Interpreters

In my last post I owned up to being 'depressingly monolingual'.  I envy anyone who speaks multiple languages and deeply regret not studying harder in Latin and French classes at high school.

It is remarkably easy to thrive in a global consulting environment speaking only English.  I make all the typical tourists' effort of learning 'please', 'thank you', 'hello', 'yes' and 'no'.  As most of my clients have a stated policy that all multinational meetings are conducted in 'business English' this is rightly recognised as a pretty minimalist courtesy.

However, when I'm working with sales representatives I sometimes come up against a genuine language barrier.  Salespeople conduct their calls in local language and often only the ambitious bother learning English.  This is more likely to be the case in the major northern Asian countries, China, Japan and South Korea.  In such circumstances I have to work with an interpreter.  A piece of advice: -

Be cognizant of the interpreter's fatigue level and manage it

This is blindingly obvious when you think about it because interpreting is such an exhausting job.  Everyone else in the room is speaking freely (and quickly) in their native language and the interpreter has to continuously rearticulate every thought as eloquently as he can.  And because interpreters are meant to be unobstrusive they are often instinctively 'low status' personalities (see previous posts), but this also means he'll never interrupt the flow of conversation to say he needs a break.  

A bilingual trainee in Beijing put it like this: "As the day went on he got worse and worse at translating your jokes."

All of the usual rules about managing fatigue (ie introduce new concepts as early in the day as possible) apply, only more so.  Keep a close eye on your interpreter from lunchtime onwards and if he looks tired assume he is and call a break.  Don't bother asking him directly because he'll most likely wave you away and soldier on to the overall detriment of your session.