Ultimate Crumpet

Hello and long time no speak!

This edition of the Ultimate Crumpet is brought to you from the southern hemisphere. I am currently with 3 of my Japanese co-workers sat in the conference hall at the 34^th World Heritage Committee in Brasilia, Brazil!

My ID Card for the World Heritage Meeting. My ID photo was taken after I had been for over 48 hours so I wasn't looking or feeling too fresh.

Talks are currently going on simultaneously in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese and I’m sat on a chair surrounded by scraps of paper with illegible scribbles I’ve made all over, an electronic dictionary with some fresh batteries and a headset that transmits what is being spoken by the committee and all state parties into English with the hard work of dedicated interpreters sat in tiny booths at the back of the conference hall.  The committee is currently voting on whether a world heritage site should be registered as a site-in-danger giving me some time to fiddle about on my laptop and not requiring much of my concentration!

Sneaky pics of the the Conference Hall. Shit is going DOWN.

This is a crude photo of the conference room that I’m in now (not meant to take photos oops!) but gives a good idea of what’s going on. There is a long table at the front of the room with large projected screens behind. On the table are the main committee such as the chairman, the secretariat, rapporteur, legal advisors and some others who keep the conference going and make any final decisions. Then in front of them, spreading across the hall, are lots of tables that are each taken up with different state parties like Japan, the US, Cambodia etc all of whom can make comments and vote on all the additions and amendments to the World Heritage list and its inscribed sites.

I’d like to explain exactly how I ended up being in Brazil with work – seeing as job is in Japan. To be honesty, this business trip came about very suddenly and was quite a shock to me when I first heard!

In mid-April, I was stood near the lifts outside my office and bumped into two members of staff at the world heritage site office who struck up a conversation which went something like the following:

Mr. X: Hello Jason! How are you? Do you remember me? I am Mr. X (Obviously not his real name!) from the World Heritage site office – we met once a long time ago!

Me: Ummm, Hello! Yes I remember you – it’s been a while, how have you been? (I didn’t remember him.. oops!)

Mr. X: Not too bad, oh by the way –would you like  to come to Brazil with us in July and be an interpreter for the our group at the world heritage committee meeting?

Me: Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?!

I didn’t quite believe what I heard and was pretty sure he was joking about going to Brazil but it turned out that he was deadly serious! Suddenly I was being dragged to lots of meetings and given seemingly endless mountains of translations and preparations to do before the actual event.

Entrance to the 34th World Heritage Committee meeting in Brazil.

The reason why we are here now is because Shimane Pref. is home to a World Heritage Site called “Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine and its Cultural Landscape” which became became a listed World Heritage site in 2007. However, the people in charge of the site wanted to make some minor modifications to the boundary of the site such as adding a nearby town and some old transport routes used for moving ore, silver and everyday goods.

A proposal for the modifications was drawn up by the prefecture and submitted to the World Heritage Committee to receive a draft but not conclusive decision on whether or not to approve the changes. It turned out that the committee approved the changes which then set the ball rolling for me and my co-workers coming to Japan to the actual committee meeting where the final decision will be made!

I am here as an interpreter and translator for the Shimane Prefecture delegation. The majority of what is being discussed at this conference apply to or concern Japan/Shimane but when the discussions that do come around, I’ll be forced to do something that causes me to feel more stressed and pressured than anything else I have ever done… Simultaneous Interpretation.

Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of Simultaneous Interpretation and exactly what I’ll be doing:

In simultaneous interpretation (SI), the interpreter renders the message in the target-language as quickly as he or she can formulate it from the source language, while the source-language speaker continuously speaks; a spoken language SI interpreter, sitting in a sound-proof booth, speaks into a microphone, while clearly seeing and hearing the source-language speaker via earphones.

I’ll be sat with headphones on listening to the English and putting the English I hear into Japanese as quickly as possible and speaking into a microphone all whilst trying to keep up with what is being said.  It’s the same thing that you see on live television when someone who doesn’t speak English is interviewed and you hear someone interpreting what he or she is saying and speaking at the same time (well about 2/3 seconds afterwards) in English.  I have had a couple of times before now when I’ve done simultaneous interpretation and I’ve found it very difficult simply because of the amount of concentration it requires. It may sound like I’m complaining about having to do this but nothing could be further from the truth. I’m actually very excited about the opportunity and see it as an extremely good opportunity to put my language skills to the test but it is just very nerve-wracking knowing that people are depending on you to give them the information instantly and more importantly – accurately.

I am lucky however because I have the chance to record what is being said in English too and have the opportunity to do a self-review of my performance later in the evening where I should have some time to do a proper and thorough write-up of the discussions in my own time.

I tried doing some trial runs this morning with my co-workers when I interpreted discussions about the states of different World Heritage sites around the world. I feel that it went rather successfully despite having absolutely no prior knowledge of the site and the vocabulary that would appear regarding case (for example, one discussion was about illegal logging occurring within a World Heritage site in Madagascar) and I’m feeling a little more confident about when the time comes to interpret discussions about Japanese sites.

I’m going to leave this post here for now and shall report back after my time to interpret and translate comes around… provided that I actually survive the experience! My head feel likes its about to explode just thinking about it! I should stop procrastinating whilst in the conference hall too and pay greater attention to what is happening to other World Heritage sites!

Wish me luck and see you on the other side!