Interpretation Samples

Below are some of the examples of the work that I did as an interpreter.

I hope that these examples will be able to give you an idea when to hire an interpreter to get most from an often time-constrained meeting with your Japanese visitors.

• Japanese public school teachers' three-day visit to the Benicia School District. This tour was organized by the Ministry of Education in Japan to give them an opportunity to observe US elementary, middle, and junior-high school education at work. At each school, Japanese teachers had ample time to discuss with their American counterparts about curriculum, prevention of school violence, fundings for education, text books, teaching materials, and parents' participation. The school district held a farewell party at the end of the visit, and though unplanned, an American teacher and I played the masters of ceremony. It turned out to be a very memorable event, both sides expressing great satisfaction with their exchanges.
• Ministry of Justice Fair Trade Committee's visit to the San Francisco Anti-trust Division of the US Department of Justice. We discussed with Mr. Crook, the head of the SF Division about illegal bidding, its exposure, and prosecution procedures.
• Hitachi employees' visit to a groupware developing, selling and training company. Five instructors were involved in the two-week software training in which thorough mastering several sophisticated concepts was required. By the end, two Japanese engineers and I completed the training and happily but sadly dissolved the two-week three-person team.
• Otis Elevator International Managers Conference. One-week strategic meeting held at Napa, to which about 100 representatives from all over the world attended. Discussion sessions sandwiched a lecture given by a expert lecturer. I interpreted for Mr. David George, Chairman of Otis Elevator and President of United Technologies and Mr. Ford, the founder of Otis Elevator. It was a fabulous week-long event with great food and socializing with people from all over the world.
• Netscape meetings with business partners and prospective customers. This is where I learned about the concepts of private and public keys among other things. At a pary held for Japanese distributors, I interpreted for Mr. Marc Andreessen, the main archtect of the revolutionary Mosaic and later Netscape Navigator.
• Assisting newspaper journalists in an interview is challenging because they are always after cutting edge technologies or hot news. For example, I went to interview the CEO of Calgene, a company famous for genetically engineered tomatoes, Dr. Paul Billings of California Pacific Medical Center, an authority on genetic counseling and bioethics, and Dr Elbert , the director of human genome project consisting of three National Laboratories.
• Japanese people with disabilities visited groups of Americans with disabilities and facilities for disabled. Japanese people with different disabilities visited the Bay Area to meet people at the Center for Independent Living, UC Berkeley's program for students with disabilities, and Recreation Center for Handicapped. Since I happened to know a store sellling goods developed for people with different disabilities, we dropped by there and Japanese visitors bought goods difficult to obtain in Japan.
• Lecture: Present condition of the Internet. I organized this lecture, inviting an expert professor from Business School of the University of California at Berkeley.

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