Translating is hard

Last week, the Portland-Sapporo Sister Cities celebrated their 50th anniversary in conjunction with the Portland Rose Festival. On Friday, June 5, a delegation from Japan, including Mayor Fumio Ueda and Sapporo City Assembly members, arrived for a weekend of activities commemorating our sister city relationship.

I enthusiastically volunteered to participate in the festivities. I figured I could use my bilingual skills to help with a tour group or do some basic translating. I was surprised when I was asked to be a translator for the official Re-Signing Ceremony. I was unsure of the rather high assignment, but I wasn’t about to turn down such a great, unique opportunity when presented with one.

The day before the ceremony, the other translator and I met with Fred Ross, the International Relations Director for the City of Portland. As he walked us through City Hall going over what we’ll be doing the next day — starting with the courtesy call in the Rose Room, the Re-Signing Ceremony itself in the Council Chambers, and then the reception in the atrium — I really started to wonder, what the hell am I doing here!?

Now, I’m a fluent English speaker (obviously) and a fluent Japanese speaker. When I’m in Japan, people don’t suspect that I’m an American that’s lived in the United States for most of my life. When I do have to explain that I’m visiting from overseas (because I have to tell them why I don’t have a Japanese address for a form something), they’re often impressed or even seem baffled at my perfect Japanese.

That said, when I looked at the mayor’s talking points that I was provided, I had pangs of panic. I was up most of the night looking up words and trying to familiarize myself with the unfamiliar. I may be able to carry on conversations with Japanese friends and family, and generally get along day-to-day life in Japan with relative ease, but a formal occasion with politicians? That was another matter altogether.

I learned scores of new words.
vice speaker = 副議長（fukugichou)
city assembly/council = 議会 (gikai)
honorary citizen = 名誉市民 (meiyo shimin)
Chamber of Commerce and Industry = 商工会議所 (shoukoukaigisho)
re-signing = 再調印 (saichouin)
written oath = 宣誓書 (senseisho)

The list goes on.

By about 5:30am, when I lay down for a “nap” so I can — ridiculously — go to my regular job for a few hours before I head over to my translating gig, I was hating Japanese.

I arrived at the Mayor’s Office around noon and hung out with the other translator, comparing notes. Morgan, a community college Japanese teacher, was doing Japanese to English, which I already suspected was the much easier job. (She later told me that she’d responded to the e-mail about the translating assignment and requested Japanese to English, which is why I got stuck with English to Japanese. Damn.) Fred Ross introduced us to Mayor Sam Adams, and then I watched as they walked around, the IR director briefing the mayor on the day’s events.

At 1pm, the dignitaries from Sapporo arrived and we went into the “Rose Room” for the “courtesy call.” I didn’t know what a courtesy call was before, but everyone was seated along a big table, where there were some formal words by the two mayors and a few others, a gift exchange, and then some time for mingling and picture-taking. I was seated behind Mayor Adams, and Morgan was seated behind Mayor Ueda.

This was definitely the most difficult part of the day. One of the first things I had to do of course, before I was really even settled into translating-and-speaking-formal-Japanese mode, was translate Mayor Adams’s unscripted speech. He talks. He pauses. I spit out what he just said, in Japanese.

A few more considerations about myself:
a) I consider myself someone who is generally comfortable with being in front of people. I enjoyed giving presentations in school. I’ve been in performing arts my whole life. During my short involvement with Model United Nations in high school, I got an award my very first conference out.
b) In a sense, I’ve been translating for people my whole life. My parents’ English never got very good; my language skills surpassed theirs by the time I was about 7. I was the family translator.

But:
a) I’d never done anything of quite this much level of responsibility when it comes to speaking. When I was looking around the room at two mayors and the Sapporo City Assembly among others, looking at me expectantly, yes, I was very, very nervous. I’m sure my lack of sleep wasn’t helping either.
b) Translating for errands and casual, friendly conversation is just not nearly the same as translating a speech for a mayor. Japanese has a very distinct formal language that I’m not accustomed to speaking in, let alone trying to translate into. It’s because of this that makes English->Japanese translating so challenging, and it’s this point where I think it really shows that my English is much better than my Japanese.

In case you’re not bilingual yourself and you think translating would be easy for someone that is — well, it’s not. The thing with being bilingual is, I do no translating when I talk. I don’t think in my head, “how do I say this?” and translate it; I just speak in Japanese or I speak in English and it comes out. So imagine trying to think of synonyms for a particular word. How about completely rephrasing an entire sentence? Now how about doing that on the spot (quick!) in front of important people in an unfamiliar setting?

I was just relieved that I was able to pull out the phrase for “recession.” 不景気 (fukeiki)–that’s one I just happened to have picked up on my last trip to Japan.

At 2pm was the actual Re-Signing Ceremony. We were joined by many more people for this in the Council Chambers, including Portland city commissioners, former Portland mayors, and members of the Sapporo citizens delegation (important businesspeople and such). There was some time before the ceremony started, and I was greeted by Russ Lewis, the local news anchor who was MC’ing the ceremony. He was very friendly and did much to put me at ease. He had never had a translator before (other than for sign language), and he asked me about places in his speech he should be pausing. I told him he doesn’t need to worry, because for this, I had a pre-translated speech in hand.

Armed with speeches I can actually read from (I didn’t even translate them myself — someone from the Sister City Association did, though I did make a few changes), the ceremony went fairly smoothly. The only speech I didn’t have pre-translated was the one for Sam Adams, though I did at least have his speech (in English) in hand to follow along, which made it infinitely easier than the earlier speech. I got it the day before but hadn’t bothered to pre-translate it, since I was under the impression that these were just talking points and not the actual speech. Well, he did follow the written speech, and I had at least looked up some key vocabulary words, so I think I did fairly decently, if with a few stumbles.

Finally, we moved out over to the atrium for the toast, where I ended up not having to do much.

The reception was the fun part. I tried to keep my “translator hat” on and did what I can if I spotted people that looked like they needed translating, but I got a chance to also just mingle and talk to people. I asked people from Sapporo what they thought of Portland, or of the U.S. One woman told me that this was her first time in Portland, but she had once lived in Louisville, Kentucky on a homestay when she was younger. Funny enough, the people from Sapporo often started with the same question everyone else here seems to start with: “Are you a student?” I suppose it’s my age (I’m 25 but look younger), but maybe they thought I’m in the U.S. for college?

I was relieved when it was all over, but all in all, it was a good experience. I feel grateful and honored to have had the opportunity to take an active part in the Portland-Sapporo sister city relationship!

For the rest of that weekend: To Be Continued…