your competence as a package not only covers matters of communication, but everything peripheral that comes with it, and understanding as a matter of fact of business and corporate dynamics. Then, what are they and how do you get to acquire these, not only through repeated blunders? Having had my share of blunders over the years - I might specialize in professional blunders - I know first hand that beginning interpretation in-house is a sure advantage to internalize codes, not only language. Interpreters I have noticed with several years of in-house stint are more fit when switching to freelancing mode than others with slim if no in-house experience.

However, internalizing is one thing, but putting a critical eye on these, that starts with awareness, is another issue, and a key issue at that, because awareness is the condition for developing strategies. Whereas Armani doesn't compensate for lack of competence or preparation, wearing attires with self-assurance and grace (no smile please) is an advantage to control stress in situations where your background and experience of business settings and the theater that comes with it may be lacking. I will try and ponder on this matter further on at a later stage.

NHK radio goes streaming

2011-09-01T09:08:00.001+09:00

I still don't know whether one should refrain from smiling or not, but in about two hours, the national NHK radio is about to launch (drums please) streaming broadcast over ... what was the name? ... ah, yes, the Internet.

You may be glad to know that you won't be able to listen from abroad, at least this is the official stance. Besides, who would want to listen to the NHK abroad, and why this country should strive enlightening the world with Japanese language? Language and culture promotion is for Italy, isn't it?

Whatever, the NHK should also come to mobile devices from October 1st. The "should" in the media is the key here because you never know what may happen in the meantime. The brilliant idea has certainly be pushed by the 3.11 and the need to use whatever channel available to broadcast alerts and warning messages.

Radio is the poor child (parent pauvre) of Japan where TV rules. The offer is paltry and the content narrow. You can already listen to Japanese radio (except NHK) over the Net through Radiko.jp. One interesting channel is Radio Nippon, probably the most heard radio in cabs. AM radio are an open vista to popular culture. It is a good source to beef up the lighter side of the profession. A bolus of AM radio shadowing is a nice and unusual way to start the day, no joking intended.

Interpreting from the war angle

2011-08-31T08:35:00.000+09:00

Two articles in the lap of a week or less are centered around military interpretation. The first one refers to the Japanese Americans who were the first to enroll to the U.S. Army's secret Military Intelligence Service Language School. As books on the subject have already been published, I found in this article a diverging information from these books that left me under the impression that military action to deal with the issue of the enemy's language started late. In fact, training for the churning out of war interpreters started before Pearl Harbor although the momentum may have not met the surge of increased needs once the conflict started.

Another piece is also related with military and is fascinating. It is an interview of Tony Rosado, a trained attorney turned interpreter and trainer of trainers at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. One especially juicy chunk I wish to read and discuss in the future is the matter of specialization as it is raised in this short extract:

"Lately I have spent quite a bit of time teaching because I see that as the profession evolves and becomes more specialized, there is a greater need to provide the proper instruction for specialized fields.
We are like physicians who went from being the doctor for every possible illness, dentists, veterinarians, and yes, even barbers, that have evolved to become specialists in very specific aspects of their profession. I am sure that is also happening to us. Clients will more and more look not just for a plain- vanilla interpreter, but for a legal Mexican Spanish interpreter, a Korean interpreter with experience in neurology, a Tagalog boxing interpreter, etc."

Let's push #IntJC into the future now

2011-08-30T10:07:00.008+09:00

The first #IntJC session is scheduled for Sept. 10. You can read the details here, and please spread the word.

For those in the loop over Twitter, you may not remember that blip on the 140 signs radar of musing about one day, not in the so far away future, having somewhere in the physical world an unconference around interpreting at large. Blips of "one day my Prince will come" pop up, poop and disappear from the screen in a blink, pushed by the next grand forgettable idea.

Let's try and make #IntJC Journal Club meeting over Twitter not a pooping blink with no second, and third servings. If you are in, it is already time to suggest texts to munch on for session 2 and 3, to start with. There is no selection committee. There is no democracy. How unfair. One day there will be, but let's start planning right away for more.

The guys and girls at Twitter Journal Club, the inspiration model for #IntJC, are meeting remote fortnightly on Sundays. Do you think they have so much idle time on hand learning and practicing medicine that they can cut off with the family each other Sunday for an hour (night or day depending on where you log from) and chew the fat about arcane things that may save human life?

So let's not be enthusiastic for session one and go back to our mumbling reveries of done (drank, ate, etc.) this and that 140 signs at a time, when that history making Session One is over. You know, that public self-introspection, that dialog with me and my navel. It's good to do it too. I am one culprit. But when I read (and not much understand) what they do each other Sunday at #TwitJC, I am jealous, until Sept 10. I am thinking that in another life, I won't be only Italian, but a doctor on top of that, an Italian doctor and a cook.

I am dreaming of (a white Christmas) Journal Clubs on more mundane things too, cooking for parties in Jim Haynes style, breakfasts meetings in Tokyo, the art of getting lost in the city looking for some madeleine and tea.

But what is at hand right now is #IntJC, which is definitely not a sexy name, and the attached web site is dull and bland, but who cares. Putting colors is not today's issue. Today's issue is setting a theme and a date for Session 2 and 3, to start with. Otherwise, it may end up like so many cool blips on our radar. After all, if you are dying for opportunities to talk about "our businesses", let's stir the pot and not wait "after session 1 to think about it". The model is understood. Let's move on now.

Even if experience using this tool of communication is probably nil or close to zero for most of you planning to come (sitting on your favorite upgraded first class chair, isn't it good?), planning for the next stage is authorized.

Once we have logged 50 sessions of #IntJC, chances are high an unconference, or just a breakfast in Tokyo or elsewhere to put pictures on faces will start blinking again on the radar screen, and leave a trace for more than 140 signs. Let's do it. Time will tell whether it was foolish or wise. There is no reason to wait until that time comes.

IntJC, interpreting Journal Club first session preparation 2

2011-08-28T10:06:00.001+09:00

I just set up a quick dedicated web site for the #IntJC initiative. It is here:

http://sites.google.com/site/interpretjc/home

Please dispatched and help iron down my blunders. As I don't want to monopolize this initiative, a few "officials" ready to help with any coordination (I guess the workload will be extremely low) are welcome. Just apply and get admin access to the dedicated web site.

The first session is scheduled for Sept 10, from 3 pm local time. Anything more you want to know should be included in the above web site.

Merci, and let's do it.

IntJC, interpreting Journal Club first session preparation 1

2011-08-26T08:20:00.000+09:00

Thank you to All for the positive reactions. I am wrapping up things here with some redundancies. Please forgive this.

- You don't need to use Tweetchat. You can follow over Twitter, but Tweetchat makes things easier for at least two reasons: 1. You won't forget to add the hashtag #IntJC as it puts it automatically. If you forget or mess up with the hashtag over Twitter, it won't show in the stream. If you can manage manually with the hashtag within Tweeter, that's fine. 2. You can set a duration until the next refresh with Tweetchat, with a minimum of 5 sec. This is very nice. And an extra 3. Tweetchat is a web site, not an application. You sign in using your Twitter ID and password to participate, but if you only want to watch, you don't have to register (participating is better than just lurking though).

- Just a reminder, the Tweetchat dedicated URL for the hashtag #IntJC is http://tweetchat.com/room/IntJC You can click on it right away and see, and test, for yourself. Say hello IntJC for instance to start with.

- @InterDiaries: thank you for the opportunity you took to suggest a text. Here is the link: http://www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/bitstream/10077/2476/1/08.pdf

My only concerns are:

- In test mode for the first session, it may feel daunting to start right away with a research paper and exclude potential participants. I do read a lot of academic texts myself, but as far as the non-trained interpreters I know are concerned (I am one of them), they don't care about such content. Where do we set the minimum level of "elitism"?

- I wish the experience is inclusive, including the majority of untrained interpreters who practice on the planet without the credentials. I am one of them and feel closer to a terp on a theater of war than to a AIIC member. Tokyo as a theater is way safer than anywhere else though.

- I still believe your suggestion clicks as long as there is a guideline, starters for a conversation between participants who read it, and trying to go beyond the message that the text and concern focus on simul booth interpreters. Don't take it badly, but as a guy in liaison interpreting practicing in consec mode on various theaters, the booth is planet Mars. I am interested with other planets, but fact is that I don't belong. Yet, your suggestion is valid.

- To anyone just lurking, please come onto the loop and make suggestions although decisions will have to be taken at some stage. Commenting here is one way to do it as it offers space. Another way to comment 140 signs wise is simply to use Twitter (don't forget the hashtag!) or Tweetchat (the hashtag insertion is taken care of and you can play and get used with the tool and concept before the show).

- The purpose here is to be able to first just try and do it, as a shoe maker would say. We won't know how "it feels" and whether it is a valid approach or not until we do it, so let's do it. The time frame target is September, and will be fine tuned in the meantime.

- If you haven't done so please go back to the original post http://japaninterpreter.blogspot.com/2011/08/request-for-participation-journal-club.html

and query the original Nature article, and also peruse a script of how they are doing things among medics. You may not be a seasoned Twitter user (I am not) and the foreign factor of the subjects there are covering may feel daunting, what with the Twitter speech, figure de style and colloquial. But it's Ok. It can be done and a little messing up with things is no reason to procrastinate.

Merci.

Age of remote

2011-08-25T08:21:00.001+09:00

Interpreting is going StarWars, and remote, like flight controlling. The Lockheed Martin’s Linguist on-line service LinGo Link reads like SF novel. The sentence "LinGo Link also enables the interpreter to provide “whisper-in-the-ear” cultural and intelligence support that goes beyond the words being spoken — offering clues to the community’s culture, security, economy, and laws — and enhancing the quality of the exchange" sounds like liaison interpreting turned James Bond. At a Theater (of war) near you, soon?

More on Journal Club

2011-08-23T18:03:00.001+09:00

You can already test the hashtag #IntJC if you are a Twitter user.

If you are not, you still can have a look at the future conversation pad at this URL:

http://tweetchat.com/room/IntJC

If you register to Tweetchat, that is, allowing the service to access your Twitter account, you can test the "virtual conference room" with #IntJC on the door without the need to input the hashtag each time you write down something.

I have also installed the TweetDeck free application. TweetDeck is proposed by Twitter itself so it should be safe. The screen gets as impressive as a jetliner cockpit, almost. And you can track the #IntJC hashtag by searching for it. It will generate a dedicated column. This is brilliant.

But the technology is nothing a mean to launch a first remote meeting to discuss, in 140 signs mode, around an article we will have read and pondered about ahead of time.

I think both press and academic articles are OK granted they are freely accessible online. No sharing of articles under copy-write restriction shall be allowed. Better not get into trouble from day one.

It would be nice if potential participants propose articles. In the future, a vote could be implemented to select which article to be the focus of the Interpreting Journal Club session.

If you haven't done so, please read the previous post and the linked pages to have a grasp at what a Journal Club à la Twitter is all about.

The language of communication shall be English, if you don't mind.

As participants will certainly be located in various parts of the world, the decision regarding date and time will be crucial, and won't match everybody's schedule, but c'est la vie.

At least, lets try and do it.

One last thing, as I have not experience doing this, and as I am not a savvy Twitter user, we are all invited to mess up a little bit until we get used of the gear and evaluate the validity of it all. They are doing this Twitter Journal Club among medical students, so we should be able to manage without much fear and shame.

One last, last thing: an agenda at least to allow the conversation to start will certainly be welcome, or call it simply some "manners and rules" to allow smooth lift off and landing. I will see how they do this in medical environment but you are welcome to provide suggestions and comments.

Summary:

- If you are interested by the project, tell it by leaving a comment here or in the previous post.
- Text selection: if you already have on hand an article you think valuable to use as a conversation starter, make a suggestion. You can do all this via Twitter as a mean to test the hashtag #IntJC.
- A date and time shall be decided upon. Here again, suggestions and comments are welcome.
- Tentative duration could be a maximum of one hour.
- If you know people who might be interested, please twitter and facebook around. Smoke signals are OK too.
- If you see anything important I must have missed (and I must have), please comment.

Merci.

Call for participation : Journal club about interpreting

2011-08-23T09:45:00.002+09:00

I wish to start a journal club around interpreting (special focus on liaison, consecutive, business, social, etc.) using Twitter, or Skype. The model is Twitter Journal Club for medical studies. The top page is daunting and apparently meaningless unless you already know about it. Read instead the following.

Read this article here, or if you are not registered to Nature online (free), query the title "Researchers tweet technical talk".
... the About page here.
... and the How it works page here.

The principle would be the same:

- propose and work - that is - read ahead of time an article (press or academic) pertaining to interpreting.
- discuss it at a fixed date and time.

The best way to check the validity of the formula (is Twitter OK? Skype better?) is to try it.

Interested parties, please leave comments or contact me privately :

ldersot {at} gmail (dot) com

The logical mind

2011-08-23T08:48:00.002+09:00

We worked on a .ppt about dietary reference intake of French people and the prospective evolution of the population in the perspective of 2020. At one point, the speech went like this:

if 100% Fr 人 Fish 1/week
=> + 148 380 t end prod
=> ~ x2 raw

(Note : 人 is "people". How neat Chinese script can help with note taking!)

"If 100% of the population would eat fish at least once per week as recommended, there would be a need for an additional 148 380 tons of finished products, that is about twice as much in terms of raw catches."

With this kind of mathematics like formula pattern of speech where the subject and vocabulary are not a major barrier for interpreting, only the logical minded students showed strong mastery. Real strong. I was stunned by the rendering and weaving in action (the concentration, some with eyes almost closed) of speech you don't usually deliver around the coffee machine. They were translating into Japanese, their A language. None of them are professional interpreters, nor do they aim at it. Some are requested from time to time to deliver interpretation - consecutive - at work. The logical, strong analytical mind has a hedge in such situations. There is some fat here to further chew on, maybe in terms of training for business liaison interpreting.

Specialized broad knowledge

2011-08-09T16:54:00.001+09:00

What is general knowledge from the point of view of liaison interpreting? What are the orientations, strategies for getting versed or at least wet in specialized domains through the acquisition of "broad picture", or "metaknowledge" that can be applied to several subjects of potential future assignments?

When the Fukushima trouble occurred, I made a bet with myself that besides loosing all work opportunities - as opportunities vanished the very moment the drama took place - I should invest time and money into getting wet with the single domain that would potentially mean sources of revenues and experience, namely, nuclear. I bought books on the "subject".

But what is the subject of "nuclear", by the way? There was no time to think about this. I got a long and welcome assignment, not because I read books but as usual, by serendipity and sheer luck. What I discovered quickly is that nuclear books were not the proper books I should have read. Instead, what I know now is that "process engineering" was the source of understanding the context, for which no feedback and no briefings were made available. The proper way to restate this is that: it came to no one's mind that interpreters and translators would have tremendously benefited from even the shortest briefing on the process at stake.

Setting aside the lame justification that "you only learn on the job", here are a book progression I now consider to be a valuable approach to the "subject"
which was basically a matter of fluid decontamination engineering. Could this be anticipated? Do you anticipate the assignments to come?

----------------------------
Note:

Do you "design" the expectations by preempting or betting on what subjects should be hot (photovoltaics in Japan right now?) and need "readiness" to get future assignments?
----------------------------

What I mean by book progression is that unless you have a specialized background, you must try and locate that intro book that will usher in practical facts to get the big picture quickly, then, if time allows, further dip into more specific, specialized knowledge and progressively build a broad and sensible understanding to matters at stake. As far as my previous experience is concerned, it looks like this:

Note that these are real titles of real books. One "big discovery" this time is that the "intro books" on the left in green are geared at technicians as opposed to engineers. The engineers books come on the right side starting with "Chemical Engineering Design". On the left, they are devoid of maths and theory and less than 200 or even 100 pages. The two on the left are door stoppers. Yet, even without the maths, they get quite meaningful once you go through the technician books. But the technician books are I believe enough as a thick starter.

I don't mean that this is the solution to get ready as a liaison (on site) interpreter. Understanding the context is essential but not enough (how do you work on glossaries with these?), but constitutes the first ideal step to acquire a "specialized broad knowledge", in this case starting with "process engineering".

As the definition in Wikipedia suggests, process engineering encompasses various industrial domains, and open up understanding of various subjects for possible future assignments. It is one example of a set of generic technical knowledge and maybe be a hint at what an ideal liaison interpreting curriculum might be built around. As it is, it is not enough, but as a basic brick of knowledge to build upon, it now makes sense.

"Process engineering encompasses a vast range of industries, such as petrochemical, mineral processing, advanced material, food, pharmaceutical, and biotechnological industries." (Wikipedia)

Books reading

2011-08-08T10:30:00.001+09:00

I flew over "Healthcare Interpreting In Small Bites" by Cynthia E. Roat. It's a buffet and I prefer a structured focused menu. The author zooms over important subjects though in friendly fashion, subjects that matter for some beyond healthcare interpreting, into liaison for business as well. It is a collection of newsletter articles and makes for an easy read, no sociology jargon and linguistic epithets. Part 2, which covers Exercises and Crossword Puzzles is a page filler of dubious value. Too superficial to make use of. There are however very valuable insights elsewhere, the matter of being polite and the usage of polite English ringing a bell in my first L2 language, as I have been noticed in the past that my Japanese may sound at time "too polite". "Noticed" but not "counseled" on what is a better way to deliver, as usual here. Managing interaction flow, or interpreting in conflictual or grieving settings are other subjects of deep interest. But where does the value stand as with a blog when entries just simply skim the surface and quickly wrap up tips on "how to do in such circumstances" (culturally speaking, Japan stresses where you are wrong while the US highlights what you should do to do better)? I see the value of the book as a laying off of subjects to discuss among pairs and interested people. There are enough subjects for a group of practitioners to read ahead of time, get together and exchange appreciations and experience. For a read alone experience - that is, reading alone with oneself, the value of it is a little bit shallow. If you circle and interact with pairs in professional associations and the like, the book will fill your monthly thematic meetings for a few months to come and open up vistas on further matters of exchange.

Just when I was sighing in a previous post about a love for language declaration with La bella Lingua by Dianne Hales, I started reading "Being and becoming a speaker of Japanese" by Andrea Simon-Maeda.

" In-depth ethnographic details and introspective commentary are skilfully interwoven throughout Simon-Maeda's narrative of her experiences as an American expatriate who arrived in Japan in 1975 - the starting point of her being and becoming a speaker of Japanese. "

This is just an opposite book, at least the first part, deep into academics, no leisurely reading but extremely promising. Aside to this, seen from these shores of strong Yen and heat now on par with the sultry parts of the US, the immediate availability of the ebook version at a small 11 dollars suddenly make ebook reading a tremendous value. More on this volume at a later time.

A love affair

2011-08-02T00:42:00.000+09:00

I just finished reading "La bella lingua" by Dianne Hales. It was a very good read, and incidentally, as I read it over an iPad, I must state that while it is OK reading over such hardware, I am longing for the paper book version for good reasons. That lingering effect after a good book is over is nurtured by the tactile experience of the tangible book, the aimless flipping of it, the feeling of the thickness of the whole object that tells where it started and where it has ended. A page counter is a cold and brutal alternative. All this and other things on a screen are gone. I may keep the iPad for reading about pipes and valves and other technical stuff, and keep paper for things that do not professionally matter. There are no add-ons, no consolatory bonus, which is good by the way because they would be useless. It's not a DVD, just a book in missing.

La Bella lingua is a long declaration of love with a language that happens to be Italian. It is also a call for love sharing which also makes it an exceptional read and promotion for a foreign language. I can remember no equivalent coming out for a language from the "interpreting community". Maybe the love affair is dwarfed by professional and technical concerns. Maybe routine that settled has some role playing in this. Maybe waxing over language but not in stiff upper-lips authority style sounds too "student like".

Dianne Hales is a passionate never-ending lover-student, and I feel some uneasiness, call it jealousy, in regard to the lush life-love-language she describes. A growing number of people around me are used to my joking about "next time, I'll be Italian", which is half-joking only.

Ms. Hales doesn't explicit a bit about the reasons why she does not reside permanently in Italy but you may fathom that professionally speaking, the US is where she makes a living. This allows her I believe to have enjoyed many times the thrill to "go there", and the pang from "leaving it until next time". This is a sensible feeling someone may have already written about somewhere. Partir, revenir. It is overall a very satisfactory read on an all-embracing foreign language love, and a model of sharing a non-exclusive infatuation. In that sense, even if you are not desperately in love with the language at stakes, you may end longing for such feeling.

Vin et peuple heureux

2011-07-24T12:11:00.000+09:00

Three years ago, I launched a professional network with a visibility online and activities offline, in Tokyo. Freelance France Japon is targeted at French (language) Japanese people mostly working freelance or heading small enterprises of their own related with both worlds, be it in or outside Japan. We are a tiny bunch and the 3.11 matter was yet another blow in the fragile will to bond professionally.

FFJ as it is called followed on the step of a perfectly failed trial at gathering Japanese-French interpreters under a single professional and convivial banner. It didn't start but allowed me to complete an analysis of the dynamics at stake that makes interpreters behave likes solitary wolves, here.

FFJ has had a difficult life too, freelancers in this geographic/linguistic niche being usually cautious if not worse toward anything that smells of "association". To what my answer has always been : "me too!" And despite this procrastination, the purpose has always been to nurture a professional dialogue that has been nonexistent among freelancers.

Set "abroad", it has had to meet registration, free at the beginning, with massive non-participation. The Facebook syndrome was functioning perfectly. Besides, how boring it is to talk about professional stuff, what more, with a mix of people with a mix of unrelated professional activities? When time came to introduce a registration fee, a small ¥2000 per year, exactly 50% of the rooster flew away. In the tiny world of expatriate communities (a half-backed truth that doesn't exist unless you settle yourself in the middle of the middle of that chimera), you have been left basically with:

- getting warm with the powers up there, chambers of commerce going hand with hand with the embassy of your country, or going alone. I pass the various ex-centered associations of mixed origin parents and the likes. They do have their value, but they do not help raising awareness of being

- or rather acting as an independent professional, meaning often alone.

Being not a natural socialite, I discovered a lot and am still messing up in developing a true professional self. But lately, the one baffling characteristics has been to hear time and again how argumented are freelancers for not associating. The list of reasons not to engage is staggering, not in length but in banality and sameness.

- I have my own network.
- What's the use of this, anyway?
- I have kids and a family.

.... the least voiced over argument is: "I don't want to meet with competitors".

Aparté wise, when Picasso was met by a visitor who loathed at Gertrude Stein portrait not resembling the model, he snapped back : "she will resemble the painting". My single answer to the issue of usefulness is copied on this saying about Picasso. "Ça sert à quoi? Ça servira."

My broader argument regarding competition as an inhibiting factor for professional bonding to this last one (I don't argument with the paltry first three) has been the same routine. As FFJ is French oriented, I tell them : "Just imagine a typical commercial street in Paris. Over 200 meters, you may find, two butchers, three bread and cake shops and a selection of charcuteries. Sorry for the flower shop and fishmongers but I assume they are not alone too. Are they competitors? Yes. Does this hamper some sort of collaboration? No. Actually, the meat shops are both members of the same meat retailing association, and they do sometimes talk, about what? You name it : meat. Not only do they talk, but the daring one offers to take over the business of the other when they close alternatively for Summer vacations."

You don't do this with supermarkets.

So what is the problem with so many freelancers here? Too many are not settled into a "profession". Vagueness, vague à l'âme and unsettledness related more than often with the uneasy raison d'être abroad do not nurture professional association feeling. There are other reasons to join the circles around chambers of commerce and embassies, more tactical and or political, more fine-tuned toward "usefulness", power being concentrated in tight bundles. None have any inkling toward fostering the "being a independent professional". Besides being potential access to jobs, their dynamics are not freelance oriented.

Before FFJ, the major recognition was to come to terms that nothing, except in a sense the Japan Association of Translators in my case, was available. Facebook came in to mar the situation and make believe (I know there are exceptions) that playing the "bisounours" online was what networking in professional fashion was all about.

FFJ is still struggling for the same original reason. "What's the use of that crap?" Ça sert à quoi ce truc? uttered in automatically irritated mode as if you get fished by a sect member trying to bring you in with your money inside.

I stopped inviting and massaging people to turn members a while ago. No proselytism will do. Individuals must behave individually and see the value there is to socialize in professional manner for professional purposes, "et plus si affinités".

Yesterday, we were packed a good 14 people at home for the first time ever big party ... at home. Not all were members but quite a lot. There was Y. whom M. persuaded to come despite chronicle dragging feet. I heard that she just "didn't like that socializing stuff". How can you decide you don't like vanilla before ever trying it? She came and enjoy.

We had never met but I knew her by heart : a Japanese french-japanese interpreter. They are all the same. Fear is their fuel. So I jokingly started conversion with a "let's not talk to each other because we are competitors so by definition we hate each other, don't we?" She giggled, and for good reason, because implicitly, inside the mind, that's how things always worked.

She reckoned how the kings and keens of J-F interpretations, those teaching at Simul school, had nurtured over generation a pyramid like system of professional society where you would crawl under their feet sheepishly whenever you were cheeky enough to cross their holy paths. They are kings and keens of interpretation and they deserve the titles but most of us don't eat their lunch, so what's the fuss? They don't volunteer for Fukushima. The other interpreters do not deserve the scorn but the sheepish attitude make them look for it. The opposite of sheep is not arrogance but standing for oneself.

One reason why so many interpreters do not have promotional web sites is fear : fear of being spotted by the holy agencies who reign in, or fear to be seen by others. I don't know if it is typical to Japan but this schizophrenic dynamics is the way it is here. The funny thing is to some extent that Y. and I do not belong much to that dynamics, to that ecosystem that oozes of despise and fear.

She postponed the "possible" registration to FFJ for autumn, who knows why, and sheepishly asked if it were possible not to show her face on her future profile page. I said no, although a few members have clanged to that approach. You have to make a coming out and just tell who you are, as a professional service provider. Hiding behind a Hello Kitty picture is lame, at least over FFJ.

The education of a freelancer starts with standing for oneself, and I believe it can be helped by mingling and bonding with pairs, even with other independent professionals with different jobs and specialties. Those who do not think so, I have nothing to counter argue. Their problems with what I see as a truth - whatever the difficulty to implement it - are not mine.

A. who has yet to turn a member sent me a thank you note with this delicious French of her I should hang outside on the door : "Repas délicieux, vin et peuple heureux ..."

Trust, freelancing and the Financial Dpt.

2011-07-22T16:18:00.001+09:00

You learn something everyday. I was just contacted by a blue chip corporation from a country almost next door. They need me but are concerned the finance department may frown upon signing with a freelancer. "Are you incorporated?" I was taken aback and a little bit short on arguments. There is no freelancing incorporation in Japan. Things may be different in your country though. I know that there is a registration system in France for freelancers, the details of which I don't know. In Japan, you may register with a "business concern" name or not for fiscal purpose. But if you don't do this during the first year of practice, you are automatically registered, fiscal wise, because tax only matters with freelancing. No stamps, official signatures, "freelance bank account", etc. Nothing of that kind, including a national consciousness of what freelancing is at absolute frozen temperature. There are no freelancers associations with something like a social claim or strategy. The UK PCG is light years ahead of fathomable stuff in Japan. Unless you are a famous consultant, an attorney or a chef with some fame (then you are already incorporated), you keep, or are supposed to keep a low profile in a social setting where most people goggle, choke and giggle when you announce in casual manner you are working "alone". I do share a common status with their fishmonger though. The world in Japan is corporate, period.

I had once an interesting experience with a foreign client who split the bill with the Japanese side. No problem on the foreign side, but the Japanese side came back to me very affected, saying they have had "no previous" experience of dealing with a (God forbid!) an individual service provider. But the mater was simply an accounting issue. They inquired and I ended up doing the standard thing, that is providing an invoice and got paid.

My final argument for today was that they would pay double through an agency, a claim hiding a long list of "things that are different", like the possibility to brief the interpreter direct and in details, and even maybe meeting prior to the assignment at no charge, and not behaving the linguistic machine kind of perfectly greased and boring interpreter, you know, the "neutrality illusion". I didn't delved into such details though and am waiting, finger crossed (toucher du bois!), hoping that the financial department dares and believe that some level of trust might be possible. After all, they are way much bigger than me, a pebble versus a galaxy. But we do share a common trait : we are all doing business.

Stretchwork belongs to liaison interpreting

2011-07-19T20:39:00.000+09:00

I had lunch today in steam bath like Tokyo - a typhoon is closing in - with N. who is a nice chap and IT specialist. You can be both or one of each neither one. I talked about stretchwork and identity as a professional service provider for rather long terms assignments in corporations, that is exactly what he has been involved with for many years. When I tried and explain what stretchwork is referring to, a key subject many if not all independent professionals practice unknowingly, he snapped back before I ended my explanation : "I have been doing that all the time!".

"Stretchwork is a strategy for bridging the gap between experience and aspiration.
Basically, it builds on a contractor’s current skill set but provides opportunities for
adding new skills. One database contractor explained,

You get contracts that keep stretching you. I know C programming, but I don’t know
the web, so I’ll get a project that requires C programming on the web. I know C, so I
will stretch a little bit, I’ll start learning Web stuff.

A technology architect put it this way:
I pick a project that gives me the best return in terms of skills. If I have
already done 15 projects with databases, it’s very unlikely that I will do the
16th one with databases. I will try to do the 16th with a twist with e-
commerce so I can capitalize on any database background but also get into e-
commerce"

This extract comes from a good short pdf text on the matter that is referring to an academic paper you can find for a fee online.

Both books I have been referring too in previous posts that elaborate on independent work are heavily oriented toward IT professionals, the Silicon Valley being the essential reference to that matter. But by reading the short description of stretchwork above, it is obvious that liaison interpreting at least has been a succession of brash or foolish acts into stretchworking. That these had been performed voluntary or not is another issue. The very first time, still a university student, I was invited by the faculty head in Paris to accept a short work consisting of simply listening to a group of Japanese people visiting, if I remember well, a water treatment plant. I was invited to be a spy, an eavedropper. No one inquired first whether the ears had listening competence enough for the task and I have long forgotten, and on a purpose most probably, my performance of more than 30 years ago. Before I said yes, I first said no. To what the faculty head snapped back: "You will always be more competent at Japanese than your boss." She was right at the time but no longer nowadays. It was in a sense provoked stretchwork. Later on, getting wet into liaison interpreting while still a student with assignments that were paying at the time an incredible amount of money, was stretchworking on purpose but without any consciousness. It just happened and the reward was juicy.

It is to some extent nothing different now. Unless you focus on, let's say, medical interpretation, stretchwork is a matter of fact, otherwise, in liaison you will never be "ready". Which means that "readiness" needs be the focus of attention and nurturing, based on the very awareness of what stretchwork is all about, for at least the purpose to refine the strategy.

Increase your self-reliance

2011-07-19T17:36:00.001+09:00

The self-training book has arrived. It is somewhat skinny when you consider the hefty volumes you can buy for the same price, especially these days thanks to a strong Yen. The title is "Reading a P&ID". It is skinny but looks good, down to earth, practical.

I am glad to have read these lines on page 5:

"You do not need to be an engineer to read a P&ID. Experienced operators should already be familiar with process equipment and functions that are described on the diagrams for their work area. This course will give you the tools needed to understand how this information is recorded on drawings. P&IDs can be a valuable source of information to help you perform your job and increase your self-reliance."

Now, how does this translate in the context of interpreting (in liaison mode) ?

- You don't need to be an engineer. Good news.
- You don't even need to be an operator, experienced or not, because all you are required to do is interpret.
- Forget about familiarity with process equipment and functions. Who cares? You are a language specialist, aren't you. That should suffice.
- You don't even need, as a consequence, to go through this course, because you don't need to understand. You just need to interpret.
- Help yourself with self-reliance to help you perform your job.

Now, let's write this again from a perfect world point of view.

Veteran interpreters on the job will brief you on what is essential, one being able to understand to some extend P&IDs. A one hour one-to-one briefing with an engineer on location will save you time reading theoretical stuffs that are in effect useless for the task to perform and quickly ramp you up to what is needed from you as an interpreter. Most of the story is told over that mysterious map called a P&ID which is actually no mystery and rather easy to decipher with some guidance.

Nothing of the kind happened. Experience has shown time and again that clients are seldom able to provide guidance. And it is not their fault. They are busy, but more than that, they are fishes swimming in the water as a matter of fact when what you need is a little push because you already have some background that needs stretchwork, a quick fix to understand the matter called "water", the dynamics of it, the direction to follow to get the core issue at stake for the current situation. In other words, a good start. I leave open, or call it blank, what the role of a veteran interpreter could be, or could have been.

If you get into process engineering, the above mentioned skinny book is a powerful boost for some 100 pages. Add to it something about pipping and valves. I recommend this one.

Increasing self-reliance at the preparation stage - for long term liaison interpreting - could be a team effort granted there is a team leader who puts meat on the sterile bone called "team". It doesn't happen just by calling it a name as with Alladin. In the meantime, self-reliance is indeed a solitary expression but it can be nurtured, and the efforts to do so shared in public. I do think preparation - focused - and "culture générale" - broad - are a pair of matters that matter most to the subject at stake in this blog as in others. How do you nurture self-reliance, indeed? It doesn't receive the attention it deserves.

Here's the program

2011-07-19T14:39:00.002+09:00

It is a good year and half that the Learning to liaise in Business conference in Trieste took place, exactly on December 4th, 2009. It seems that papers have yet to be released. The last time I inquired, I was hinted back that they were due this Summer.

- Market Expectations – What does the market expect from you? And what can you expect from the market?

- Cultural Compatibility Indices for Facilitated Mediation.

- Business Interpreting through the Study of International

Business Ethics.

- Interpreting Strategies for Cultural Mediation.

- The Liaison Interpreter: an Intuitive and Impartial

Cultural Mediator.

- Interpreting for Business as Opposed to Political Discourse.

Veronica Drugaş – La comunicazione transculturale: quando ad interagire sono due

culture dello stesso ceppo linguistico.

- Training in Business Interpreting and Computer-based

Materials: Work-in-progress.

- Teaching Liaison Interpreting.

Could there be a juicier program than this one? No, but I can only envision the coffee breaks. It was Italy so the coffee must have been first class. By the way and incidentally, how come things take so much time to be published? I know the answers: because it has always been like that (because a rose is a rose is a rose); because publication is secondary to being there: the academic socialization matters most; because .... you're not part of that world, that's none of your business. In the meantime, Interpret America has not listed "business interpretation" as a full fledged category. You know, only your customer do not speak English. They are a rare species found everywhere.

If you believe Google scholars, "Liaison interpreting" is a vanishing expression in 2011, only gaining reference on the battle field as demonstrated over the Unprofessional Translator.

So much things could be fed through discussion without a .ac at the URL ending.

The matter of professional independence

2011-07-16T10:11:00.000+09:00

The matter of professional independence is the background landscape of probably many interpreters and translators around. As a common ground of freelancing, it is not specifically related to the profession I am primarily pondering about here but some serious stuff readings around freelancing have had a powerful and long lasting eye opener effect in the past years. These are the kind of books you read again and again some brilliant chapters that stand as essential reminders and help make sense of things. Besides some good articles not carried by the standard superficial tongue in cheek resources focused on freelancing online, the following two books are the current source for repeated reading: "Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy", and "Freelancing Expertise: Contract Professionals in the New Economy". None are referring to interpreting but they still ring a strong bell, especially the first one more focused on middle to long term mission based contractors working inside a corporation. I knew of some in-house interpreters who were freelance contractors and fit the descriptions.

Learning contexts

2011-07-15T19:17:00.000+09:00

Clumsy monologue starts here. This has been an exceptional assignment running with a few blanks for more than two months now. Nuclear mess killed the market - temporarily - but provided an unexpected opportunity in nuclear industry.

Short to very short assignments may be standard to liaison interpreters. At least, it had been my experience so far, until March 11. When you advertise services that encompass large domains (and this relates to stretchworking strategy by the way), how do you learn to learn, to feed the broad as well as focused understanding of things when things and subjects so often change unless you work with recurrent clients? Me too I am reading daily in various domains, but what should come first as far as meta-knowledge are concerned? Reading news reports on Fukushima did set a sort of loose canvas of contextual knowledge but have been of no practical use so far.

The discovery of something new may come (in the perspective of interpretation and translation as well) with frustration and the scrambling to try and cling to something that would provide a quick fix to grasp what is at stake, what will definitely help gain confidence when the assignment goes on for days and weeks in a domain where you start unequipped. The standard suggestion I have heard time and again here is that time and humility will help. I don't know why humility gets into the picture but it is a very local concern.

When other veteran translators around focus on vocabulary only while you stick to the fact that context rules, you are left alone gaping at your, yes, incompetence. I have been asked very narrow questions on some words usage in French when all I wanted for a picture of the machine at stake.

For sure, time and the consequence of slowly catching the big picture of the subject do suggest that in order to get wet, you have to keep soaking in the bath for a while. This is not a clever discovery. Yet, I am in the thinking that these are feeble arguments especially when interpreters are supposed to know everything. "After all, you speak the language, don't you?"

Where are the accelerating factors to grasp faster and somewhat meet the expectations faster too? This may sound indeed arrogant but when time is not given, strategies to accelerate understanding of the context through weeding out what is not essential for the time being are essential. Where are they? In Wikipedia?

Over time comes a settling down reaction where loads of half-read books and written resources hastily printed and piling up start to make sense, at least for some chapters. There is nothing such like a single context in a single industry. So many things and subjects can be covered that would require an encyclopedic kind of knowledge with instant retrieval function. But this is interpretation and translation, in-house, and there is no time allowed to learn other than learning while doing and stumbling, which is not permitted. The settling down that looks like Rubik's cube pieces getting into place is showing this time an interesting apsect I have difficulties to elaborate in words. Sorry about that. That's where dialog is required, not monologue like this one.

Again, contexts are various and with multiple angles, but what I have discovered over these weeks is that in the current context at least, learning fast for translating and interpreting purpose requires weeding out large chunks of the big books I bought. A slim book on the matter of nuclear theory will have sufficed. A late observation of what is at stake here has yielded an important discovery, that most things, discussions and discourses finally have been revolving around two pieces of knowledge: system structures and articulations, and how things work together. In engineering lingo, it means understanding P&ID and PFD, that is, Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams, and Process Flow Diagram.

Both are some kind of generic or meta-knowledge, in the sense that they apply to broader that the sole industry name at stake. They are the ABCs of the engineers around. These two documents effectively usher in a large chunk of the vocabulary needed in many circumstances and within a context. The recommendation therefore would be for a translator or interpreter in liaison mode going into engineering to focus on understanding process descriptions methodologies, that would inevitably usher in, in a dynamic context, lots of vocabulary leading to better understanding of yet further contexts and language attached. I am not clear on this but "metaknowledge for interpreting in various specialties" seems to be a potent and mightily daunting subject. How to prepare for interpretation (and translation) when speed is everything and you are not God may deserve some discussion I long to hear about and read. End of the monologue.

Tight lips

2011-07-06T08:40:00.000+09:00

Another key facial, gestural pics from the news. After the kneeing and bending down to the floor, here comes the media remorse with tight lips and teary eyes.

The gentleman's name is Ryu Matsumoto. He blundered, or gaffed as the media and everyone else would conveniently wrap up, when the show should require instead to crush the brake pedal and observe. Mr. Matsumoto said rough, despising things as a short lived Recovery Minister to some of Tohoku governors. Tohoku is the name of the region battered by the 3-11 disaster. He even ordered the media to keep lips shut. Fortunately, the media didn't obey the dictator apprentice. This is a very Japanese public show or remorse, the tight lips face.

The more interesting aspect is that Mr. Matsumoto who is originated from Kyushu, that is in simple geographical terms, at the exact opposite side of Tohoku, has been displaying the truth, or let's call it the Kyushu truth, that of a majority of people far away from Northern Japan who despise the Northerners because they both share a common ground of countryside. That is where Japan comes close to Italy but with two Calabrias. Regionalism is strong, even if the power is centralized in Tokyo. The roughly brushed portraits of tendencies typical of the broad regions as spelled by Tokyoites tell a story. The hungry spirit who want to reach the capital city and become famous usually come from the South. They are entrepreneurs, they wanna be a part of it, Tokyo, Tokyo! I am told that this apply to Shikoku island as well. On the opposite side are the Northerners, poor in expressiveness, short and slow speakers, never raising the voice, enduring the originally harsh regional conditions. They may be coming by train and land at Ueno station in Tokyo, famous because it is a rare station that looks European, in the sense that the tracks do stop at the station. But on landing, you have the legend of the poor Tohoku emigrant being lured into poorer conditions by rascals waiting for them right on the platform. Kyushu and Tohoku are sharing a common historical factor which is largely past poverty.

In a more international context, in March this year, ex-senior U.S. diplomat Kevin Maher met the same destiny when expressing despise at the lazy people of Okinawa qualified as "masters of extortion", who are also the first to leave the islands seeking better conditions. An interestingly large number of singers of national and even international fame come from Okinawa who left to find America in the capital. As people say here in Tokyo, they ar of the "hungry" type. Understanding regionalisms traits with all their simplistic reductions is also an important piece of cultural awareness. It helps better understand the context, which is key as anyone reading knows.

And by the way, how are Tokyoites qualified? As the nice idiots who gently welcome and answer to the unending stream of questions from the freshly arrived Southerner claiming allowed that she is so dumb coming from the countryside. Once fed with information, they unleash hunger and build up their career, and risk ending up balking at the tamed, slow moved enduring Northerners. All this make things look so simple, all the more when reality often tends to look much like the rough descriptions.

I want to create glossaries

2011-07-05T13:12:00.000+09:00

Unfortunately, the enticing TermMode of InterpretBank doesn't work on this computer, although the ConferenceMode does. Could it be related with the Windows 7 Professional version in Japanese only? It would cost nothing less than ¥16,000 to upgrade to the multilingual version just "to see". Or maybe it is just a matter of software greenness. I would have loved to try it though for it does make sense in consecutive, liaison, dialogue, whatever you want to call "non-simultaneous" modes. In business settings and depending on the speed of delivery, looking for a word on the side while listening at a speech part that doesn't require "a lot of notes" if no notes at all, has been a standard way of working for the past years. I remember A. shocked at the idea to put in full view of the client and people around your electronic dictionary (sometimes plural), and now your PC with independent wireless Internet access (how many Japanese corps do not provide Internet access for visitors? Too many). I was shocked in reverse. These are tools intended to better deliver, when circumstances allow. What's wrong with exposing these? Anyway, Japanese to name but one language would require a three field entry interface, for you may want to also add the phonetic reading at times. I am waiting for version 1.01.

The big books arrived

2011-07-04T12:42:00.000+09:00

When the assignments are short as is the case in liaising for business and technology, preparation time is usually short and requires a plan to focus on what should be needed. The less details the client provide, the bigger you may get into the wrong appreciation and direct your efforts in what may matter less. But what about when you intend to get wet if not drenched in something you haven't been munching upon for years, but you bet it will be in high demand? It is no secret nor a show of cleverness that Energy might be one such huge subject with potential for assignments. I did a preemptive bet (how a bet could not be preemptive?) with nuclear energy following the Fukushima accident and things turned out to justify the bet although in an unexpected way. Unexpected things happening is a standard element of assignments. It is the level of un-expectation that raise the tension. The most unexpected situation I can remember was a case where hyaluronic acid as applied in cosmetic was the subject, and a doctor was called upon in a meeting, unexpected of course, to deliver a short presentation on HA as used in a very narrow, unexpected niche of ENT application. I happened to have personal experience in ENT and an amateur interest to medicine that helped a lot.

This time the situation is different for the subject is a continent and "general culture" around it must be fed extensively, including some of the basic, generic strings that sustain the subject sub-elements. Doing your homework is leaving the comfort of shallow reading. One thing I noticed working around an army of engineers is that those people are masters of envisioning things for which they may still have no drawing ready to feed the imagination. Visualizing is one of those skills highlighted as key in interpretation, besides so many other keys.

There are more big books in English, mostly produced in the USA, than in French or Japanese. The "Handbooks of ...." are many, enticing and daunting at the same time. They make a powerful thump when allowed a free fall upon the futon. Choosing the hardcover version when available is a wise choice. Selecting the right volumes has been a long process where previous experience nurtured the strategy. Broadening the scope of learning must help visualization. A parallel but time consuming reading effort with Google pictures to show how things look when not picture is available on paper might be interesting to try.

With the two other languages that matter to me, the choice means many slimmer books. Money wise, the handbooks may come cheaper. One has to refrain to buy too much and risk piling up yet another tower of unread material though. I played with the idea to buy at least one version in electronic version. I am glad I didn't indulge in it. There may be a matter of conflictual reading dynamic at stake but I tend to forget the small number of electronic books I bought for the iPad. The unflippability of an ebook does make a difference. Magazines fit somewhat better on the tablet.

Anyway the big chunk of books are here. They are way less heavy than expected. They call for active reading strategies

That is to say

2011-07-03T05:29:00.000+09:00

Another issue of the AIIC newsletter, and invariably a redundant symptom of "Us versus them". In an article about interpreting work and anti-ageing (no hyaluronic acid involved), you can read this :

"The question the AIIC Research Committee has been exploring as part of its Lifespan Project is how age-related changes in language abilities and the cognitive abilities underlying them are experienced by professional multilinguals – namely, conference interpreters."

Definition of NAMELY

: that is to say : to wit

Why this redundant emphasis on professional multilinguals as being ( de facto) conference interpreters?

"Des psychologues sont-ils sur les lieux?"

No Iraqi terp, no community interpreter will ever eat your lunch. Never. Have no fear.

Sorry to put the society to so much trouble

2011-06-28T11:07:00.000+09:00

TEPCO chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata bowed and repeated how sorry he, as a company head, was. The sentence he used as reported by the press was:

「福島第一原発事故、計画停電では、広く社会に多大なご迷惑をかけたことを深くおわびする」

The maning of it comes later, on purpose. It could be used in any repenting situation, from zero to +20.000 victims. Saying sorry is not an issue here. It is a social obligation so you have books about apologizing, but no chapter about the need to apologize, as if no apology or escaping with arguments (it's not me but the other) were an option. It's not. There are no exception. And even though the bowing side may not be the culprit, from a social decency point of view, it must first apology for the nuisance.

The nuisance, the keyword in formal, formalized Japanese is "meiwaku". It is translated alternatively by:

annoying
inconvenient
pesky
pesty
troublesome
unwanted

Meiwaku being short of synonyms in Japanese, it is a weightless word. It fits to the apple that fell on the head of a passersby calling for the tree owner to apology. It fits for an annoying nuisance like that at Fukushima. The English too is poor although varied. Any single word listed over here is lame, no, abysmally lame in weighing in the death toll to start with the gravest inconvenience.

A literal translation would read like this:

I apologize for the huge inconvenience that the accident at Fukushima Dai-ichi and the planned power cuts have brought to the society at large.

There is hardly any other way, any larger than huge inconvenience that can fit the bill. In the social setting with its own version of appropriateness, the sentence is perfect and the ire is not linguistically related. The words, fixed as they are, do not matter. What does matter is to utter them, clear or mumbling, and bow.

The interpreter to Western language may be overwhelmed by the lameness of the translation, frantically something more definitive, deeper, crushingly tragic that would meet the realities of victims and shaken people safe but troubled by all that has been going on since March 11. In that sense, Western languages may be more creative, the speaker allowed or expected to select from a huge, image laden vocabulary that may belong to tragedy, theater that is, to allegoric poetry, among many other pools of language available to express what words can't fill up perfectly.

There are many other redundant situations where Japanese comes as an easier language to master, by simply applying the adequate pattern of speech.

Pure information

2011-06-24T22:38:00.000+09:00

Valuable data may not reside where you are looking for them. Taxis in Tokyo are getting stuffed ever more over the years with "entertainment", now the LCD screen oozing mindless ads. Finding the button to call it quit - you still have the freedom to do so - is not easy, on purpose.

Pamphlets on many kinds targeting the male customer in business jacket have been around for years on. But I found, and for once had a look at a pamphlet waxing on a tap water filtering system aimed at corporation. The pamphlet, perfectly in line with current concerns about radioactivity claims to drastically reduce Cesium and the likes. It even shows an illustration on how several layers of chemical processes, including reverse osmosis, get rid of the muck and deliver clearer water. The pamphlet is an excellent 101 indirect introduction full with technical vocabulary related with my job these days, although it is not about filtering tap water. It's a precious piece of serendipity I would have not found boarding the subway.

Visibility of failure

2011-06-20T14:31:00.000+09:00

Everything is recorded but not necessarily where you may think to look at first. I have been reading for extended reasons an academic article whose title is "STRETCHWORK: MANAGING THE CAREER PROGRESSION PARADOX IN EXTERNAL LABOR MARKETS" by SIOBHAN O’MAHONY
Harvard University and BETH A. BECHKY University of California, Davis. It was published in 2006, in the Academy of Management Journal, volume 49 number 5. I paid US$25 for it. It is worth all the pennies. There is not a single reference to interpreting or translation. Yet, it hits the nail on the head granted you are a freelancer, or more impressively, an independent contractor whose service happens to be interpretation or translation. There is a free article here, "Bluff your way into a new job", which is a watered down version, very much oversimplified, and with a nasty catchy title. You will loose at least one essential chapter in that free article, the one that refers to "Visibility of failure". My current work environment is the scene of a counter dogma play where I am a powerless prop, except that the position allows for analyzing the situation between bouts of translation work. A new interpreter, in the sense that she was new to the situation, is not only proving to be top class, but she happens to share a professional training background with most people around. Imagine that you are a physician hired to interpreting for other physicians. What would happen to neutrality, to cite one mantra, if you quickly understand not only the technical issues at work, but the whole differences in terms of culture and communication dynamics? Neutrality during interpretation may be guaranteed, but before and after that, you naturally end up as being an interpreter cum consultant, and in the current case, a formidable reference to people around having come in Japan for a mission, but by far and large foreign to the country.

So, what is the relationship with visibility of failure? It points at being comparably largely inadequate and having to cope with the visibility (to others) of your own failure to match a situation that simply can't be matched. In the academic article, the authors explain for a totally different profession that visibility of failure is something you manage by declining an offer, knowing that you will be no match. It is a preemptive strategy I am learning at post level because it could not be fathomed prior to it. There are different options, one that would be to advance the contract termination date coming soon (but money is a powerful incentive). Visibility of failure has tremendous potential negative consequences, the major one being the high risk to loose referral power, or put under a different spotlight, the risk that one be the target of negative buzz. Comparatively, loosing face, which comes down to the issue of managing that feeling, is a marginal itching. Turning the situation, low key, into ones advantage, for instance learning a new domain and betting on future use of it, suggesting to be of service when really needed, showing concern for future development and the potential to help are among the ways to wrap it clean, almost clean that is.

Fukushima terps

2011-06-18T06:32:00.001+09:00

There are terps in Fukushima too. They face danger, not of a weaponry kind though. They are mostly interpreters because they happen to speak two languages, and they are all male, not for religious and social reasons. I would like to stop a little on this last fact. In a massively female profession (I have that sense that "massive" is even larger here in Japan than in your backyard), the foreign enterprises providing services on the Fukushima nuclear plant have been facing an acute drastic shortage of male interpreters. Interpreting is not a male profession because in the local social psyche, a male professional is working in a corporation, gets a salary and brings back the money to the wife each end of the month to raise a family. It is not that Japan is devoid of "independent professionals". It is rather that the social blindness to the fact that there are independent professionals indeed besides doctors and lawyers, like the fruit and vegetable tiny shop owner where I buy bananas these days, is stronger than tungsten. But I leave this issue for another time.

You may be shielded by a glass pane doing simul, but this is not for radiation protection purpose. On location terps in Fukushima spend a few hours daily with full face mask that are not the best tool to communicate. They are facing dangers, radiation not being in the short term the top contender in the list. Rubles, swarms of people around wearing the same masks that limit angle of vision, pipes of all types all laid out on passage ways, protuberant various objects, machinery of all kinds, slippery dirt make for many traps to fall onto.

Contrary to most terps in human battling war zones, the majority of these terps in a contaminated location are foreign, to the region, and to the subjects at stake. To my best awareness, they face a situation unknown to them in many ways. Walking around industrial areas require a different pace and acute attention to the environment compared with walking the office carpet. What with when you are donning thin astronaut like gears. A full OJT situation, where you basically discover the subject on the job, is a powerful source of stress. The legal compulsory training you go through before, at least the basics of radiation protection I have been through (but I am not going to work anytime soon on location), doesn't give you a single idea of the subjects at stake. Many situations you intervene as "liaison interpreter" (you hardly hear this expression these days except in this blog) are of a niche size. Gamma ray generation won't help in anyway to understand the equipment at stake. I learned on the spot (and forgot) about vehicle tires manufacturing a long time ago. Most of them are learning on the spot, and sweating with that uneasiness that is a powerful depressing factor that you simply don't understand for a while what they are all talking about, starting with the people speaking your mother language. And I am aching and sorry for them because a few simple acts could reduce the stress and boost readiness, prior to OTJ, although I know that local technicians understand and are helpful after the session to raise the level of understanding of the confused terp devoid of an engineering diploma.

I could argue but decided not to that even a one hour briefing to the parting interpreters on the real subject at stake (forget the gamma alpha beta triptych) would be better than nothing. Technicians coming from far away to the local war zone are briefed. The interpreters I have seen are not. My decision to not intervene and consult stems from the fact that I know the reaction from people who always know better than you what interpreting is all about. Besides, other office interpreters too are implicitly supporting the arguments: "That's the reality of terrain interpreting: you learn on the spot and figure out how things work and are linked mostly using your brain and talking with people around who know." In the best of worlds, interpreters would take on their own hand the briefing task of new interpreters without arguing or begging understanding and a green light from the hiring side. But that would require a system stronger than sheer will to share with others.

And think for a second how interpreters of all kinds and all levels are the number one culprits of the situation, leaving besides the closed knit ivory towers of research and academia the task to stand for their turf. I would not dare argue on engineering matters with all the nice and (really) bright engineers I am meeting everyday. They would "naturally" have a spontaneous gentle and innocent say on what you do, or are trying to do. Period on this.

I know the argument of "no time" which is true, but there is enough time for a one hour briefing. I know the puzzled look back meaning: "but you speak the language don't you?", to which the urge to shout back a "it's the context stupid, the language comes next!" bursts inside.

Anyway, it is time to secretly extend the story of war terps to the contaminated zones of the industrial world and start practice with a mask on.

Post-preparation and enlightenment

2011-06-15T10:34:00.000+09:00

If you set aside the matter of preparing "for interpretation" (and what about preparing for translation?), you are left with "preparation". When this takes place after the show has started, what should it be called? Maybe enlightenment. It is the first time a novel, a quick read, has been so enlightening. Daily shower of press readings about the Fukushima mess and things nuclear was the glue, formless. "La centrale", the nuclear plant is the binder. It has set parts of the Rubick cube into place. There are readings that especially work after, not before. "La centrale" puts images onto stories heard first hand from nuclear site workers going onsite donning hazmat suit, dosimeter and full face mask "jumping into the water" as they call it. I am also reading a book "for engineers" as the cover stresses many times. It is an ethnographic description of the daily life of engineers. What would have been too much "specialized" before is now a very interesting reading, because "life experience" is reverberating with the story developed on paper.

Whereas, general culture would lead anyone to invest reading time (don't forget listening and viewing time) on the science and technology of nuclear energy, real life informs that more minutes, off-centered readings are more in steps with what matters onsite. But when starting without experience, you are left nurturing culture with broad, general matters. Some systematization in choosing actionable contents to nurture general culture might be in demand.