Is "Watashitachi wa, donna shigoto wo shimasu ka" the best way to ask "what kind of job are we going to do?" in a job interview?


How could I ask "what kind of job are we going to do" in a Japanese job
interview?

I could just simply use something like:

> Watashitachi wa, donna shigoto wo shimasu ka

But for me it doesn't seem natural and it looks so elementary.

I'm thinking of how can I make it shorter and natural, like how a Japanese
native would ask. So I've come up with another one:

> Donna shigoto wo saremasuka

I'm not so sure if that is correct, I thought of using a passive form so that
it doesn't come across as too direct to the person that I'm asking about their
job in particular.

If I translate this second sentence using Google though, it just says "What
kind of work do you do?", but I don't trust that translation since if I also
translate "Donna shigoto o shimasuka", as you can see without the passive
form, it also just translates to the same "What kind of work do you do?".

Is using the passive form correct or is there better way to say this?




> But for me it doesn't seem natural and it looks so elementary.

This is a business setting, so we can't merely be concerned with idiomatic
phrasing; we have to worry about appropriate levels of politeness and
formality. I don't know these in any particular detail, so I can't give an
authoritative answer, but I can tell right away that a formula like this isn't
going to work. You don't want to be asking a direct question, and you don't
want to be making the sentence about you (after all, the nature of the work
won't change to accommodate you, if you don't like the answer, and it isn't
affected by your status).

As a rule of thumb I would not consider using a first-person pronoun like
[私]{watashi} in this setting except if the situation required me to
distinguish myself from others, or if I needed to accept personal blame or
assign personal responsibility.

[私]{watashi}[たち]{tachi} seems to me especially problematic here; assuming you
aren't interviewing together with a friend with the prior understanding that
you will be accepted or rejected together, there is no "we" to speak of here.
You aren't part of a group of coworkers unless and until you're hired, so
speaking like that will definitely sound presumptive. (Not to mention, they're
already doing the work in question, while you aren't.)

That said, for the second attempt, I want to address idiom/correctness first
before formality.

> I'm not so sure if that is correct

The instinct is a step in the right direction. The "passive" form in Japanese
works a bit differently, and as far as I'm aware doesn't connote indirectness
in the way that an English speaker thinks of it. (A large part of why it comes
across "indirect" in English is that it allows you to omit the agent of the
verb: "the job was done" doesn't require saying who did it, while with "___
did the job", the blank must be filled in. But in Japanese, those omissions
are possible regardless, so it doesn't make a difference.) Grammatically, the
job should probably be marked with [は]{wa}. I can't put my finger on why, but
using question words like [どんな]{donna} or [どう]{dou}[いう]{iu} as part of a
subject or object, without having a topic first, sounds quite brusque to me.
They seem to work better with a copula, and anyway _we don't need an action
verb_ now that we have the strategy of talking about the job - "what kind of
job will be done?" is awkward; we just want "what kind of job is it?".

Expressing that directly in Japanese, we might repeat the noun, and use an
honorific:

[お]{o}[仕事]{shigoto}[は]{wa}、[どんな]{donna}[仕事]{shigoto}[です]{desu}[か]{ka}？

* * *

However, I agree with jarmanso's idea that we still don't want to ask a direct
question. Instead, we phrase it as a request for information. This gives us
the necessary business-language opportunities to mark status and formality.
(Pedantically, the proposed form is a question about whether we may have the
information, so it's that much more indirect.) I don't have any better ideas
here (aside from the honorific which I'm not at all sure is called for), so
I'll just explain how that proposal works.

[に]{ni}[ついて]{tsuite} [at the start of a
sentence](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/41391) gives a sort of
"more explicit" form of [は]{wa}, while being different grammatically. Whereas
in English we need to introduce words like "regarding" to capture the idea of
a topic in a grammar that doesn't directly support it, [に]{ni}[ついて]{tsuite}
_actually has_ that meaning.

[詳]{kuwa} [しく]{shiku} is just a vocabulary item so I won't spend time on it.

Presumably you know by now that Japanese rarely uses direct imperatives, and
will be familiar with [教]{oshi}[えて]{ete}[ください]{kudasai} as a formal version,
and plain [教]{oshi}[えて]{ete} as informal version, of a request to
[教]{oshi}[える]{eru} (usually glossed as "teach", but more broadly "inform
about"; it's used in many contexts where English speakers would say "tell"
instead).

[いただけません]{itadakemasen}[か]{ka} deserves a bit more explanation. (You might
recognize the positive, non-potential, but still polite form,
[いただきます]{itadakimasu}, as an expression by itself.) The plain, positive form
is [いただく]{itadaku}, and this verb is the humble-speech replacement for
[もらう]{morau}. The "ke" is because we use potential form as well - we ask
whether it's possible to be told, not whether we are being/will be told.

So really the sense conveyed is more like "might I not have the benefit of...
?" This way shows appropriate humility, as well as the sense that being given
this information is a favor done for you.




Native or more advanced speakers might come up with better ways to address it,
but in this situation I would probably ask it differently to the interviewer.
Instead of asking "What kind of job are we going to do?" I would go with "Can
you tell me more about the job, please?".

I would put it this way:

>
> しごと{shigoto}について{nitsuite}、もっと{motto}くわしく{kuwashiku}おしえて{oshiete}いただけません{itadakemasen}か{ka}。

しごと{shigoto}について{nitsuite} regarding the job

もっと{motto}くわしく{kuwashiku} in more detail

おしえて{oshiete} tell me

いただけません{itadakemasen}か{ka}。could you please? (polite)

