Short Bio
David Higbee is a trilingual conference interpreter (Japanese, Spanish, and English) with over 20 years of experience in Japan, the US and Latin America. Having studied formally in all three regions, he has earned a BA degree in Japanese and another in Spanish Translation from BYU. He is currently a candidate to receive an MA in Conference Interpreting from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, CA (known as “MIIS”). His current certifications include JLPT L1 (by the Japanese Ministry of Education), ACTFL Superior Certificates in Japanese and Spanish, and court interpreter certification by both the Superior Courts of California and the National Center for State Courts consortium for court interpreting.
David has been a court interpreter since 2002 and made his foray into Japanese <> English/Spanish interpreting in Japan in 2003, where he was a medical interpreter. After returning from Japan, he expanded into legal and technical fields where his trilingual skills were in high demand. Since then, his experience has been evenly divided between working for Japanese companies operating in the US (Honda, Roland Corporation, Toyota, Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, etc.) and multinational corporations working with Japanese partners (Teradata, Boeing, Siemens, Bombardier, UTC, Ingersoll-Rand, Cisco). He has also been chosen on numerous occasions to be the voice of Japanese celebrities visiting the US, including work with film director Takashi Miike, director Takumi Saito, director Hirokazu Kore-eda, composer Nobuo Uematsu, and the directors of the Pokemon Franchise, to name a few.
David started his own language services company Trifecta Translations in 2016, while working as an in-house technical interpreter at Honda R&D. He is an ardent supporter of the freelance work model, and often gives professional workshops for language service providers while advocating for language access issues in the press and social media.