Yearly Archives: 2013

In a previous post, I wrote about professionalism.  In a different previous post, I said I am a professional Japanese-English technical interpreter.  Should I fulfill my role?  Yes, I should.  What is my role?  That is the question.  As I wrote in another previous post, I personally think that my role is to fill the cultural gap between Canadians and Japanese, which is not officially expected.  For now, I dare not to count this.

The term “interpret” have some meanings.  According to Longman (1995), one of the meanings, which my client seems to expect me to do, is “to change words spoken in one language into another” [1].  But my Canadian colleagues expect me to do more.  I’m the only one who talk with everyone in the current workplace, and some Canadians expect me to coordinate some small works that a Japanese supervisor does not take care of.  I enjoy doing it, in fact, and those Canadians appreciate it.  In this way, things go smoothly, but some Japanese coworkers do not like it; they stick to conventional Japanese way of working though it is inefficient and takes longer time unnecessarily. Am I a good professional technical interpreter?  No.  My client expects me to work like an interpreter machine.  I should not work like a coordinator.

Of course, “interpret” has another, primary meaning, which is “to believe that someone’s action or behavior or an event as having a particular meaning” [1].  As I wrote in a previous post, Japanese conversation is like coding and decoding.  I often decode what Japanese coworkers say and then interpret it to English.  Canadians appreciate it, but those Japanese even don’t know that I do it.  Without it, those Canadians should have been confused.  Apparently, I am not a good professional technical interpreter, but I am happy to make things go smoothly.  This is how I contribute for the current workplace.

[1] Longman Group Ltd, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited, 1995. 

Technically speaking, I am a professional Japanese-English translator/interpreter.  But English is still difficult for me though I have used English for more than 10 years.  Having said that, what troubles me when I interpret between Canadians and Japanese is not language but attitude.  It’s attitude barrier.

I was born and raised in Japan, but since when I was a little kid, I’ve had difficulties in communicating with typical Japanese.  When they tell something to other people, they hide important points between the lines.  Canadians do it in some degree, but typical Japanese do it in much higher degree.  So, when they listen to other people, they always try to read between the lines.  It’s like coding and decoding.  For some reasons, I cannot code and decode in their way.  When I speak frankly, they assume I imply something. If I say, “no, I’m not implying anything”, they assume I imply something by saying it.  As I wrote in a previous post, in Japan, it is important to show your efforts.  When someone asks other people to do something that they cannot afford to do, they do not say “I cannot do it” but make tremendous efforts to do it, which makes other people feel bad. So, they try to avoid asking other people to do something whether it is demanding for them or not.  If someone says “I can do it”, typical Japanese assume the person implies that he/she cannot afford to do it but will make tremendous efforts to do it because he/she was asked to do so.  If they want someone to do something, they do not tell it to the person but expect him/her to read their mind.  If the person do not do it, they complain about the person behind his/her back.  All those things happen in the current work place, and it often causes problems between Canadians and Japanese.  I’ve tried to explain it to my Japanese coworkers, but they never understand it.

A good thing is that now my Canadian colleagues understand me.  When I lived in Japan and had problems caused by the attitude barrier, those Japanese told me “you are wrong”.  Now I know I was not wrong.

In a previous post, I wrote about corporate culture based on the Toyota’s recall case.  In the post, I discussed communication among different engineering teams, and wrote “Now I imagine how they have established the system.  Did anyone take initiative to communicate among development teams?  Or did anyone establish a system to share information among different teams whether or not they are willing to communicate?”. Recently I found an internet article that shows a case in which the latter system does not work.

Probably many people know the nightmare of Boeing 787 Dreamliner.  I found an internet article that introduces insight into it.  Boeing outsourced the majority of engineering and construction of the plane, expecting it would reduce the development cost and time.  But the result was totally opposite.  To make a long story short, Boeing could not manage communication with and among partners.  According to the article, Boeing adopted, or at least tried to adopt Toyota’s outsourcing system.  But they only superficially adopted the structure of the system and did not lean the culture.  Boeing introduced a web-based communication tool to share information with partners, like I imagined as in the previous post, and it failed.

Now I am sure about two things.  First, communication among engineering teams is not easy.  Second, copying a system does not work unless the corporate culture is understood and introduced appropriately.  Probably I will face situation like this in some degree in the future.

As I wrote in a previous post, I bought a car.  Was it a good choice?  I still don’t know.  I mean, I chose a good car, but don’t know if buying a car was a good choice or not.  As I wrote in the post, I seriously thought of environmental impact when I decided to buy a car.  But this internet article about “dis-ownership” points out another critical issue; people choose sharing over owning not because it is “green” but because it saves money, as the article goes “the new status symbol isn’t what you own–it’s what you’re smart enough not to own”.

Of course I knew it when I bought the car, and now I know it as reality.  It costs.  What compensation do I get?  Time.  Is time money?  Yes, sorta.

I agree with the author of the article; when I was in Japan and spent more than an hour to commute by public transportation, I read a lot of books.  But it does not work here in Orillia.  Before I bought the car, I used bus to go to work, but I spent less than 10 minutes on bus and spent way more time on walking and waiting for a bus, i.e., I could do very limited things when commuting such as briefly checking internet news on my Blackberry.  Now, with the car, I have more time to do more things.  I bought time.

As I wrote in another previous post, I spent more than a week in downtown Toronto, and did not use my car a lot there.  Probably in some cities, sharing is a better and smarter choice than owning.  This raises another question.  How can more cities be smarter ones?

Today I used bus to go to downtown to look for a hair salon; I expected I would walk around to find one in downtown where parking is limited.  And I ended up choosing one with parking in front.  Oh well.

I spent 11 days at my friends’ place in downtown Toronto during the Christmas vacation to take care of their dog while they visited their parents’ place in Calgary.  The photo below was taken from their room.  Now I have spent a little more than a week in Orillia since I came back from Toronto.  I ask myself; which is better to live, urban area or rural area?  As I mentioned in a previous post, Toronto is not a favorite city to live for many people, but I actually enjoyed staying in the core of downtown Toronto.  Many things, almost everything you need in your daily life is available near by.  In Orillia, I use my car almost daily.  When I was in Toronto, I usually walked and used public transportation, and even missed my car because I used it only once in a few days.  And of course, Toronto is generally more lively, exciting and inspiring than Orillia for many reasons.  I found one authentic Japanese food restaurant, and there must be a few more.  So, is urban life more suitable for me?

However, interestingly, a day after I got back to Orillia, I felt like walking in downtown Orillia, which is even smaller than downtown Hamilton or Kensington Street in Calgary, where most buildings only have two stories.  I actually liked it.  Honestly speaking, I did not enjoy living in Hamilton; it is not big enough to be sophisticated and not small enough to have hospitality.  I like the small town’s hospitality in Orillia, which I did not find in Toronto.

So, which do I prefer???  Anyways, let’s see what job I get after April and where I will go.