AIRA Dispatches Interpreters for Japan Bird Festival 2016
Japan Bird Festival 2016 with the common theme “People and birds living in harmony” was held widely at Abista, Bird Museum, Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, Teganuma Aquatic Park, etc., in Abiko city where people, birds and cultures are harmonized. For this annual event AIRA dispatched volunteer interpreters to foreign exhibitors’ booths on request from the organizers.
Date: November 5 (Sat.), 6 (Sun.)
Venue: Teganuma Aquatic Park
Interpreters: Rie Hama, Yasuhiko Hesaki, Chikara Igarashi, Joselin Kobayashi, Michiko Kurata, Penny Liupeng, and Takaharu Yoshida: 7 in all
During the 2-day event, the weather was fine and genial. Interpreters helped people at 3 exhibitor’s booths of Philippines, Hong Kong, and Bhutan. Ms. Kobayashi from Philippines and Ms. Kurata same as last year, were in charge of Philippine booth. Ms. Liupeng from China was in charge of Hong Kong booth, and Mr. Igarashi who has a profound knowledge of Bhutan helped people at the Bhutanese booth on Sunday. Ms. Hama was in charge of Bhutanese booth, and Mr. Yoshida and Mr. Hesaki received visitors at Hong Kong booth on Saturday.
The exhibitors, who are all birders, sold bird badges of their countries, T-shirts, and handcrafts including cloth wallets. Visitors asked various questions such as “What is your national bird?” “What is the name of this bird?” or “How does this bird sing?” So interpreters were very busy asking the exhibitors and explaining the answers to visitors.
On the second day, Mr. Hisanaga Shimazu, former president of Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, visited the foreign booths.
As a result of a poll conducted by the executive committee on the excellent performance in the section of the explanation, workshop program and significant message on the exhibition, the Bhutanese booth was awarded the Ooban (coot) Prize. At the award ceremony, Mr. Igarashi interpreted Bhutanese prize-winner’s speech of joy in front of visitors.
Bhutanese language has a slight similarity to Japanese. When the Bhutan exhibitor talked about numbers, audiences were very surprised as Bhutanese pronunciation of 11, 12, 13, and 14 is almost the same as Japanese ones. At the very last of his speech, he asked audience to visit his beautiful homeland Bhutan. (No. 16-21 Translated by R. Hama)
