Translating

Today I went to Nogi to translate for a world famous violinist named Janos Mote. Mr. Usui and Miller were wanting someone to be able to do it, and considering my background in classical music (I played the viola for 7 years before finally putting it down before I entered college), they were leaning towards me to do the translating.

When I got there I was picked up by Ayaka, the student that was going to be helping me interpret. I already met Janos Mote before, I went with Fumi and Rin to see him and several other musicians perform at the Nogi auditorium a few weeks previously. So, I had no problems talking to him or anything. I found him to be pretty fascinating myself. Even though he was born in Hungry, his English was pretty good and I could easily communicate with him (despite numerous natives saying my English speaking style has changed since being here).

After formalities were over, we soon started the event. He was going to talk a little about himself and answer questions from the audience, then give some violin lessons to several people that shown up. He was concerned about this because he had never taught beginners or near beginner levels lessons before. Then, the translation session began. At first I thought I was going to be translating from Japanese to English for him, but I realized that wasn't what I was doing and I was actually translating from English to Japanese for the rest of the audience listing to him. Luckily there were only maybe 15 or 20 people there, so I wasn't that much pressured to perform, but my main concern was being understood by audience. For the most part, with my lack of knowledge of more vocabulary (I always feel this), I felt I was understood most of the time. When I did have trouble in finding something how to say, I asked Ayaka about it, and most of the time she was able to figure it out unless it was a special expression in English that most non-natives don't know. When questions came, I translated his responses back into Japanese, but sometimes I didn't know how to phrase something properly (even one guy joked he didn't understand me at all, but I think honestly he was kidding anyway). Afterwards, I watched him give lessons to the people that wanted lessons and it was over.

I reinforced something that I learned a while back with Japanese. Sounding foreign is directly translating from your own language into another language, but you have to utilize the target language in order to be best understood. Especially in Japanese, since the language itself isn't too direct and there's often very simpler ways of saying something.



(Ayaka is on the left, her friend Keko is on the right)



(This is after the performance at Nogi. Janos Mote is on the far right.)