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Our President took a rest from chairing the meeting this time,
and the floor was taken by Dr. Charles De Wolf, who has been acquainted
with our speaker, Mr. Masumi Muramatsu, for many years. Dr. De
Wolf spoke briefly of Mr. Muramatsu's career as an interpreter
before calling on him to speak on his chosen subject, "A
Half-Century of Interpreting Language and Culture: Retrospects
and Prospects."
During his half-century as an interpreter, Mr. Muramatsu said,
he had had moments of glory and moments of utter misery. His guiding
principle in interpreting was to convey the emotions and personality
of the speaker. As a veteran European interpreter had said, the
important point was not to translate the words but to convey the
message. (He gave an extreme example of the results of mechanical
translation achieved by processing through state-of-the-art translation
software the recent famous (infamous?) statement of an American
officer in Okinawa saying certain Japanese were "nuts and
wimps". "Nuts" had come out as "kinomi"
and "wimps" was said to be untranslatable.) In interpreting,
he always did his best to make sure the listeners got what the
speaker was giving. If the speaker was aiming at entertaining,
he would try to make the audience laugh; if the speaker wanted
to touch their emotions, he would do his best to make them weep.
He had had wide experience of interpreting for American political leaders, and when he saw the film "Thirteen Days" he found he knew all the politicians portrayed in it. At the age of 26 he had interpreted briefly for a humorous John F. Kennedy, then a senator. A decade later he had sat behind the same man, now president, and he was clearly in no mood for joking. Mr. Muramatsu marveled at the large flakes of dandruff visible on the shoulders of his suit -- no doubt a sign of desperately scratching his head to find the right words to say about the Bay of Pigs.
Of the Presidents, Ronald Reagan was the greatest storyteller, with memorable jokes. American Presidents had had reasonably standard pronunciation -- until Jimmy Carter came along. His Georgia accent presented a new challenge to many a non-American. Mr. Muramatsu recalled with glee a summit meeting in London. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt prided himself on his English and always listened to the English speakers direct; but when Jimmy Carter began to speak, he shot him a glance of astonishment and hurriedly reached for his earphone! Once Mr. Muramatsu was interpreting a debate between Carter and Ford on NHK; he was interpreting for Carter (whom he had no difficulty understanding) and his partner Mr. Komatsu took Ford. Ford could not always catch Carter's witty remarks and somebody commented that he should have listened to the translation! As an aside, Mr. Muramatsu observed that the equipment could be a problem, especially when the users forgot about it; Mr. Reagan had once been fidgeting with his earphone, which fell out and left him looking around in puzzlement, cut off from the interpretation. To illustrate a fine point of his craft, Mr. Muramatsu told us about a story within a story: at a U.S.-Mexico conference, the American representative was chagrined when his speech drew no response, the more so because the following speaker attracted loud applause; he found out only later that the second speaker was his interpreter! The teller of the story ended with "The audience couldn't understand until they heard the translation!" Mr. Muramatsu was familiar with the story, and for his Japanese audience he added the words "into Spanish". One of the rules of interpreting was that you should not add to what the speaker had said, but in a case like this a "footnote" was permissible, to clarify the meaning.
Mr. Muramatsu had interpreted for twelve Nobel prizewinners, among them the economists Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson. This involved translating quite complicated arguments, preceded by "one the one hand....on the other hand" often ending up with rather a lot of hands. A treasured possession was a book autographed by Samuelson and inscribed: "For Masumi Muramatsu, who improved my prose and clarified my thought".
When translating Nixon's announcement of his resignation, Mr. Muramatsu had almost wept. At first Nixon sounded upbeat and even elated, but as he went on his voice cracked. Mr. Muramatsu did not try to imitate Nixon ("the interpreter is an alter ego, not an actor") but he conveyed the emotion, and Japanese listeners told him it brought tears to their eyes. The experience reminded him of the Emperor's radio broadcast at the end of the war in 1945; people were expecting an exhortation to fight on to the death if need be; but instead he asked them in his old-style Japanese to "bear the unbearable".
Another memorable occasion had been the Pearl Harbor anniversary ten years ago. George Bush Sr. had addressed the veterans, many of them in wheelchairs. The text of the speech had been faxed in advance to NHK, which had parcelled it out to a number of translators. Mr. Muramatsu had this translation in his hands when he broadcast, but he merely scanned it to get the gist and instead did a simultaneous interpretation. (Another major rule in the profession is to "check against delivery" -- that is, listen to the speaker and be faithful to what he is saying, regardless of what is in the text. ) Mr. Muramatsu attended a "Survivors' Association" reunion of U.S. and Japanese veterans on December 6, at which the theme was friendship and reconciliation, and found it very moving to see them hugging each other. A young naval cadet, unaware that the Japanese armed forces had been disbanded after the war, asked a Japanese veteran how long he had stayed on in the navy. When he finally understood, the Japanese replied drily, "I joined the ranks of the unemployed."
Mr. Muramatsu said he had had his miserable moments, but always looked on the bright side. Early in his career, in 1956, he had been accompanying a group on a harbour tour in San Francisco Bay. The guide pointed out the "Old Marina" -- a word unknown to him at the time; linking it with the "Ancient Mariner" he said that retired sailors lived there. When one of the tourists expressed surprise he covered up by saying that they got a good pension. A rather more embarrassing case had been at a meeting of finance ministers. He mistook the phrase "a lot of clout" for a derogatory reference to Germans --"krauts" -- and was hard put to it to cover up his mistake. In this connection he remarked that when correcting a mistake the interpreter must not say "I'm sorry" as this would be taken as the speaker's remark; one said simply, "correction."
On the question of whether translators would be displaced by computers, he was confident that this would not happen immediately. One key factor is that computers cannot convey what is in the mind of a human, and certainly not humour, which depends so often on an unexpected twist of meaning. Interpreters should cultivate a sense of humour, and even smile slightly when conveying a joke; it is important, however, not to burst out laughing before translating the punchline; the listeners should have the first laugh.
On this typically humorous note Mr. Muramatsu concluded his remarks and left plenty of time for questions. In response to a lady who said she had heard a simultaneous interpreter who finished translating before the speaker had finished the sentence, Mr. Muramatsu said that it was not good practice to jump the gun even though it was often possible to guess how the sentence would end. One might lose the audience's interest, and even their confidence. He himself tried to end two or three seconds after the speaker (five seconds was too long).
On another point he said that he was not totally bilingual, having learnt his English as a teenager. But he could say what he wanted to say, and it did not matter if he had a bit of a Japanese accent. In fact a little bit of an accent was considered charming, and it was said that Kissinger's accent was intentional. This was the age of "World Englishes", when there were many standards, and it was now legitimate to use a direct translation of a Japanese phrase in English: for instance one might say "I can finish this job before breakfast" (asameshimae) rather than saying "It's a piece of cake."
He had lived in Madras for some time; someone once complimented him: "You speak good Indian English" but someone else corrected this to: "No, he speaks beautiful South Indian English!"
In Europe it was axiomatic that one should translate from another language into one's own, but he found that it could sometimes be easier to work from Japanese into other languages.For one thing, he could understand the nuance of the Japanese, and so convey it in the target language. In Europe there were many who spoke more than one language; but there were not so many speakers of other languages who could interpret from Japanese, and so the Japanese had been forced to interpret both ways. When asked if he remembered afterwards what he had been interpreting, he said he remembered the small details, not the important points. For instance, he recalled Mrs. Thatcher eying the various interpreters in turn to see which one was currently speaking: when she saw his lips in synch with the speaker, she flashed him a smile. On another occasion he recalled a gracious remark of Kiichi Miyazawa. Miyazawa is an experienced speaker of English, who will even quote Shakespeare, but on that occasion he said, "I will speak in Japanese today, as we have Mr. Muramatsu to interpret for us."
The interesting thing about interpreting, said Mr. Muramatsu, was getting new knowledge, which he enjoyed sharing with others. There were some subjects he did not touch; medical interpreting, for instance, was beginner's work; it required only a precise knowledge of the vocabulary and no ability to convey emotional nuance. He did not interpret for politicians either; if there was a public reaction against some statement, they tended to put the blame upon the interpreter. His delight in his work was evident throughout his talk, which he closed with the words of encouragement he often used when signing a book for a student: "I wish you a happy future with English."
The evening was brought to a close with a vote of thanks by another long-standing acquaintance, Mrs. Doreen Simmons, who recalled two interpreters, a Class 2 and a Class 1, who were hired for identical press tours; it was noticeable that the better qualified person spoke much less, being able to come straight to the point instead of having to talk around it. A rich vocabulary, constantly being enlarged by experience, was vital, though she recalled that the specialist interpreter for a professional Japanese choir did not know the word onchi -- "tone-deaf", having moved only in exalted musical circles. An early meeting with Mr. Muramatsu at a Japan-British Society dinner had opened her eyes to the difficulties often faced by interpreters because the nature of their work was not understood by those who hired them. Mr. Muramatsu was a man who constantly learnt from experience; he could never stop enquiring and growing, which was just as well, for language is a human activity that never stands still.
Adapted from "The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin No. 4", April 2001, compiled by Prof. Hugh E. Wilkinson and Mrs. Doreen Simmons.
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