Abstract
As Japan faces a sharp increase in foreign residents and foreign visitors, demand for qualified
medical interpreters has been rapidly rising. Efforts are under way to standardize medical
interpreters’ services across the nation through the creation of a national certification system
and government-accredited training programs. A code of ethics is an essential part of medical
interpreter training, but a nationwide, unified code has yet to be developed for medical or most
other types of interpreters for that matter. The paper looks at a US code of ethics for medical
interpreters, developed by the National Council on Interpreters in Health Care (the NCIHC),
and the NCIHC’s efforts to establish a national certification system for medical interpreters
and compare those with codes of ethics developed by different parties, and ongoing efforts
toward standardization in Japan.
