Category: Ramblings

Lise, please don’t interpret this.

I was interpreting at a Japanese law firm one day in a meeting between my Japanese manufacturer client, their US attorney (also my client), and the Japanese manufacturer’s local Japanese attorney. It was a meeting regarding US litigation between the Japanese company and a European competitor in the US.

The meeting was going ostensibly well for about an hour, when suddenly the Japanese attorney turns to me, saying “Lise-san, please don’t interpret this.”

He then addresses his Japanese client (also my Japanese client) and launches into:

“What’s happening here is that both you and the opposing party are being manipulated by your Jew attorneys, so …”

The term for Jew and Jewish in Japanese is yudaya, obviously fully understandable as a slur when used adjectivally before the word for attorney in either its English or Japanese form.

That aside, did the Japanese attorney stupidly think that, by telling me not to interpret, he would keep his antisemitism a secret from my client? Or did he just want to avoid annoying his US attorney at least during the meeting while insulting him as he sat there?.

I needed to travel with the attorney after that meeting, and he let me know that he was well aware of what has transpired already as we rode the elevator down to the ground floor after the meeting.

I mentioned to him that, upon hearing this slur, I was toying with the idea of letting drop in the meeting that I am a Jew (although I am not), but discarded the idea, as I could imagine getting into an ugly and time-consuming debate with the jerk about his lack of civility and common sense about what is and is not proper behavior in a business meeting.

I am happy to say that this Japanese attorney was never my client, and that the US attorney remained my client after that.

Don’t interpret, just translate.

I was interpreting one day in a deposition in the US Embassy and needed to make a comment on the record about why I had interpreted a certain term in English the way I did. Everyone appeared to understand and agree with the comment, but one of the attorneys piped up to say “Please don’t interpret, just translate.”

Both the interpreters in the room had to hold back from laughing. The attorney was demonstrating one of the reasons people outside the interpreting/translation tent often confuse the terms and call an interpreter a translator. I have often corrected people when they get these terms wrong, but I think we translators and interpreters (and the rare individuals do both translation and interpreting between JA and EN) might consider admitting defeat in the interpreter/translator battle.

It’s just a translator.

Some years ago I was interpreting in depositions at the US Consulate in Osaka. It happened that the opposing side’s interpreter, who would be interpreting for the attorney examining the deponent, was engaged rather suddenly and was not yet on the list of persons to be allowed into the Consulate. He was being made to wait on the first floor while they tried to work through the administrative problems to let him in.

Since the deposition couldn’t proceed without a lead interpreter (I was the check interpreter), we took a break. In the waiting area outside the deposition room, the deposition-taking attorney was at a window discussing the problem.

“Is it an attorney downstairs waiting to enter?” a Consulate official asked him.

“No, it’s just a translator (sic)” was the reply, referring to the interpreter.

The mistake of characterizing an interpreter as a translator aside, this makes me wonder how the attorney intended to examine the Japanese deponent if the person who is “just a translator” was stuck downstairs, waiting among huddled masses of visa applicants (mostly Brazilians that day, as I recall), yearning to breath free or whatever they intended to do in the US.

The interpreter in question is well-known and had spent many more years perfecting his professional skills than did the youngish above-noted attorney.

To Don’t Lists

Although I have often been fond of making “to do” lists with items I check off as I do them, I have recently come to see the value in making “to don’t” lists.

You simply make a list of things, including things that you should do, but that you know in your heart you will not do. Then you proceed not to do them. You can check them off as you don’t do them, but that is optional.

It is best to keep a record of your to undone to don’t items, because you will need to include these in your next to don’t list, thereby avoiding accidentally doing some of them. Consistency is a virtue.

This is an elegant solution to a longstanding problem. You enjoy a sense of achievement without having to expend any effort or spend any time.

Publishing of Intellectual Property without Permission: It’s unlawful in most places.

Publicly sharing a stolen image in a social media post that consists almost entirely of the stolen image is unlawful in most legal jurisdictions.

Adding credit to or citing the originator doesn’t make it lawful without first getting permission to publish, and many such “credits” just name (often by a meaningless pseudonym or platform name) the immediately previous thief who unlawfully published the image elsewhere.

All of this is a win for platform owners like Mark Zuckerberg and a loss for the universe of people still purporting to know right from wrong. Zuckerberg is guilty of countless violations of ethical common sense and doesn’t live in that universe. And his sucking up to and funding Mango Mussolini is another indication of a problem that needs fixing and is a reason I left his platform recently.