Month: March 2025

How old were you during the war?

I interpreted in a deposition of a senior executive of a major Japanese corporation in connection with patent litigation in the US. Things were going well, until one question from the examining attorney near the end of the allotted time for the deposition.

The question came just after the attorney went back at the end of the deposition to ask about the educational background of the deponent, something that is normally done at the beginning of a deposition. In part of his reply, the Japanese executive indicated that he attended the Army Cadet School just before WW2. This prompted the attorney to ask “So how old were you during the war?”

This was to be a jury trial in a state that is not known for being generous with non-Americans. The attorney was fully aware of that, and I can only imagine that it would be seen as advantageous for the jury to think that the deponent had—or at least was old enough to have had—participated in WW2.

Naturally, the attorney on the defending side justifiably went berserk. Such a question had no bearing on the merits of the case. Getting to watch this kind of provocation and the reactions thereto unfold is arguably a benefit to deposition interpreters. Mostly, though, it is mind-numbingly boring, particularly if the subject matter is something the interpreter is not interested in.

Don’t bother can be good advice.

Some weeks ago on LinkedIn, I made some comments about the lack of translation career opportunities for students of foreign languages, basically because of the adoption of AI to replace professionals in the translation process.

The comment was met with virtual nods of heads by some readers, but one person piped up to say that I discouraging newcomers from entering translation, thereby leaving more work for me. He actually sounded serious. He was chiding me for essentially telling students not to bother, and what’s worse, for personal gain.

Reflecting on that, I recall having a distinct experience of being one time told not to bother and having that be the best advice I could have gotten.

It was at the end of 1975. I had been working in a fiber optics laboratory of Western Electric in Princeton and had just completed the last half of an undergraduate engineering program at night. I had a degree in engineering, but that wasn’t going to lead to anything exciting at the laboratory, where the researchers were PhDs and there was nothing between engineering associate and member of research staff. So, I decided to move on and shift my focus.

I contacted the head of the Japanese department at a nearby university in Philadelphia to see if he would speak with me. He quickly agreed, and what ensued was enlightening. I was already functional in Japanese, and my interaction with him was in Japanese.

I had intended to get an advanced degree in Japanese. His advice was quick, being essentially “Don’t bother.” He explained that, with my already-acquired Japanese ability, I would not be learning any more language in a graduate program. He additionally (in a soft tone, not to be heard by several of his students in the room at the time) said “You can easily get an MA or even a doctorate, but do you want to be stuck like these people?”

His advice was clear; add my Japanese ability to my engineering degree and real-world experience and run with it, as that was much more promising that becoming a Japanese specialist.

Admittedly, this being the 1970s, it was still possible to become a translator of sorts with only foreign language or translation in your skill set, but his advice was spot on for me, and I only became a translator after a suddenly available job elsewhere provided me more than three years’ experience working as the Japan branch manager of a US manufacturer, that offering me a great learning experience that prepared me for the real world of providing language services to direct translation consumers.

Being told not to bother can be the best thing you can hear, if it opens your eyes to other, better opportunities.

I’ll repeat the advice to Japanese learners. Don’t bother learning Japanese if your goal is to be a translator. It’s too late. Your chances of success are tiny, and it would be better to just add Japanese ability to a solid qualification and skills in another area that would provide a career even without Japanese ability.

Landmines in the Evening

It was 1976 when I visited the Japanese trading company handling the electronic measurement products of my US employer. I was soon to fire them, switch to another trading company, and move to Japan to manage the directly run operation, but working with them provided me an inside look into the situation of going through a trading company to sell products of a US company in Japan.

One day, while chatting with my contact at the company—a section head at the time—he happened to mention that people from Korea were visiting them that day. It was about 5:30pm. He said they always visited around that time, and you know exactly what they expected to be treated to. It still being in the 1970s, might guess was that it was not just dinner and drinks.

The trading company evidently got the benefit of a war reparations agreement between Japan and Korea (money from the Japanese government given to a foreign state and boomeranging back to a Japanese trading company, which is not uncommon), and I guess that emboldened the Korea people to ask for something more than products sold by the trading company.

The only other time I had encountered such entertainment was a few years after that, when I was at dinner attended by a company president—now deceased, and the founder of an older, TSE-listed company (before he was essentially ousted by a bank and a major computer manufacturer in a takeover)—and a European dealer of his new company, who was visiting Japan.

At dinner, the CEO leaned over to me and essentially asked me whether he should arrange for a woman for his visitor. Without interpreting, of course, I advised him that it would be a risky move and might even worsen the relationship with his dealer. He (I hope) withdrew the idea of setting his visitor up with some evening diversion.

There are landmines on the road to success in Japan, and sometimes the Japanese themselves risk treading on them.

“What the deponent wanted to say was …”

One day in the early 1980s interpreting in a deposition for US patent litigation, after I finished interpreting into English a response of the Japanese deponent being examined, the check interpreter commented “Mr. Lise’s interpreting was fine, but what the deponent really wanted to say was …”

Not surprisingly, the examining attorney ran up and down the side of the check interpreter’s head, figuratively of course, since violence is frowned upon in the US Embassy here in Tokyo. The attorney, of course, questioned how the check interpreter had acquired his mind-reading ability.

The check interpreter immediately realized his error and started to apologize on record for his mindreading, whereupon, just a few words into his apology, the attorney that had engaged him said “We’re going to take a break,” and literally took the check interpreter by the arm, guiding him out into the space outside the deposition room. The attorney surely did not want the apology to go onto the record, as that would cast doubt on his interpreter’s ability, although it might serve to bring attention to his interpreter’s supernatural abilities. Perhaps he could find work entertaining at parties.

Depositions are usually filled with boring examinations of boring witnesses, but occasionally we enjoy a bit of drama and comedy.

They speak English among themselves: The delusion of a clueless expat

In the late 1970s, I was the branch manager of a US company here in Japan, and one of the banks we used was the Tokyo branch of a bank the home office used, the now-defunct Seafirst bank in Seattle.

We had no particular problems with them, and I distinctly remember them gifting me some tickets to watch Sumo tournaments in Tokyo. One day, however, it was brought home to me just how clueless an expat in Japan could be.

Most of the people running the bank were, of course, native Japanese speakers. My contact included one Japanese employee and an American, apparently from the Seattle headquarters. One day, when I was meeting with the American, whose name I do not recall, the Japanese fellow participated, using his English, which was quite good, this being necessary because the American was not a Japanese speaker.

When the Japanese fellow left the meeting room to get something, the American said to me, with a straight face “You know, these people use English among themselves, even when we foreigners are not around.”

I was toying with making a quip about the language of the sound a Japanese tree might make falling when nobody is around to hear it, but I refrained. Such an attempt of sarcasm might have cut me off from the Sumo tickets.