JAITS

Presentation

CONFERENCE INTERPRETING IN ASIA
Jean-Pierre Allain

Ladies & Gentlemen, colleagues,
It is a great honour for me to have been invited to address this annual conference of theJapan Association for Interpreting and Translation Studies. I am not a theorist, a
researcher or a professor. I am just a plain conference interpreter. I owe the honour tomy friend Prof. Kondo Masaomi, whose ability as interpreter and as teacher I have cometo admire over the many years that we have known each other.
Let me start by telling you a little about our profession and about myself. A few years
back I was invited to address first year interpretation students at the University of
Science Malaysia. Their teacher had sent me some questions in advance. These are thequestions and my replies:
1. What made you choose to be an interpreter and how did you manage to get into thisfield?
I grew up with several languages. My mother is British, my father was French. I wasborn in Paraguay in a community of European immigrants were the majority was
German so that German was the daily language. I went to primary school first inGerman, then English, then Spanish. Later my family moved from Paraguay to Brazil
and I finished my highschool in Portuguese. Then I did a B.A. in Humanities, inPortuguese, Spanish, French and Latin at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. I also
worked from age 16 on, mainly as multi-lingual secretary in different companies. At age
22 I decided I wanted to make use of my languages and to become an interpreter. My
aim was to help nations understand each other. Like many young people, I was idealistic
and thought the United Nations was a great thing.
Allain, Jean-Pierre, “Conference Interpreting in Asia” Interpreting and Translation Studies, No.8.
pages 287-301.  by the Japan Association for Interpreting and Translation Studies. This
presentation was given at the 11 th JAITS Annual Conference held at Daito Bunka University on
September 11, 2010.

2. Could you name some obstacles or problems that you faced on your path tobecoming an interpreter?
My main problem initially was financial. I come from a poor family and had to save themoney needed to move from Brazil to Switzerland, where I enrolled in the Ecoled'Interprètes at the University of Geneva, and then to live there for several months.
Later I found part-time jobs I could do while studying, that helped me finance mystudies. Another challenge I faced when studying for interpretation is that I realized I
needed to know much more about the world, about economic, political and social issues,
so as to understand the speeches I was interpreting. So I decided to take a degree in
economics while I was also studying for interpretation. I managed to finish my masters
in economics one year after graduating as conference interpreter.
3. As an interpreter, what are the common problems that you face during interpreting
and what other problems do you face that have to do with the interpreting world thatyou are in? How do you overcome all these problems?
Common problems that most interpreters and I find area) Difficult speakers, e.g. those who speak a language other than their own and don't
express themselves clearly. Nowadays many delegates are obliged to speak English at aconference, even though that is not their language.
b) Difficult accents and ways of speaking of non-native speakers (mainly in English, butalso in other languages).
c) Lack of documents in the booth that are being read or discussed in the conferenceroom.
d) Poor sound reaching the interpreters.
e) Wrong position of the interpreter booths in regard to the conference room, depriving
interpreters of adequate visibility of the speakers, rostrum and screen.
f) Poor lighting and ventilation in the booths.
4. Throughout your interpreting career, what has been the biggest challenge ininterpreting?
The biggest challenge still is to get organizers to understand what simultaneousinterpretation is, how it works, what it entails in terms of knowledge, linguistic ability

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and stamina of interpreters. Most people wrongly believe that anybody who speaks two
languages can interpret from one into the other. They fail to grasp that to do the job
properly, interpreters need to understand immediately; they need to know what thediscussion is about. Therefore they need information about the subject of the conference
well before it starts and need to study and learn about the subject. You can onlyinterpret what you understand. Interpretation is not transposing words from one
language into another. It is explaining in another language and its cultural context what
the speaker has just said.
5. While interpreting, what do you do when your mind suddenly goes blank or when
you can't find the equivalent of what is being said?
It has never happened that my mind goes blank, but it happens quite often that you don't
find the equivalent word for what is being said. However, if you understand what the
speaker says you can find another way of saying the same thing in your own
language. The main thing is that the interpreter must understand; and that's not only aquestion of language, but most often of substance.
6.Could you give us some tips on what we should do to improve our interpretingskills?
Assuming that your native language is Malay and your second language English, I
would suggest:a) Spend at least two years in an English-language country. Don't go to a UK university
and join a dormitory or flat with other Malaysians. Go and live with a local family who
speak English. If you already have another profession, get a job in that country where
you are forced to listen to and work in English all the time. Or, enroll in any kind ofuniversity course - not necessarily language course. Study economics, politics, arts,
literature, biology, music, or any subject - but study in English surrounded by English
speakers.
b) Read English books and magazines. Listen to English radio and TV programs.
c) Do translations from one language into another. That forces you to understand thesubject you are translating and to consult dictionaries, search the Internet for
information. It enriches your vocabulary.

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7. Finally, in your opinion, besides being multilingual, what other skills should anexcellent interpreter have?
a) Preferably, at least one university degree in any subject other than languages, e.g. law,
medicine, architecture, accounting, economics, politics, physics, etc.
b) A quick and nimble mind. An alert intellect, open to learn new things. Curiosity
about the world, people, sciences, arts. Interpreters must be aware of the news. At any
meeting it is likely some speaker will allude to some recent event, possibly without
describing it. The interpreter must understand what the speaker is alluding to, failingwhich he does not get the message. (A recent Japanese example: We must at all costs
avoid a Sumo situation.)c) Be a good speaker: Know how to explain something in few words, but the right words.
Speak clearly.
d) Be a good team worker. Simultaneous interpretation is teamwork. You never work
alone. You have to be able to get along with other people, especially in stressful
situations.
The interpreter as communicator
From what I have told you, it may appear that my experience is different from yours.
That is to say from the experience of Japanese interpreters, most of whom have grown
up in a monolingual society and have learned one foreign language only. However, there
is much we have in common.
I believe our role as interpreters is to be communicators. We communicate the ideas of
speakers to our listeners. Notice that I do not say ‘we translate the ideas of speakers’. Of
course, in a certain sense we do. But beyond that, what we try to achieve is to get acrossto listeners the ideas and not the words of speakers. There is a substantial difference.
That is usually difficult for the public and clients to understand. They generally believethat interpreters ‘translate’ what is said. Hence the well-known confusion between
translators and interpreters. I do not know whether in Japanese the public in general
makes a distinction between these two professions, but I do know that in Asia generally,
the distinction is not clear.
Putting into practice that ideal role of ‘communicator’ is not that simple. One mayeasily slip into the habit of merely transposing words from the source language into the
output language. We can immediately recognize when an interpreter does this. It is what
non-professional interpreters, call them amateurs, often do. If you listen to an amateur,290

say a translator or a tour guide, in simultaneous interpretation, you will usually get a
number of words – sometimes even sentences – that the speaker used, but you will failto understand the message. In other words, communication is absent.
I find the best interpreters are those capable of listening to more than one sentence at atime, before rendering the meaning in the output language. At times, it may sound as
though the interpreter were hesitant or looking for the right words. But listen to a whole
speech interpreted by a good interpreter and you forget that it is interpreted; you take it
as original.
One important aspect of our profession is confidentiality, which engenders trust. This isimportant for all meetings, but especially those at which confidential information is
discussed. It is an important part of the AIIC Code of Ethics to which members have to
subscribe. A colleague told me once about his experience in this regard.
He was approached by a law firm about an assignment, and after he agreed on theprovisions of the contract, he was asked if he had any problem in signing a
confidentiality agreement. “None at all,” he responded. “In fact, my professional
association has a clause on secrecy in its code of ethics.” The client called back a little
later to say that, having read the AIIC Code of Ethics, he did not consider it necessary
to sign any other agreement on confidentiality.
A profession’s standards, with ethical tenets at the core, is a major component ofprofessionalization in any field. Any erosion of essential ethical principles is thus amove toward deprofessionalization. As interpreters, we must maintain our fundamental
precepts for the good of all, including our clients. AIIC does well to emphasize thatanyone applying for membership makes a commitment to abide by those fundamental
principles just by signing the application form. I don’t know whether interpreters inJapan are required by agencies or clients to sign a confidentiality clause or to prove they
follow a code of ethics. But even without belonging to a professional association, eachinterpreter can abide by ethical principles, including confidentiality.
The AIIC Code of Ethics contains many elements that implicitly aim at assuringcommunication. Confidentiality fosters trust, so necessary to good communication. The
integrity and transparency underlying the commitment not to accept work for which one
is not qualified, or not to accept more than one assignment for overlapping periods oftime, also engenders trustworthiness. Elements of collegiality help to weave the fabric291

of team work which is so essential to our trade and has helped make interpreting a very
egalitarian profession in a world where hierarchy usually reigns.
When I talk to colleagues, some tell me that among their most vivid memories are
assignments in which they felt that the dream of being cultural intermediaries, realcommunicators, came true.
Good communication is also dependent on the qualifications of the interpreter. Hencethe importance of professionalization. And it is also very much contingent upon theconditions under which competent interpreters work. This is why the AIIC Code of
Ethics has a clause on working conditions, even though it does not spell them out indetail.
As intermediaries, we stand between people to connect them, not to separate them. I
would like to think that we work in situations in which communication leading togreater understanding is possible, at least by the transmission of accurate, complete andun-coerced information.
Organising teams of interpreters in Asia
Some of you may know that I frequently organise teams of interpreters for meetings in
Asia. I do so as Consultant Interpreter, that is to say an interpreter who puts at thedisposal of a conference organiser her or his experience and knowledge as aprofessional interpreter and knowledge of the market to gather together a team ofinterpreters for a meeting. This is a different activity from that of interpreting andrequires administrative and negotiating skills.
When clients need to find interpreters they usually turn to one of these sources:
Translation agencies: They are known as providers of translations and, as we saw
earlier, many people, including conference organisers, do not know or do not make thedistinction between written translation and oral translation or interpretation. So it isnatural they should turn to translation agencies. These are known to work withlanguages and often present an image of experts, linguistic specialists.
Professional conference organisers (PCOs): They handle all aspects of theorganisation of a conference and are often the sole interlocutor of a client. However,292

they are not specialists in languages nor interpretation. They usually sub-contract
interpretation services, sometimes through other intermediaries.
Equipment providers: They provide all the audio-visual equipment used at conferences
and are known as technical experts. They may have long-term contracts with hotels or
conference centers.
Conference centers and other meeting places: They often are the sole interlocutor of aclient. They are in general not much interested in interpreters, as conference
interpretation is not often in demand – many meetings are held on their premises
without interpretation.
Consultant interpreters: They are the only intermediaries who know our profession
from the inside, but they have little visibility. Most clients do not know they exist.
Sometimes, consultant interpreters form groups or companies, as clients often prefer towork with a company. Some clients make this a requirement.
There are several advantages for interpreters and for our profession as a whole when
AIIC Consultant Interpreters organise teams of interpreters. For instance, those
consultant interpreters know AIIC interpreters and can easily find other members
through the AIIC directory. They offer an AIIC quality guarantee. They frequently workon the teams they organise. They are the only ones who uphold AIIC values andprinciples, as well as the professional standards and working conditions. However, there
are too few of them. And some find it difficult to get an appropriate remuneration for
their work as consultant interpreters.
A consultant interpreter’s activities include canvassing (that is, finding clients),
obtaining from a client the requirements for a meeting (can be difficult), preparing costestimates and then quotations. This can go on for a while, with changing requirements,
larger or smaller teams, until a final agreement is reached. Each stage requires a new
estimate and new quotation. In the meantime, you need to find the right interpreters withthe appropriate language combination and, in Asia, where distances are huge, try to findthose closest to the meeting venue. You need to find air flight times and airfares. Most
clients, understandably, want an estimate of the likely airfares they must pay. When you
have your team of interpreters, you need to confirm them and later prepare and sign
contracts with them. Also, most clients want to have interpreters’ CVs and getting thoseis usually a protracted task.

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After that comes all the administrative work: Prepare a contract with the client, getapproval – sometimes after several versions have been exchanged – and client signature;
invoice and get payment of a down payment, which should cover at least the interpreters
airfares that you, consultant interpreter, may need to advance to the interpreters; sendout individual contracts to all interpreters, get them signed and returned; get theinterpreters’bankingdetailstotransfer

airfare payment;

arrange

for

hotel

accommodation for interpreters; send the client all interpreters’ arrival and departure
information; get background documents for the meeting to send to interpreters; and soforth.
At the meeting itself, check the SI equipment and meeting room microphones, usually
the night before the meeting starts. Ensure booths are properly placed; that there is safe
access and emergency exit; that there is light in the booth; power outlet for laptops;
water to drink; paper to write on, etc.
The practices in Asia-Pacific
I organise quite a lot of teams for Japanese PCOs and occasionally direct clients. I alsoorganise teams for meetings in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong,
Philippines, Bangladesh, China, Korea and other Asian countries. If I get a request for ameeting in another continent, I try to pass it on to an AIIC consultant interpreter on that
continent.
Challenges to organising interpretation in Asia
One of the issues consultant interpreters face constantly in Asia is that clients want tofind ‘local’ interpreters. That is precisely what many agencies offer on their websites
and in their promotional literature. As we have seen, if we exclude Chinese, Japaneseand Korean, there are only a handful of professional interpreters who work withlanguages generally used at international conferences and who reside in Asian countries.
I need to explain and emphasize again and again that, unfortunately, for these languages
there are no ‘local’ interpreters.
Take for instance a common language combination such as English-French-Spanish,
required for a conference in Singapore. There are no ‘local’ interpreters for thislanguage combination in Singapore and only two in Malaysia and Thailand combined.
Clients have a hard time accepting this fact. And as a consequence, many go for theagency or convention centre that promises to provide them with ‘local’ interpreters.

294This will cost much less, not only because the fees these agencies or intermediaries pay
are usually substantially lower than what professional interpreters charge, but also
because there will be no travel costs, hotel and daily subsistence costs and travel days topay.
I explain to clients that there is a big difference between professional conference
interpreters and language assistants, language aids or expatriate English teachers livingin Asia, who may speak a foreign language very well and be ‘local’.

A perfectcommand of languages is only an essential prerequisite for simultaneous or consecutive
interpretation at a conference. To access the profession these days, interpreters musthave a university degree in conference interpreting, vast general knowledge, which canbe acquired by experience or study, a quick mind, an ability to understand otherpeople’s accents and situation and the capacity to work under pressure and deliver theentire message coherently. Languages are the tools of the profession but they alone do
not make a professional conference interpreter. A concert pianist must have two hands
and ten fingers, but must first learn to use them to produce music and then perform withan orchestra. So too a professional interpreter learns how to use his or her linguistic
skills to perfection before being able to work at an international conference. Most socalled ‘locals’ may have the fingers but not the skills and the practice.
In JapanSince we are in Japan, allow me to say something about my experience with Japanese
PCOs and clients. In general, Japanese PCOs have a lot of experience organisinginterpretation for meetings, at least Japanese-English interpretation. However, when
they need other languages they usually resort to consultant interpreters and I am
probably the best known to them. For me, the advantage is that I can assume from thestart that they know how simultaneous interpretation works, so I need not go into longexplanations. The interesting thing, though, is that I often have to explain how the otherbooths – apart from the Japanese – work. It is because almost all Japanese interpreters
are bilingual, that is they work in Japanese and a foreign language – 90% in English.
Very few have 3 or more working languages. Therefore, based on their own experience,clients and PCOs assume all interpreters are bilingual and always work in bilingual
booths, with English being one of the languages.
As you know, most interpreters of European origin or with European languages, speak
and use three or more languages. When I am asked to constitute a team for a meeting
with, for instance, English-Japanese-French-Spanish-Russian-Chinese, I will try to find295

interpreters who know and use as many of those languages as possible. I am confronted
with the option of forming a team according to the UN standards, or according to Asianpractice. Japanese will normally be provided by the PCO or client, so I can factor thatout of my estimate. The UN system insists on interpreters for the English, French andSpanish booth to know all three languages. That means, in the English booth the twointerpreters must have Spanish and French; in the French booth the two interpretersmust have English and Spanish; in the Spanish booth the two interpreters must have
English and French. In other words, they do not have to be bilingual and provide a‘retour’ into English, as do the interpreters in the Russian, Arabic and Chinese booths;
they have to be trilingual at least, but not necessarily provide a ‘retour’ into English.
For the Russian and Chinese booths, organisers will most often rely on bilingualinterpreters who will take English in relay from the English booth when it is not spoken
on the floor, that is to say when a delegate speaks French, Spanish, Arabic, etc. In theUN system bilingual booths are staffed with three interpreters, just as is the practice inJapan which, in fact, was ‘copied’ on the UN model by two Japanese interpreters of thelate 50s who spent several weeks in Europe and New York analysing and observing how
conference interpretation worked there.
In what has become known as the Asian system of interpretation, all booths arebilingual, with the second language being English. That makes sense, since more than
90% of Asian interpreters have English as their second language. It has the undesirable
effect of not giving the 10% of Asian interpreters with a different second language
much of a chance to work, except at the rare meetings where the second language is not
English, but instead is maybe French, Spanish or Russian. I should add that 90% ormore of Asian interpreters have only one second language: English.
An interesting result of this reality is that when a conference is held in Asian languages
only, English is added as the relay language, even when no English speakers participate.
I have, for instance, organised teams for meetings with Thai-Vietnamese-Chinese atwhich all interpreters work from their language into English and vice versa. When aChinese delegate speaks, the Vietnamese and Thai interpreters take relay from English
provided by the Chinese booth, and so on for the other languages. There are few Asian
professional interpreters who work between two Asian languages or more. Similarly,
there are no European interpreters who can interpret between two Asian languages. If
there were, I doubt they would be trusted to be capable of such a feat.

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Interestingly, when I organise a team for the language combination I mentioned before(English-Japanese-French-Spanish-Russian-Chinese), Japanese or Asian PCOs willusually ask me to provide three interpreters for the Japanese, Russian and Chinese
booths, but only two interpreters for the French and Spanish booths who will be
expected to also interpret back into English, because there is no English booth. Allbooths are expected to work from their language back into English. I argue with clientsthat we need three interpreters for all bilingual booths and that, if they did have an
English booth, the number of interpreters for English-French-Spanish would be six inany case. In most cases, Japanese clients accept this logic, but that is not the case inother Asian countries. In fact, in Southeast Asia, the general practice is for all booths to
be bilingual and have only two interpreters. It is hard to fight against that trend, becauseof the extra cost and because I am competing against other providers of interpretation
who mostly work with non-professional interpreters and in any case pay theirinterpreters much less. But that is another issue.
In other Asian countries
Organising interpretation services in countries other than Japan is more difficult. Mostof the clients are not familiar with interpretation and really do not understand how it
works. Since English is so ubiquitous, it is assumed automatically to be the language
most spoken at a conference and, as such, is not even counted as one of the conference
languages. As a consultant interpreter, I constantly get requests for interpreters for, say,French and Spanish, or Thai and Vietnamese, without a mention of English. Of course,
what the client wants is interpretation from English into French and Spanish, or into
Thai and Vietnamese, and back into English when those languages are spoken. A
client’s request could go like this: “We have a conference with about 300 delegates.
There are about 10 who speak Thai and 20 Vietnamese. Can you find interpreters? And
the equipment and 30 headsets?” Only after talking or writing to such clients,
sometimes more than once, do they realize that they need 300 headsets because when aThai or Vietnamese delegate speaks, the other 270 delegates will not understand. Then I
can explain that the conference languages are three (English, Thai, Vietnamese) and nottwo.
A challenge for most Asian languages is to find competent interpreters capable ofrendering the subtleties of their native languages into English that is grammaticallycorrect, fluent and elegant. That is an extremely difficult feat and no doubt, the reverse
is equally true – translating English concepts into fluent, elegant Asian languages. All297

people of different cultures and languages have their own specific way of expressing
ideas, emotions, feelings – in short, specific ways of communicating.
Language and culture
This brings up the fascinating subject of languages and cultures. I recently read anarticle which discussed this issue and would summarize the main interesting conclusions
thus:
Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to,understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they
speak different languages?
This question touches on the major controversies in the study of mind, with important
implications for politics, law and religion. Yet very little empirical work had been doneon such questions until recently. The idea that language might shape thought was for along time considered untestable at best and, more often, simply crazy and wrong. Now,
a flurry of new cognitive science research is showing that in fact, language does
profoundly influence how we see the world.
Some sharp observers of language point out that, for instance:Russian speakers have more words for light and dark blues and are better able tovisually discriminate shades of blue.

Some indigenous tribes say ‘north’, ‘south’, ‘east’ and ‘west’ rather than ‘above’,‘below’, ‘left’ and ‘right’ and, as a consequence, have a great spatial orientation.



The Piraha people of the Amazon basin eschew number words in favor of terms like‘few’ and ‘many’ and are not able to keep track of exact quantities.

One study found that Spanish and Japanese speakers could not remember agents ofaccidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? Well, in Spanish andJapanese, the agent of causality is often dropped, e.g. one says “The vase broke
itself” rather than “He broke the vase”.

That language embodies different ways of knowing the world seems intuitive, given thenumber of times we reach for a word or phrase in another language that communicatesthat certain je ne sais quoi we cannot find in our own language.

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It would seem that if you change how people talk, that changes how they think. If
people learn another language, they inadvertently also learn a new way of looking at theworld. When bilingual people switch from one language to another, they start thinking
differently, too. You too have probably observed this in your own behaviour. Certainly I
have. My wife of 40 years and I usually speak English to each other, although we also
have other languages in common. She tells me that when I speak Spanish or Portuguese
to someone, I seem a different person. Why do we think the way we do? An importantpart of the answer, it turns out, is in the languages we speak.
This brings me back to the point I was making: The difficulty of conveying ideas
expressed in an Asian language in a European language (or another language in general)and vice versa.
When there is need to find Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Malay, Hindi or otherinterpreters, I am confronted with more difficulty than finding Japanese, Chinese or
Korean interpreters. There has been a longer tradition of simultaneous interpretation
between the latter three languages and English, as well as other languages, than is thecase for the Southeast Asian languages. Schools and universities in Japan, China andKorea have been running interpretation courses for several decades now. Such schoolsor other opportunities for a professional training as interpreter do not yet exist forSoutheast Asian languages or are just beginning in some cases.
Interestingly, the government of France sponsored interpretation courses at universitiesin Thailand and Malaysia in the 1960s and 70s and some AIIC interpreters were there as
lecturers for a while. The courses were abandoned after only a few years because thelevel of English or other foreign language of the students was simply insufficient. Sadly
that is still the case with the courses run by universities in Malaysia and Thailand, as I
can attest having been invited to speak to students there more than once. I mentioned
one case in my preliminary remarks. While almost all university students in thosecountries study English at some time during their school years, very few attain a level ofcomfortable fluency. As you may have observed, the level of English spoken throughout
Asia is very low, but people understand in general and, for most, that is enough.
There are a handful of interpreters for Thai, Vietnamese, Malay, Indonesian, Lao,
Khmer, Nepali and Farsi; more for Hindi which is used at conferences in India. With afew odd exceptions, these are not people who graduated from a university-levelinterpretation course. They are self tought. In the case of Vietnamese, some have had

299ad-hoc training of six months or more at the EU in Brussels. Most of them do a pretty
credible job interpreting from English into their mother tongue; but very few canprovide a good, accurate and fluent interpretation into English. These are the best withwhom we get to work occasionally. But there are many less professional interpreters – I
hesitate to use that word – for these languages who translate at sales, business and othermeetings. They do the best they can, but it cannot be called proper simultaneousinterpretation. On a couple of occasions during a coffee break at a meeting with Asian
languages for which I have organised interpretation, a delegate has told me: “Youinterpreters are really good. I can understand everything. Not like at such or such asales meeting, where we only could catch a few sentences now and then.”
Far be it from me to criticize other interpreters. I just want to recognize the difficulty ofour task and the fact that for many Asian languages there are no good training
possibilities. Apart from the fact that the level of English or other foreign language of
those who want to interpret needs to be outstanding, compared to what one normallyfinds in Asia.
Languages in demand
According to my own observation of market trends, I would say in Asia the mostfrequently demanded language combinations are the following, in that order:
English-Chinese; English-Japanese; English-Korean; English-French; English-Spanish;
English-Russian; English-Arabic; English-Vietnamese; English-German; English-Thai;
English-Hindi; English-Indonesian; English-Malay. Languages such as Khmer, Lao,
Urdu, Tagalog are used for interpretation mainly in courts, but rarely at conferences.
The implications are, first, that it is almost impossible to find any chance of training forinterpretation in the lesser used languages and, second, that those who do use them tointerpret very rarely get a chance to practice interpretation. This in turn means they
don’t get a chance to improve and they cannot make a living out of interpretation. They
must have some other occupation which in turn makes it more problematic to take upinterpretation assignments.
Fortunately, that is not the situation for Japanese, nor Chinese or Korean. In fact, forthose languages there are not only plenty of work opportunities which allow for constantimprovement, but also there are university courses in interpretation. And, of course,
there are academic associations, such as the Japan Association for Interpreting and300

Translation Studies, which promote further enrichment and deepening of cultural
understanding.
It has been a privilege for me to share a few ideas with you, my colleagues, and I will behappy to discuss your reactions and questions.
……………………………………
About the author
Jean-Pierre ALLAIN is a conference interpreter and an economist. He has been working
as conference interpreter since 1971 for the United Nations institutions, European Union,business and professional associations in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Americas. He has
been living and working in Asia since 1984 (Malaysia 1984-1999; Thailand andMalaysia 1999-2010). He has a long experience as conference organizer and language
services provider for conferences since 1973. He also worked as economist and advisor
to NGOs in Asia, Africa and Europe.

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