Several years ago, a potential interpreting client emailed me to ask about interpreting for a business meeting that was scheduled in only a few days. After emailing back promptly to ask what the subject matter was, but not getting any substantive response, I called and asked what the meeting was about. The reply from the non-Japanese fellow was “Oh, you don’t need to know that.”
Huh? I explained to no avail why I wanted to learn about the subject matter and why he should also want to tell me about the subject matter. After a few more attempts to pry some information out of this guy about the meeting, he proceeded to explain interpreting to me. “You just say in Japanese what we say in English, and then you say in English what the other side says in Japanese.”
It was so comforting to get this lesson in interpreting. I would never have guessed what interpreting was.
I explained that he would need to look elsewhere for interpreting, which appeared to leave him puzzled. That was probably the most clueless prospective interpreting client I have ever encountered.
But that is not the end of the story. About ten days after the date of the originally scheduled meeting, a woman from the same company calls me with precisely same meeting parameters (“interpreting” in a “meeting”). When I started explaining that more information was required, she realized what she had done. “Oh, you’re the guy who wouldn’t help us the last time.” Guilty as charged. The call ended promptly when she realized it wasn’t going anywhere and neither was I.
That left me wondering whether they had found an interpreter the last time and the interpreter was not successful in working with that minimalist briefing, or whether something else had happened.
The place was a tiny company that appeared to be involved in credit card settlement services, and was staffed by two foreigners, both Japanese-incapable and both clueless about interpreting. I am not sure if they ever acquired some clues, but my attempts at educating them had come to an end.