If you want some recurring themes here: the rituals of Dangerous Professionals are known to be rituals of Dangerous Professionals, and thus in some ways they’re as powerful as the authority, credentials, guild privileges, legal rights, etc of those Dangerous Professionals.
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“Why didn’t you say ‘translator’?” Code of professional ethics. I was a translator, in a crunchier way than I was a secretary. Translators have to say exactly what the client does even if the client doesn’t know the magic words. Secretaries execute autonomously; that’s point.
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The one time of my life I worked “translator” to advantage was helping a Japanese friend check in early to a US hotel. They said no. I told him: “We’re doing that again but this time you decline to use English, at all.” And I suited up because of course I am a salaryman.
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Me: “Good afternoon. I am Mr. Tanaka’s translator.” Friend: “チェックインをお願いします。” Me: “Mr. Tanaka would like to check in.” Hotel: “Right away sir.”
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My friend was flabbergasted that that worked. My theory: a hotel might have no availability conveniently, but if you have I Have An Assigned White Guy In A Suit money, they can often find something quickly.
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Another time a coworker from India needed a Japanese document translated and certified for a particular bureaucratic process. I translated and certified it. Now: guess what certified means?
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You might naturally think “Oh you’re like, hmm, empowered by the government because of having passed a test to make things that aren’t just translations but rather Official Translations.” Sensible guess. Wrong, but sensible.
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Certifying just means attesting that you have sufficient fluency to have executed the translation and that it is true. Buuuuuut you have to be able to sell that to someone who is “verifying” the fact of the certification, right?
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Round one: some bureaucrat, who of course doesn’t read Japanese, doubts whether my certification of the translation is a “real” certification. So I try again.
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“I, Patrick McKenzie, certify that this translation is complete and correct, as attested to by my official seal.” And then I affixed my hanko. Now there are seals and there are seals in the world.
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Bureaucrats like their seals, because they are exclusive and are authentication devices for the authenticity of documents (weakly) and for the solemnization of a claim of authority regarding the contents (strongly).
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And I have that kind of seal, too, but the one I actually used was just my personal one, which has the legal effect of a signature. Oh, it’s official, alright. Registered and everything.
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The small minded person in me thought, when doing this, “If you could read Japanese, petty bureaucrat, you would understand that I am punking you, but if you could read Japanese we wouldn’t be having this interaction so I sort of feel justified here.”
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