Taiwan Business: Finding the Right Words

Finding the Right Words

Taiwan has an increasing amount of translation and interpretation talent trained in specialized graduate programs.

BY JACKIE SHUN-HSIEH YEH
A Still-maturing Profession

BY DON SHAPIRO

Finding the Right Words

Taiwan has an increasing amount of translation and interpretation talent trained in specialized graduate programs.

BY JACKIE SHUN-HSIEH YEH

As Taiwan promotes its MICE – Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions – business as part of the drive to increase tourism, will it have the quantity and quality and translators and interpreters needed to support that development?

Currently the T&I (translation and interpretation) industry in Taiwan is still considered a fringe business, not yet as professionally mature as found in some of the other major Asian markets. But as academic programs to train translators and interpreters increase and as the domestic market gradually strengthens, Taiwan is narrowing the gap.

Five graduate schools in Taiwan offer T&I degree programs. Fu Jen Catholic University was the first to enter the field, in 1988, and was followed by National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, National Changhua University of Education, and Chang Jung Christian University. NTNU and Fu Jen are not only the longest established but also the most prestigious, and have trained the bulk of the interpreters working in Taiwan. Among those returning with T&I degrees from abroad, the majority seem to go into teaching rather than making a living primarily from interpreting.

On the “T” side of T&I, Fan notes that Taiwan has a large number of highly experienced translators, including many concentrating on such specialized markets as science, engineering, and medicine. Most of these are not graduates of T&I programs, but rather people who have developed expertise in a particular field. But of course, the subject matter they can deal with is usually limited to their own discipline.

For interpreters, notes Shelly Huang, senior manager of GIS Language Services, most of the demand in Taiwan is for either Chinese/English or Japanese/English services, in line with Taiwan’s economic and trade orientation. Steady growth has been seen recently in the need for interpreters with familiarity with such fields as green technology, environmental protection, and biotechnology, she says, and more and more regional medical seminars have been shifted from Japan to Taiwan because of the lower cost. “Although China is attracting an increasing number of large-scale international conferences,” she adds, “that really hasn’t impacted Taiwan too much because Taiwan doesn’t have a lot of opportunity to hold that kind of event.”

The financial crisis that began in late 2008 and the subsequent recession put a temporary brake on local demand. But Damien Fan, a professional interpreter and lecturer at the NTNU Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation, sees a healthy long-term trend of potential growth. Once a company uses a professional interpreter for an event rather than relying on one of its own staff members, he says, the company is usually impressed enough with the improved effectiveness to become a regular client.

T&I professionals stress the need for cooperation from the client if the interpreter is to be well-enough prepared to communicate the meaning of a speech or presentation to the audience. Lisa Wang, who has 26 years of experience in the field and also teaches interpreting and negotiating at the National Taiwan University School of Professional and Continuing Studies, says the biggest source of frustration for interpreters is clients who are reluctant to provide sufficient background information to enable them to prepare. She complains that many clients in Taiwan assume that anyone with decent English proficiency is capable of doing the job – or expect the interpreter to be a kind of walking dictionary, able to simply spout out specialized terminology from all kinds of disciplines without research.

Even when some preparatory work has been done, the interpretation task sometimes turns out to be “mission impossible,” particularly with highly technical legal, medical, or scientific speeches delivered by someone speaking his second language, says Damien Fan. “If the speaker can’t convey the meaning clearly, it’s impossible for the interpreter to do a good job. Those speeches are sometimes so abstruse that even having a few days for the interpreter to prepare is not enough.”

Price is another issue that often causes disputes between the client and the interpreter. According to a research report on Taiwan’s T&I industry conducted by the NTNU Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation in cooperation with the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, the industry’s progress has been held back by the lack of both standardized pricing and accepted procedures for formulating a contract. “Sometimes clients even cut the price after the event if they’re unsatisfied with the interpreter’s performance,” says Shelly Huang. “In cases like that, 99% of the time I stand on the interpreter’s side. If we find out the problem was with the audio equipment or the speaker, yet the client keeps complaining about the interpreter, we generally offer a discount on the equipment we provided. In this way, interpreters’ rights are not compromised, while the client feels like they’re being compensated.”

Damien Fan expresses regret that the strict standards applied in most leading markets by the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC) have not gained market acceptance in Taiwan, where the clients can be very demanding, even arbitrary. To date, no local association has been formed to represent the interests of interpreters in seeking better working conditions and prices. “Only if experienced interpreters with nationwide credibility step forward will it be possible to from a truly credible association,” says Fan.

Taiwan’s interpreters appear to be too individualistic to join together, however. “In Taiwan, if you have passion and your own niche, of course you can survive,” says Lisa Wang. “But it’s impossible to establish an association. Interpreters always have to fight alone.”

T&I professionals welcome the Taiwan government’s plans to promote Taipei as a venue for international MICE events, expecting that it will bring them more employment opportunities. But they do not seem to be anticipating any quick windfall. “It might help in the long run, but what we are witnessing now is that the budget compiled for the MICE industry remains very limited,” says Shelly Huang. “We need practical actions rather than catch phrases.”

Fan also expresses some doubts. “Due to demographic and economic constraints, it’s impossible for Taipei to compete with Shanghai in convening large-scale conferences,” he says. “Because of our small size, we can’t succeed just on a numerical basis, so the authorities will need to find small ways to be effective. To foster the MICE industry, Taiwan should focus on our special advantages, like traditional Chinese culture and cuisine. The development shouldn’t be limited to Taipei City, and senior officials should stop craving grandiose plans. That’s not going to work.”

Practical training

In spite of the difficulties faced by the profession, every year at least 20 students receive a Master’s degree in T&I from Taiwan institutions. These programs offer training in almost every aspect of translation and interpretation, including theory, techniques, professional ethics, and public speaking and communicative skills. The professors seek to impart strategies for expanding working memory, honing paraphrasing and summarizing skills, and converting phrases in the source language into the target one.

After a year of basic training, students go on to take simultaneous interpretation courses, tackling material on a wide variety of subject matters. They learn to cope with different accents and rates of speech, and even with illogical or disorganized content, so as to get prepared for real-life scenarios. Although T&I graduate students are expected to already have a high level of language proficiency, they also receive guidance from their instructors in further improving their language capability.

One of the goals of the T&I graduate schools is to get students “market-ready” once they graduate. To accomplish that, second-year students are given course materials based on speeches delivered at international organizations to practice on under simulated conditions. Most of the graduates then go to work either as freelancers or in-house interpreters, while a small number take teaching jobs. Wallace Chen, assistant professor of the NTNU Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation as well as the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation (GSTI) at Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS), says the graduates being turned out by Taiwan’s universities have a comparative advantage in the domestic job market due to their local knowledge and professional connections. But on the other hand, MIIS graduates have gained a broader, more global view.

The Ministry of Education conducts a national accreditation test in an effort to establish a gauge of interpreters’ proficiency, but opinion varies among interpreters as to the credibility of the exam. Chen, who has 25 years of working experience around the world, holds that established interpreters may not find certification attractive or necessary because their clients trust them. But he adds that certification can be an advantage in winning a new client.

Huang considers that that the only beneficiaries are the cram schools that get business from students preparing to take the exam, as the market will not accept a certificate as a guarantee of one’s capability. She prefers to make her own evaluation of whether a prospective employee is qualified. Fan, who participated in the design of the test, points out that it is still too early to measure the result. “Some people criticize the test as inconsistent with the real-life situation interpreters encounter, but as a national test, fairness remains a top priority,” he says. “In general, I think the test is on the right track.”

Recently the competition among interpreters has become fiercer due to the weakened state of the economy. “The economic recession certainly has had an impact, which is why we encourage Taiwanese interpreters to embrace the broader Chinese market by learning to use simplified Chinese and establishing connections with interpreters from China,” says Chen. “Compared with their Chinese counterparts, Taiwanese interpreters have better language proficiency, global perspective, and cultural awareness.”

Chuanyun Bao, associate professor and former dean of the GSTI program at Monterrey, notes that the large size of the Chinese market is attractive, but cautions that work permits can be difficult to obtain for foreign interpreters. Bao, who previously had 27 years of working experience in China and at the United Nations, says that to his knowledge, Taiwanese are employed in China as in-house staff interpreters only by Taiwan-invested companies. “This explains why there isn’t much competition there between Taiwanese and Chinese interpreters – basically they’re serving different markets,” he says.

But Wallace Chen believes that will change, offering some excellent opportunities for Taiwanese interpreters who are ready to take advantage of them. “It’s a huge market there, and this profession, like many others, is not and cannot be limited by national boundaries.”

Fan also expresses optimism about the future. He is encouraged by the fact that more and more graduates of Taiwan’s T&I programs seem to be staying in the profession rather than taking jobs in other industries, and by the improving quality of the instruction in those programs due to the abundant practical experience of the instructors.

— Jackie Shun-Hsieh Yeh is a student the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

A Still-maturing Profession

A generation ago, before Taiwan had graduate programs in T&I, the major source of translators and interpreters was retired military personnel. Given the close cooperation between the ROC and U.S. military in that era, the Taiwan armed forces always made sure to train officers with an excellent command of English.

In the sixties and seventies, the best-known interpreter in Taiwan was a retired army colonel named Wu Ping-chung, nicknamed Watermelon Wu (because of the large size of his head, it was said). His translation skills and phenomenal memory were legendary.

In the decades since then, the demand for interpreters has mushroomed with the growth of Taiwan’s internationally oriented commerce and industry. Generally the supply has kept pace with the demand, at least for English and Japanese interpreters, but an imbalance often develops during some periods of the year when a spike in demand occurs. Each June, for example, when Taiwan puts on the large-scale Computex trade show, “you need to book IT interpreters very early,” says Fupei Wang, general manager of corporate communications at Ogilvy PR in Taiwan.

For the events it is organizing, Wang says Ogilvy either hires interpreters through professional agencies or goes to freelancers with whom it has previously cooperated. Freelancers whose experience enables them to “really understand the industry, the client’s products, and even the client's culture, tone and manner” are generally preferred, she notes.

The biggest challenge can be translating at a press conference, says Wang. “It takes a special skill to face reporters. It’s a huge pressure to do immediate translation during a Q&A session. Sometimes the reporters’ questions can be very tough, and the translator has to be sure to capture the tone of the speaker.”