By Jerome A. Cohen
A few days ago NYT had an obituary for Ji Chaozhu, who by all accounts was always a wonderful interpreter. His efforts in the early 1970s were supplemented by Nancy Tang (Tang Wenshun), who shared a similar Sino-American upbringing. Because I was on leave from teaching at Harvard Law, I think Ji felt a certain connection with me, close enough to call one winter day in Beijing in 1979 to ask whether I could arrange for an interpreter from the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be admitted to the regular three-year American law JD program at Harvard Law School. MOFA, he said, wanted to have its first well-trained expert in American law to promote the recent normalization of diplomatic relations.
In view of China’s then extreme foreign exchange shortage, he also asked me to find the funds to pay any necessary costs! The interpreter-candidate he sent for an interview, a dynamic woman in her late 30s, proved as able as Ji predicted, and she was soon admitted without the usual tests etc. Finding the funds beyond a scholarship proved a bit more challenging. But Alexis Coudert, senior partner of the late lamented Coudert Brothers international law firm, for which I was consulting, gave an imaginative interpretation to the terms of a foundation grant he was administering for the study of Polish law that provided enough support to sustain her til graduation!
I don’t think, however, that Ji or any foreign interpreter should have been permitted by the US Government to serve both sides in formal diplomatic discussions. As I recall, the USG did not make use of Foreign Service Officer Chas Freeman, a superb interpreter (and Harvard Law School JD) whom the State Department had trained for the normalization process, for Nixon’s most important discussions in Beijing in 1972. Since Kissinger did not want Secretary of State Bill Rogers there, how could he have the Secretary’s young assistant?
Finally, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of direct communication without the intervention of an interpreter. At a recent University of Virginia Zoom conference, US Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottniger’s delivery of his speech in Mandarin—which has been widely-watched and discussed by many in China—was a master stroke, one that I hope will encourage US diplomats stationed abroad to speak more often in the local language rather than through an interpreter.
I much admired my Harvard colleague and friend, the late Edwin O. Reischauer, who served five years as US ambassador to Japan 1961-66 and was worshipped by Japanese scholars and the Japanese public for his expertise on the country and its language. Yet he usually called upon Prof. Otis Cary, whom I later knew when visiting at Doshisha University, to interpret for him on formal public occasions while serving as ambassador. He believed that any error he might commit in speaking Japanese in public would diminish his status in the eyes of his audience. As I mentioned to him, I think greater weight should be put on the value of American representatives speaking directly in the local language to the foreign public they are addressing.