Greetings

Last month, we had Mr. Shintaro Tominaga from Japan for 10 days to provide his various seminars and training at Pacific Dreams, as well as at a client's site. Mr. Tominaga is an international business consultant and currently teaches at Fellow Academy. Fellow Academy is a prominent translation school in Tokyo.

He provided three different seminars to American business audiences and two seminars for Japanese translators. His seminars for Americans were "Communication & Negotiation with Japanese," "Effective Presentation to Japanese," and "Secrets of Quality & Productivity in Japanese Companies."

I attended all these seminars and personally, I really enjoyed his brand new seminar - "Secrets of Quality & Productivity in Japanese Companies." Mr. Tominaga illustrated the systems used by Toyota Motors and Seven-Eleven Japan. It goes without saying that Toyota is a top Japanese auto-manufacturer and Seven-Eleven Japan is a top franchise convenience store chain in Japan. (Now Seven-Eleven Japan owns Seven-Eleven US.)

Naturally, people are wondering what kind of relevancy between Toyota and Seven-Eleven; auto-manufacture vs. convenience stores. This is a real secret, and why Mr. Tominaga chooses those two companies in his seminar. Mr. Tominaga is coming back to the US in the middle of May and he will continue his new dialogues and findings through his seminar about Japanese quality & productivity secrets.

For Americans, I think his theory, assumptions, and styles are very engaging and persuasive, and based on his real life experiences. He can examine Japanese ideas, concepts, and underlining characteristics with real world examples. For most of these types of things, it is not easy to express and explain in a verbal manner in English. I think it could be a very difficult task to explain even in Japanese, our mother tongue.

He provided a wide spectrum of cross-cultural observation, and revealed invisible and subtle cultural elements. For most Japanese people, the Japanese mindset or way of thinking is not logical and explainable in language, but that is not the case for Mr. Tominaga in his seminars. He will continue to reveal Japanese secrets to the American business audience by de-mystifying Japanese secrets with his engaging seminar styles.

Ken Sakai
President
kenfsakai@pacificdreams.org

Mr. Tominaga's Seminar Schedule in May 2007

May 15 (Tue) 8:30AM - 4:30PM:
"Communication, Presentation - Negotiation with Japanese" at
SEMI in San Jose, CA

May 17 (Thu) 8:30AM - 4:00PM
"Communication & Negotiation with Japanese" at Pacific Dreams,
Inc.

May 18 (Fri) 8:30AM - 12:00PM
"Effective Presentation to Japanese" at Pacific Dreams, Inc.

May 23 (Wed) 8:30AM - 4:00PM
"Secrets of Quality and Productivity in Japanese Companies" at
Pacific Dreams, Inc.

Ken Sakai
President

Honyaku Kotohajime - No. 58: "Translation as Cross-cultural Bridge"

Chances are that you frequently come across a variety of issues associated with communication and decision making in cross-cultural business environments. Japanese do not see many cross-cultural issues everyday while they are in Japan. In proportion to offshore transactions and overseas presence, Japanese have long enjoyed their monoculture, but are now recognizing the divergences and differences in cultures outside their own.

Let us take "quality" for example. Japanese manufacturers pursue 100% quality for their pride as well as for their consumers' sake. This perfect-quality orientation is sited most often as being responsible for overseas operation issues. If a Japanese company builds a plant and begins production in the US, the company will find its first conflict in the definition of the "quality" between Japanese workers at its domestic plants and local-employed American workers. Many Japanese companies have to invest enormous time and energy in filling the gap. In the US, a quality product generally means a product that works satisfactorily, whereas, in Japan, it means "absolutely no defect." This makes for a phenomenal difference in the concept of quality. 

Then what is quality translation? Quality translation goes beyond a simple conversion of one language to another. I don't mean that translation causes falsification or leaps in interpretation of core messages. Rather, no matter how carefully translators translate a source language to a target language, deliverables do not always convey the most accurate connotations of words. This can be due to subtle differences in concepts conveyed by individual words from culture to culture. As described in the above example, it is no wonder that both trans-pacific cultures strongly affect the concept of quality.

Some Japanese companies successfully convey the high-quality oriented mindset to a core corporate culture. Employees and teams enhance their morale and discipline through diligent and ceaseless improvement of processes; thus these companies achieve their objectives.

The counterpart US companies place special emphases on financial results, which is called the "bottom line" in accounting lingo. The US companies would rather leave tasks to individual employees than specify or minutely manage how to do, leaving the employees with the freedom to handle the task 'out of the box' and according to their own procedures. The US companies always stick to results; therefore, they consider the Japanese perfectionistic approach as irrational because it seems to increase cost and the raise the break-even point, even to the point of being unprofitable.

In my experience, the toughest part of translation is how to properly express word-driven concepts. Dictionaries do not teach us tacit meanings on cross-cultural backgrounds except for the most significant and common ones. Clear-cut meaning in a foreign language deeply rooted in an individual culture is difficult, no matter how many books we read and no matter how many questions we ask cross-culture experts. We must learn from successful and unsuccessful experiences by exposing ourselves to the cross-cultural world.

Pacific Dreams Inc. (PDI) keeps it in mind to translate languages from a cross-cultural perspective. PDI is honored that this approach is highly appreciated by our clients, and strives for translating culturally embedded meanings in linguistic symbols. We have yet to reach the perfect quality; to achieve this aim, we must gain more knowledge, skills, and experience. Translation is the first step for bridging cultures, and PDI believes that, without integrating cross-cultural perspectives into translation, we cannot attain perfect quality. With this view in mind, PDI will continue providing you and your cross-cultural clients with quality translation. 

Ken Sakai
President
E-mail: KenFSakai@pacificdreams.org

Pacific Dreams, Inc.
25260 SW Parkway Avenue, Suite D
Wilsonville, OR 97070

TEL: 503-783-1390
FAX: 503-783-1391