Jim Brown (interpreter)

More commonly known simply as “Jim” he has served as interpreter for seven U.S presidents since Jimmy Carter to more recently Donald Trump during his visit to China in November of 2017[2]Brown was born in Washington D.C. as the son of a U.S. diplomat, and studied history and international relations at the Fu Jen University in Taiwan before joining Pan-American Airlines in the late 1970s.

Although admitting that he wanted to be a "generalist", the U.S. government considered his proficiency in the Chinese language to be an asset as China reopened its once-closed gate to the world at that time, and assigned Brown to multiple tenures at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

[3] Brown remarked that his proficiency in the Chinese language had caught locals off-guard.

[3] Brenda Sprague, then the State Department's Director of Language Services, explained that the ability to perform consecutive and simultaneous translation during formal diplomatic and senior-level functions was the highest level of language expertise, but that "At Jim's level, there is only one Jim".

This biography of a person who has held a non-elected position in the federal government of the United States is a stub.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry , accompanied by longtime Chinese translator James Brown, stand in front of the South Gate to Beihai Park and look at Bai Ta , or the White Pagoda, at Beihai Park in Beijing, China
James Brown as interpreter for a meeting between Ronald Reagan and Deng Xiaoping in 1984.