Abstract
Currently, “interpreting” courses are offered by more than 100 universities and colleges
all over Japan and, considering the popularity of these courses among students, the
number is likely to increase in the years ahead. Most of these courses, however, are being
offered as an extended-type of a foreign language course with the primary, if not the sole,
course objective of the enhancement of students’ linguistic skills. Being an interpreter,
however, requires much more than linguistic competence. Interpreters are not just a convenient conduit of communication: they are essentially “mediators” of intercultural communication. As such they must have a strong intercultural communication competence as the basis
of their interpreting competence. This paper first reviews the notion of “communication competence” and discusses some of the basic concepts thereof from an intercultural perspective.
It then proposes a new paradigm, which the authors hope will provide a solid conceptual basis
for rewriting the current syllabuses of the so-called “interpreting” courses in such a way as to
give them a renewed status and function within the university education.
https://ror.org/002rw7y37 
