Author Archives: deddyone

A short video while I was interpreting for 2 high-profile individuals

Posted on by

For those who might be interested on how it’s look like to do my job.

This is a snippet of a video while I was interpreting for Japan Parliamentary Vice Minister of Defense and Indonesian National Armed Forces Chief Commander. This is how it’s like when interpreting a spontaneous dialog between 2 high-profile individuals without any prepared materials. In the video you can see a short part when I was interpreting from Japanese to Indonesian language and also from Japanese to English language toward the end of the video.

*The video was taken from the official Indonesian National Armed Forces youtube channel and narrated using Indonesian language.

Meeting between DPR (Indonesian People’s Representative Council) and METI

Posted on by

It was an honor for me to be chosen once again for another high-profile client.

This time it was for the meeting between the Head of DPR (Indonesian People’s Representative Council) Dr. Puan Maharani and the METI Minister Nishimura Yasutoshi.

Actually, this is the first time for me to enter the Main Building of MPR (People’s Consultative Assembly). So I was quite excited. I hope to contribute more to the strong relationship between Indonesia and Japan through my indirect work like this.

Courtesy Call from Japan MoD to Indonesia

Posted on by

On July 19th 2022, the Japan Ministry of Defense delegation visited Indonesia and made a courtesy call to meet Indonesian Minister of Defense and Indonesian Army Commander. Not much I can say about the content of the meeting since it involved military secrets. I was instructed by the Japan MoD to come to the hotel in early morning to get the briefing about the meeting agenda. Everything is in manual hard copy and I have to give back all the documents that were shown to me back to them.


*me and one of the military lady act as the MC for ceremony in the National Heroes Tomb Kalibata in the morning before we all go to Indonesia MoD.

I always admire Japanese work attitude. The day before they just visited another country, and then took a flight to Indonesia and stay for 1 night, had a meeting with Indonesian Army Commander and Indonesian Minister of Defense (in both separate place of course) and after that went directly to the Airport to go to another country. Almost no time was wasted.  The business trip was designed for the maximum efficiency.

*I found the related post by Indonesia Defense Magazine in their youtube channel here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVHel3978uA

I’m quite proud that I’m able to contribute to strengthen the military relation between Indonesia and Japan as an Interpreter. This meeting is quite special because from what I heard from their staff is, this is the first time in a decade or so that Japan Mod made an official Courtesy Call visit to Indonesia.

Global Platform Disaster Risk Reduction 2022 Event

Posted on by

Global Platform Disaster Risk Reduction 2022 was hosted by the Government of Indonesia and was held in Bali on May 2022. As the nature of the United Nations event there were hundreds of nations that participated in this international forum. To get more details regarding GPDRR you click here : https://globalplatform.undrr.org/

I was hired to accompany the Japanese Cabinet Office State Minister’s delegation. The State Minister is fluent in English and could interact very well with other English speaking participants. So my role as an interpreter was quite minimum and I was more as a backup support.


*I’m the one in the red circle

My most important role was during the bilateral meeting with Indonesian counterpart. The Indonesian counterpart is the head of BNPB (Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency). And the meeting was conducted in Indonesian and Japanese language. So this is where I could use my interpreting skills at its best.

Up to date, this is my second United Nations related event that I was involved in. And probably this is also my second highest profile job that I have taken. The first one is of course when Japanese Ex-Prime Minister came to visit Indonesian President in 2017 where I was assigned to be one of the interpreters at that event.

As one of the few people in Indonesia that provide Trilingual interpretation (English – Japanese – Indonesian), I feel honored that I could get involved in such a high level interpretation jobs.

2nd RCID Event

Posted on by

After more than 2 years of doing RSI, finally I had a chance to do an SI in a Physical Event again using a Physical SI System. The event was the 2nd RCID (Regional Conference Industrial Development) that was held at Jakarta. The main sponsors of the show are the Indonesian Ministry of Industries and UNIDO.

It was a great experience doing SI and high level relay functions with the best people in the industry. The language interpretations were in English, Japanese, Mandarin and Korean.

*I blurred out the faces of the other interpreters for their privacy.
All of us has passed the PCR test and we only put off our masks during the pictures.

Comparing the options for receiving money Internationally.

Posted on by

Having a diverse client from multiple countries means that you will need more than just a Bank Transfer (wire transfer) option to receive money Internationally.

I will try to compare several methods that I use to receive USD and highlight the pro and the con for each one (Keep in mind that I live in Indonesia).

  • Paypal
    PRO :
    One of the most popular method and the longest player in this industry, it was versatile and the process is quick.
    To receive payment, you only need to link your Bank Account, and to make a payment you need to link your Credit Card (it costs a temporary 1 USD into your credit card that will be refunded later). I have been using Paypal for several years to receive International payments. Receiving money into your Paypal account is instant, after that to cash out you need to make withdrawal request, usually it will arrive in my Bank Account in approximately 24 hours.

    CON:
    Depending on the sender, you might not receive the full amount (you actually did receive the full amount before, but it has changed), so for example you got incoming payment of 100 USD but, Paypal will take handling charge fee. I don’t intend to put the Formula for that since it might be subject to change anyway in the future.
    The Conversion rate is very poor. Yes Paypal doesn’t charge any withdrawal process above certain amount, however they will give you a very bad conversion rate currency  (one of the worst currency rate I ever experienced).

  • Payoneer
    PRO:
    Fast execution (similar with Paypal). Withdraw or cash out request generally took around 24 hours.

    CON:
    They will take flat 15 USD for each cash out request if you decided to receive the money in your USD Bank Account, on top of that, additional Bank charge (random but mostly between 20-25 USD) will also occur. I mostly send the USD from Payoneer to my USD Account in my local Bank. So if you cash-out 100 USD, you will only get around 60 USD after all the charge above.
    Specific for my case only: my Payoneer account was set by the Language Service Provider that I joined, and I could not even change the cash-out setting, it was set for automatic cash-out each time Payoneer receive the payment from my LSP (Language Service Provider) agency. A little bit unflexible.

  • TransferWise (changed name to Wise recently)
    PRO:
    Based on the paper this will be the best method because the conversion rate is the best in the industry, but unfortunately my experience with Wise was not good (see at Con below).

    CON:
    In order to receive any payment in USD, you have to first open and activate your USD Account Balance. During the time this article is written, in order to activate your USD Account you have to at least send 20 USD / 20 EUR / 390,000 IDR to Wise Bank Account in Estonia.
    So I did make the transfer payment for 22.36 EUR (the amount 22.36 EUR was calculated automatically by the system after they include the fee etc).
    I made the payment through my local bank (which is DBS Indonesia). But apparently due to unknown reason it was rejected and the money got back to my DBS account after more than 1 week. However during those 1 week, either DBS or Wise can’t trace the status of the money. According to DBS the transfer was done successfully without any rejection, however according to Wise no payment received or whatsoever. So the money that got rejected was in the limbo status for 1 week where nobody could even know what happened to it and I actually thought that they lost my money.
    Up until now either DBS or Wise couldn’t tell me what went wrong and why it got rejected. I already check the number, bank details etc and it was correct. So I gave up my intention using the Wise services.

  • Bank Transfer / Wire Transfer to your local Bank
    Pro: One of the most legit way. Very safe.

    Con: So so conversion rate if your account is not in USD. If your account is in USD, the Bank charge to receive payment is quite high.

Zoom Interpretation with ASEAN SECRETARIAT

Posted on by

ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta has been one of my most valuable client. I have been receiving many repeat orders from them in the past recent years. However due to Corona Virus Pandemic, the project with them has been halted since March 2020 because Jakarta was entering a Lockdown situation (It still is until now because we are entering lockdown phase 2 this September in Jakarta).

But the show (Projects) must go on, so they resume the project in September and used Zoom to facilitate the event.

My main job was to deliver interpretation from Japanese to Indonesian language. I expect many more projects will come in the form of Online Meeting such as Zoom in the future. Even now, 90% of my jobs came from one form of Online Meeting or another. Let’s survive and thrive in this Pandemic Situation together.

Resetting Microsoft IME Japanese Keyboard in Win 10 Version 2004

Posted on by

If your Windows 10 is updated to version 2004. There is a chance that your Japanese Keyboard setting might be messed up a little bit. I will show you the way to reset your Microsoft IME (Japanese Keyboard) to the previous version.

  • Press Windows Icon
  • Cick Setting (Gear Icon)
  • In the search Box Type “IME” and choose “Japanese IME Setting”
  • Click General
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the page and Click On next to the “Use Previous version of IME”

And that’s it, you got your IME just working again just like before.

Online Meeting Platform

Posted on by

Nowadays I think we all have to agree that the Online meeting platform has became the Normal way to conduct a meeting and or event. So let’s see my experience with some of the platform that I’ve used in my work.

  • Skype : especially before 2018.
    Mostly for a small scale meeting without discussing something sensitive or confidential contents. I got 0 clients that are still using Skype in 2020.
    Access from Skype App.
  • Zoom : since early 2019 (this is my major platform to receive online job in 2020).
    Mostly for market research type of discussion and or meeting with a lot of sensitive and or company’s confidential and credential stuff.
    Access from Windows App / Mobile App or Web Based (any browser).
  • Microsoft Teams (only have 1 experience with 1 client per August 20,2020)
    Same with Zoom. Market research Discussion related topic.
    Access from App or Web Based (Have to use Microsoft Edge Browser).
  • Other proprietary Online Meeting system (such as Cisco system).

Currently, Zoom is still the market leader in my surrounding environment. And in my opinion, Zoom has the best accessibility and more robust features comparing with the other competitor. It’s not perfect, I already discussed some lacking feature in Simultaneous Interpreting mode inside Zoom in my previous post. However I believe that this is still the most complete online meeting platform that you can use right now.

Zoom Interpretation Function

Posted on by

As you might know already, almost every meetings are conducted via Zoom nowadays. It really took the world by storm and became one of the most successful company post Covid19 era.

I have been using Zoom since the last 3 years ago, giving my service as interpreter with consecutive interpreting method. And currently Zoom also provide a new simultaneous interpretation function and I have been using that several times with my clients.

I won’t be covering how you enabled this function because zoom has a restriction that only host with some plan or business account can access this feature. And I am sure what kind of account can access this feature might be changed in the future, so if you want to get more information about that, you could go to :
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360034919791-Language-interpretation-in-meetings-and-webinars

Here are my thoughts/experiences regarding the current Zoom interpretation function (per early July 2020).

  • I have several occasions where the Host forgot to enabled this function so I could not be assigned as interpreter. And when the host finally remember that he/she has to enabled it, it was too late because the webinar has already started.
    (Updated on April 2021 : more people has become aware and familiar with the operation and I didn’t see any of this trouble again lately)
  • It was designed to be a one way presentation. So whenever the speaker open a discussion or Q&A session, it was a challenging situation because the speaker couldn’t hear the interpreter unless he/she changed the channel, however if they change the channel, they will lose the access to the audience’s voice.
    (Updated on March 2021 : Zoom provided a feature where you could hear the interpreter’s voice with certain percentage of volume and also the mic from the speaker with certain percentage of volume)
  • No force – mute. In the offline Simultaneous interpreting booth, it is a very common to have a force mute button to force mute your partner if he/she forgot to mute when you are interpreting. Or in a recent one, the system is automatically rigged that whenever your mic is on, your partner’s mic will be muted and vice versa. Zoom doesn’t have this functionality yet.
  • No Bahasa Indonesia’s label. Zoom only provide about 8 languages channel right now. So imagine if I want to interpret a Japanese speaker to Bahasa audience, there is no label for it. Let’s say we use the Korean channel as Indonesian Channel, so the audience that want to hear Indonesian interpretation has to choose… Korean… that is so confusing for the audience. I’m not so sure why they do not provide us the custom label / channel that we could set.
    (Updated on May 2021 : this issue has been resolved since Zoom already provide us the free text label for the language)

I do believe the function will get better in the future since almost all of the meetings will take place in Zoom world and more of this interpretation function will be needed across the whole world.