The Japan Association of Translators is running a great seminar called The Japanese Automotive T&I Seminar. This is a continuation of the Honda seminar that I had blogged about a few years ago. It is going to have two very experienced instructors.
If anyone out there is in my area and interested, you should definitely join us on September 1, 2016.
See details below:
I found a wonderful resource of old interpreting tapes on Youtube. They are probably from the 70s and a little slow paced, but they have great practice exercises (starting around 2b). Also, you will get to hear Nishiyama Sen-sensei around 30a, so that is exciting. If you don’t know that name, you really should. He is basically the father of J<>E simultaneous interpreting.
Enjoy!
I want to start a series on the essential skills involved in interpreting. While I would love to start with something nice and easy, I am choosing to open the series with the most essential skill: maintaining confidentiality.
Much has been written on this topic from the AIIC (conference), NAJIT (judiciary), NCIHC (healthcare), among others. If you take the time to go through these standards, you will see that interpreters are held to the same level of confidentiality as doctors and lawyers. So, we are going to take a different approach here. We are going to discuss how to handle confidentiality when you work in close quarters; in-house.
Let’s take this common example. You are interpreting at a meeting with American and Japanese staff. Things are going smoothly, when one of the Japanese associates says something inflammatory, immediately followed by 「さっきは訳さないで」(don’t translate that). Even if you are working simultaneously, you likely hadn’t caught up to the inflammatory statement yet. So, what do you do now?
This happens all too often, especially when the in-house interpreter is someone who the Japanese staff trust and rely on often. So, first, congratulate yourself that the staff member was willing to say that in front of you. But then what?
Think of it from the Americans’ perspective for a minute. They just heard something. Don’t know what, but it sounded pretty angry. They want to know what was said. They are relying on you to provide that. But then switch perspectives. The Japanese person let his tongue slip because he thought no one (who might be offended by the comment) could hear him. He is trusting you to keep it secret.
So the first thing you must do is:
Manage the Flow of Discourse
You are in control of what happens now. Both parties are looking at your panicked face waiting for your next word. So the best policy is to let the room know what is going on. You can either do that by saying, “The speaker would like the last statement not to be translated” (not my fault guys), “The interpreter would like a minute to clarify” (I can smooth this over), or “Kindly disregard the previous outburst” (he’s just venting guys, don’t worry about it).
But how do you decide which to do?
Who are you accountable to?
You are being paid to translate one language into the other. Both parties are trusting you to conduct your work fairly. They trust that what you are saying accurately reflects the speaker’s intended meaning. If you lose that trust on either side, you are no longer reliable; regardless of how good your language skills may be. Confidentiality is the most important skill for an interpreter.
But you are first and foremost accountable to your own conscience.
If something is said that is unlawful, unethical, or otherwise morally grey and the speaker is asking you not to divulge that information to the other party, that is line you should never cross. Both parties must know that you are reliable but also an ethical human being. If you are ever in the situation where you are asked to give a false statement, interpret something that you know to be illegal, or cover up someones indiscretion, you should immediately recuse yourself from the meeting. You do not have to keep interpreting when you are not morally comfortable with the situation*.
*Note: This is not true of generally uncomfortable situations such as when someone is cursing a lot, talking about a traumatic experience, or yelling at someone. These are all uncomfortable, but you have the responsibility to portray them faithfully and not try to downplay anything that is being said.
Second, you are accountable to your company. They hired you and they expect you to work for them. So if the meeting was between your company and another company, you should keep what was said to yourself.
What I do
When I am faced with this situation, I like to handle it this way. Usually I am working simultaneously so I am close to the offending comment. I pause and then say, “Don’t translate that last part,” just as the person said it. This way the Americans know that something was said and can chose to push back or leave it be. If I cannot do this, I will say “The interpreter has omitted the last statement at the request of the speaker.” This usually makes the Americans perk up and want to know what was said. But then you are back to interpreting, not intervening.
But the most important thing you can do is:
Training
Being in-house, you have the unique ability to haul other associates off into a room and say don’t you ever put me in that situation again. Okay, maybe not that forcefully, but the offending party does need to know that what they did is not acceptable behavior. Anything said in the room will be translated in the room. So if they want to vent in their language, they should stop the meeting, ask for a minute, and then they can say whatever they would like. Little quips when they think no one is listening would be inappropriate in any business setting, even when two languages aren’t involved.
So remember, in the moment it will be tough, but you have the opportunity to clear it up later and help stop it in the future. Above all, please remember to maintain the trust of both parties equally. Once you break on parties’ trust, you are no longer considered reliable, and that’s what confidentiality is all about.
In my last post, I explained how to use Word Chaining to practice memorizing random words; which will help you get better at interpreting.
I stumbled upon a website that is great for that. Brain Connection’s Word Recall Game will show you a series of random words – each for a few seconds. Then it stops and asks you to write down as many as you remember, before showing you the answers. It is the perfect format for practicing Word Chaining. Give it a try today!
I put together a practice schedule to help me polish the basic skill set that goes into translation and interpretation. I will put the schedule up here and then post occasional progress updates. Feel free to practice along with me and post any resources you found particularly helpful.
| Task | Applicable Objective | |
| 1 | 10 digit number memorization | I-3 |
| 2 | Number interpretation | I-3 |
| 3 | Word chaining | I-1 |
| 4 | Phrase memorization | I-1, T-1, G-1, G-2 |
| 5 | Quick word interpreting | I-1, G-1 |
| 6 | Shadowing | I-2, T-1, G-1, G-2 |
| 7 | Consecutive practice | I-1, I-2 |
| 8 | Translation editing | T-2, G-1, G-2 |
Listen to a recording of ten unrelated numbers. Repeat as the recording plays. Then, play the recording again and wait until the first two numbers have been said to start repeating. This way, you are hearing numbers and saying different numbers.
Example:
Recording: “1, 5, 33, 47, 118…”
You: “……….1, 5, 33, 47, 118…”
Listen to a recording of random numbers (over 6 digits) and interpret them into the opposite language.
Memorize a series of random words by forming a story in your head as you hear them.
Memorize sentences from JLPT N1 vocabulary book. Repeat the previous one before starting to memorize the next.
Prepare a list of 10 words in Japanese and English. Look at each word in the Japanese column and say the English version. Repeat with opposite language. Time target of 10 seconds to interpret the whole list (ie: no time to think about it).
Listen to a speech and repeat the speaker’s words as he is speaking without changing or missing any words. This is done in the language of the presenter (ex: listen to Japanese and repeat in Japanese).
Listen to a 5 minute speech and take notes. Interpret after speech has concluded. Record your interpretation. Re-watch speech and check for errors.
Take an old translation and remove any confidential content (company names, etc.) Post on lang-8 to solicit corrections. Compile revised version in translation notebook.
Recently, I have been looking for more ways to practice interpreting Japanese into English. But it is harder than you might think to find good resources. Even though there is a wealth of Japanese material out there, it is hard to find any that fits the general guidelines for good interpreting practice material.
What makes a good interpreting practice resource
Drawing from several different sources (see below), I have come to the conclusion that J>E practice material should be the following:
Obviously, these are ideal conditions for a beginner practice session. Once you have gotten used to these, you can move on to longer resources, with more than one speaker, on a more specialized topic. But if you want to be successful in practicing, I recommend you start easy and progress to more difficult. You may find it harder than you think at first.
Recommended Resources?
Given these conditions, I have only found three good resources. I explained one in the last post: Japanese to English Speech Interpreting Practice.
The second one is NHK Easy News. The benefit to these short news casts is that the audio is slow, but still natural paced, and there is a transcript. There is no English translation, but because the vocabulary has been simplified, it should be easy enough to understand. Also, they are short so it makes great quick practice.
The third is FluentU. With this site, you can access videos in Japanese (or several other languages) which have been transcribed and have vocabulary lists pre-generated. However, they do not allow you control over how you print the transcript. It automatically prints in a huge font with furigana. This means that it takes up several pages, making it difficult to use for something like sight translation. Also, the video topics vary a lot so you have to be choosy.
Resources:
Conference Interpreting: A Student’s Practice Book by Andrew Gillies
同時通訳者の英語ノート術＆学習法 by 工藤 紘実
はじめてのウィスパリング同時通訳 by 柴田バネッサ清美
In Andrew Gillies’ book, Conference Interpreting: A Student’s Practice Book, one of the first pieces of advice he gives is to work into your strongest language when practicing. For me, that means I should practice interpreting Japanese into English, not the other way around (which I have always found to be easier).
With that in mind, I have been looking for material that is suitable for practicing interpretation. Gillies goes on to explain that such material should have a narrative and be of a reasonable length without being overly technical (at least in the beginning). He adds that news broadcasts are about the worst thing you could chose because they change topics approximately every 90 seconds. Since that is almost all I listen to, I went in search of some real speeches in Japanese.
I was able to find this site which has the script from several speeches made by Prime Minister Abe, along with their English translation. A few even have the video of the speech, which makes them ideal for practicing.
http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/enzetsu/e_souri.html
So far, this is the best resource I have come up with. If anyone finds others, please share them.
So, let’s start with a disclaimer. I live in the mid-west in the United States of America; far removed from the country of Japan or even the Japanese communities of California and New York. While I work at a Japanese company and have exposure to the language every day, that is not enough to keep up translator level language skills. I need to expose myself to a lot more language. In a sense, I have to create my own immersion environment. So, here is how I do it. I am going to share with you the resources I use and the way they help with my translation and interpretation skills and practice.
Reading of the Paper Variety
Once a year, I manage to get to a Japanese book store, either in Portland, OR, where my family is from, or in Japan when I’m on business trips. While there, I buy up a bunch of books to read for the year. Some of them turn out to be boring, some interesting, but I try to give them at least 2 or 3 chapters before giving up. I try not to force my way through books that I dislike, because I will just give up reading all together. I also get a good mix of fiction, non-fiction, technical, magazines, and manga.
The fiction helps me make my interpreting more natural. I usually read novels that are based in everyday life so that I can reuse the phrases I learn in my interpretation. On the other hand, the non-fiction seems to help with my writing. Self-help type books are usually written in a very clear and easy to understand manner. I can reuse a lot of the grammar and structures in my Japanese translations. The magazines help me to stay in touch with current issues in Japan. I love Nikkei Woman! After falling in love with it on my last trip to Kinokuniya in Portland, I have been having it ordered monthly from Japan through our parent company.
On that note: If you work for a Japanese company, it is likely that packages come in from Japan every month for your 駐在員. If you have a good relationship with them, you may be able to request a book or two and get free shipping 🙂 Try not to go overboard; one or two a month max. If that is not you, try a forwarding service like Tenso or White Rabbit Express. Kinokuniya also has a lot of books in stock in the US and if they don’t have it, they will order it for you Japan, though they mark up quite a lot to cover the import and shipping costs.
Reading of the Digital Variety
I try to keep up with a couple different online publications:
Reading Techniques
When I’m reading anything, digital or otherwise, I have two basic rules:
Then when I find those words that I don’t know in a dictionary, I do one of three things:
As much as it might surprise you, number three is the one I do the least. Only when I encounter a word that I have been looking for and wanted to use in daily interactions, will I actually make an effort to study it. Usually, I do number one more than anything: figure out what it means and move on. You will get farther in the actual reading that way.
Listening
For this one, I am mainly going to give you a list of resources, as I don’t ‘study’ listening per se.
Watching
I distinguish this from listening because, while the skill is primarily auditory, the visual component makes it easier to understand what is being said. With youtube, it is actually relatively easy to get a quick shot of Japanese tv any time. I like to chose videos that wil help with my translation but, honestly, sometimes you just have to have fun with the language.
Then, of course, I will sit down and watch a full drama from time to time, but I can’t put links to those here.
If you have any resources to share or questions about studying in a Japanese void, feel free to leave me a comment.
So, I went to Honda’s Interpreter Training Seminar yesterday and wanted to share with my readers (which I don’t think are actually out there) some of the information that was presented. This is an overview and please understand that I did not come up with any of the information on my own. Most of it is well established interpretation theory.
Before we go into this too much, I want to make sure that everyone understands one fundamental thing: translation is written, interpretation is spoken.
Methods of Interpretation
There are four main forms of interpretation:
Skills Needed to be and Interpreters
9 Interpreting Errors
The first 3 are the most important and the trickiest. For example,
So, in the translation of this article title we have substitutions and additions (I couldn’t find a good title that would let me omit something). But, they are for a reason. In English, we don’t say “make posture”, we use the verb “get” or “have”. This was necessary so as not to make a lexical error in English. Next, we have アップする. While English does have some similar phrases like “level up” or “boost”, the general intended meaning of アップする is “to improve”. Substitutions like this are often needed with カタカナ語 even though they sound like they are English.
There are also a billion other ways that this could be translated and still be right. As it is a newspaper article, you could go with something like “Improving your posture to boost your reputation.” It all depends on what your client wants. But, when you are interpreting, its important to stick fairly close to the original. And its vital to never add, change, or omit ANYTHING that will give the sentence a different meaning.
I have been a translator and interpreter for two years and four months. I started working as a bilingual office administrator with only a JLPT N2 as qualification. Two years and one job change later, I am ready to pass, no, decimate the N1 this December. But other than that, I will still be without qualifications.
I understand that translation is one of those things that comes with experience. The more you do it, the more you learn, the better you get. But there are people out there who have done it much longer than I have. Surely I could learn a lot from them. The problem is…I can’t find them.
Here is what I have learned about T＆I education that is related to Japanese:
Schools in Japan:
There are several T&I schools in Japan. These are small specialized schools that crank out interpreters at record pace. I cannot say much about the impressions that businesses may have about interpreters trained at these schools. But, it does seem that the most popular one is Simul Academy. Another thing about these 専門学校 is that they are often broken down by type of T&I. Basically, that breaks down to: subtitling, conference interpreting, tour guide interpreting, and general or technical interpreting and translation. There are some other categories, like pharma translation, that have become huge lately, but the main areas are those listed above. You can use the TsuHon if you are interested in finding more schools in Japan.
Schools in the US and other countries:
There are a few schools that are known for interpreter training. The most famous one is the Monterey Institute. It is famous for training the world’s best interpreters. However, like most other programs in the US and abroad, this school only offers master’s degrees. There are many programs throughout the US that offer short program training in Spanish interpreting, as that is our second most widely spoken language here, but you will be hard pressed to find one that trains in Japanese.
Correspondence courses:
Much to my surprise, these are few and far between as well. Babel University offers a correspondence masters degree but it is very hard to get any information from them and I am not sure they are a reliable school. DHC offers online and correspondence classes but no comprehensive program. ALC has a correspondence program but doesn’t offer any support. And so on and so on.
Basically, if you are a Japanese translator and interpreter in the US, you do not have a lot of options. But that brings us to the next question: How much training do you really need for a profession that you already have?
When I attended iJET a few years ago, I asked a question to the general assembly about freelancers. I prefaced it with a comment about how I was new and hadn’t even completed N1. The response I got was a general scoff. Not because I hadn’t done it but because most of the scoffers didn’t think much of the test. Most of them, like me, had fallen into this profession because they could speak a fair amount of Japanese and someone needed a translator at that moment. Where as most of the Japanese translators I know went through schooling and spent hours to get a certain level of TOEIC just so businesses (and other Japanese) would take them seriously. I suppose I have always adopted the later attitude toward my profession rather than the former. I have always said, “Just because I am an American doesn’t excuse me from meeting Japanese expectations.” If an employer would expect X out of a Japanese employee, I don’t want them to ever say “Oh, well its ok that she doesn’t have that qualification, she’s an American.” It may be naive to throw away the gaijin card, I just hate preferential treatment.
Anyway, I don’t know how I will go about getting some kind of qualification, but as this is the beginning of my third year, I figure its about time to start. I don’t think I have any readers out there, but if there are, I would appreciate any advice you have.
Becoming a Translator 