Speaker | IJET-31 (June 24-25, 2023) | International Japanese-English Translation Conference

Interpreter

Mary Corbett

Mary Corbett is a documentary maker and writer. She had her start in nature documentaries, through which she took a great interest in communication skills of the animals she spent considerable time with in the wild, and which led to a series on interspecies communications and animal-assisted therapy.

She is currently working on a book and documentary on Marilyn Monroe's transformational visit to Japan with Joe DiMaggio in 1954, which left behind a string of Marilyn legends in each town they visited across the archipelago, along with a treasure trove of hilarious lost-in-translations still entertaining us today.

Sessions

Adventures of an Accidental Interpreter to the Stars (JATINT)

Documentary maker Mary Corbett grew up on the Old Bluff in Yokohama with a passion for history. She enjoys envisioning the moments when people with no common language met and made history, such as the miracle and hilarity of Tokugawa's samurai and interpreters meeting with Commodore Perry for the first time in Yokohama. They spoke only Dutch, having been told by the Dutch representative it was...