Challenges Facing Community Interpreter Training in Japan

Abstract

As Japan becomes an increasingly multilingual and multicultural society, there is a pressing need for the cultivation of community interpreters who can serve as a bridge between foreign residents and the host society in accessing public resources such as government, education, medical and legal services. This need was further emphasized by the recent earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident that struck Eastern Japan on March 11th, 2011. Building on its 26 language departments, the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies initiated its Community Interpreting Program in the summer of 2010 in order to provide practical training not only to current college students, but to employees of regional government offices and international centers, whose jobs involve frequent contact with foreign residents. The program is unique in the diversity of the languages covered and its dedication to cultivating interpreters with the flexibility and expertise to offer interpreting services for such high-stake situations as professional consultations and disaster situations. The Community Interpreting Program offers its graduates opportunities to acquire professional experience through practicums coordinated with external organizations such as bar associations. During these practicums, the graduates are given the opportunity to collaborate with clients to review and critique their own interpreting performance. Given that there is no national qualification system for community interpreters, there is a need to create infrastructure that enables participants to continuously sustain programs of self-study, while maintaining “mileage” logs of their interpreting work. Meanwhile, with current community interpreting courses deriving their content mostly from conference interpreting training methods, there is a need to carefully assess the actual needs of the market and design multilingual, interactive curricula tailored to those demands.