The 19th Japan Bird Festival opened on November 2nd, under the theme of “Encouraging closer coexistence with wild birdlife”. This bird festival is one of the largest wild bird related events in Japan with a lot of participants from abroad and at home. AIRA dispatched interpreters to support booths from other countries. (No.19-16)
Date and Time : November 2nd ( Sat) & 3rd (Sun), 2019
9:30 ~ 16:00 2nd (Sat), 9:30 ~ 15:30 3rd (Sun)
Venue : The Bird Museum Parking Lot and others
Interpreters : Taiwan booth: Xiao Ying Ying, Huang Yi Ting
Mongol booth: Hiroshi Ohsaki, Liu Peng,Lu Ze Qing
Thailand booth: Wasana Kida, Hitomi Koyama
Philippine booth: Ryozo Kobayasi, Yasuhiko Hesaki, Michiko Kurata
Myanmar booth: Chikara Igarashi, Mitsuo Kitagawa,Katsumi Nakajima
Guatemala booth: Rie Hama, Hiroshi Saruwatari, Yasuhiko Hesaki
For the 2-day festival, interpreters were sent to each booth for either a half day or a full day. Two foreign students of Chuo Gakuin University also served as interpreters.
Main topics the interpreters translated were explaining about birds, bird watching tours prepared by the countries, and selling goods of each booth. As there were the birds known well among the Japanese and/or indigenous to specific countries, the visitors dropping in at booths asked names and species of the birds and detailed information about bird-watching tours. The interpreters used terms they had learned in advance for this event.
Those visitors having visited the country on a sight-seeing tour or other purposes enjoyed talking with the persons of the booth about the country and also regretted not to have visited the specific bird watching spots when they found they missed the places.
The new participants for this festival were from Mongol (a different organization), Myanmar, and Guatemala. Some of them asked the interpreter of their booth about what kind of goods they should sell and what exhibition materials are to be prepared for the future participation.
A “Welcome reception” was held on the evening of November 2. Interpreters translated opening remarks and words by the head of the Executive Committee, Mayor of Abiko Junichi Hoshino, and the representatives of the participating countries. Liu Peng, the interpreter for the Mongol booth, was asked by the representative to get some time for writing up his speech when his turn came and to make an arrangement for giving a gift to Mayor. The representative expressed gratitude for Liu Pen’s attentive service.
The 2-day AIRA’s support of sending interpreters gave the participants from abroad a feeling of safety and also helped public relation activity of Abiko city pursuing “Encouraging closer coexistence with wild birdlife”.
(Translated by Ms.Hitomi Koyama)
