One day long ago, when I was the President of the Japan Association of Translators, I attended an event held by the Japan Translation Federation, a group that is for all intents and purposes operated by translation agencies in Japan.
It was mostly a socializing event. The JTF is under the aegis of a Japanese governmental ministry and I was introduced as the head of JAT to a person from that ministry. We exchanged business cards, the side of the mine shown to this person being in Japanese and indicating clearly my position in JAT—a group of translators, rather than translation agencies—and my profession as a translator.
His reaction—after receiving and looking at my business card—was to hand me his card, saying “Please excuse me, my card is only in Japanese.”
This guy was just told I was the head of a translators’ organization in Japan, I was speaking Japanese, and handed him a business card that said the same about me.
At first, I thought to make a quip about this stupidity, then discarded the idea, but ultimately did tell him that “When you are a Japanese-to-English translator, reading Japanese is part of the job. I suspect he didn’t catch the sarcasm.
I wonder whether things have changed much. Many Japanese have been conditioned by trained-bear foreigners on TV here speaking Japanese of a variety, some quite well, but a foreigner translating or even reading Japanese could still be an oddity to some Japanese. Some surely some cling to the belief that Japan and the language spoken by Japanese is so unique it cannot be mastered without having Japanese DNA. Bless their hearts.