Translation: Pecha Kucha
Hurry up and wait. Are the papers in order? Are all the parties present? Has the defendant been produced? How long will the judge be in chambers on another matter? A courthouse is more of a plodding place than a creative beehive, but recently the Clerk of Court of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York got everyone dancing to a different beat. She gave every department head exactly one week to come up with a Pecha Kucha—which, she informed us, was a wonderful idea, all the rage in Japan. Our newly minted Pecha Kuchas were needed to explain the work of each of the various courthouse units to a recently inducted federal judge. If successful, our presentations would become part of every new judge’s orientation to the district.
Kuchie what? It sounded like a cuddle toy. Most of us had never heard the words “Pecha Kucha” and went scurrying to the Internet to see what it was all about. Apparently begun as an alternative to Powerpoint (considered passé and boring), Pecha Kucha is a technique developed in 2003 by an architectural firm in Tokyo to get designers’ creative juices flowing by challenging them to do brief and barreling public presentations taking only six minutes each. Pecha Kucha nights, in which many presentations followed in quick succession, became popular happenings. [See Pecha Kucha on Wired.com.] The structure was to use 20 slides shown at 20-second intervals to get across the excitement of whatever project you were working on. The idea quickly spread from design to other fields.
Although we were offered technical assistance by our training department, this project shook people up. One week to prepare a finished product, in the midst of our regular workload? How to convey in pictures the policies and procedures of a word-heavy environment? Six minutes to flop or impress? Thirty-some different departments of the Clerk’s Office had to run with the ball or be left behind.
I was tempted to reproduce some scenes from our yearly comedy show about the courthouse, but then thought better of it. As all interpreters do, I like deciding quickly. I jotted down the bare bones of what was useful for any judge to know, and then searched for a metaphor to convey each idea. I didn’t spend a long time choosing but grabbed the first clear image I found and then played with the sequence, experimented with background colors, decided to forego special effects like sound or animation, and concentrated on the main points: what we do, where we do it, and how we do it, trying to squeeze in a bit of background, some humor and friendly advice.
When the time came for a dry run, the Clerk suggested I eliminate the legal background (which I had considered essential) and reduce the total number of slides. They went from twenty to sixteen to ten. The version I am sharing with you here was not the final, but one of the intermediate edits.
There were about 40 people in the conference room as we sat through everyone’s Pecha Kuchas. The new judge was presented—bombarded was more like it— with a dizzying array of facts, figures and pictures from every department. The whole parade took an hour and a half. I’m not sure how much he was able to retain, but he definitely emerged with a greater appreciation of all the activities performed by various courthouse personnel. In the process, I, too, learned about units I never knew existed, and saw employees I had never seen before. This overview would surely be useful as orientation for all employees, not just judges.
Indeed, the Clerk’s idea is to eventually post all the Pecha Kuchas on the court intranet for general reference. Our live presentations were pronounced successful, but we were all begged to edit down our slides even more for the next time. I’m hoping that a wise judge will suggest that this number of presentations should be heard over a period of two separate sessions.
PDF: Southern District of New York Interpreters' PechaKucha
If you would like the Power Point version of this presentation with presenter notes, please contact zalina@najit.org.
[The author is chief interpreter at the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.]