This paper explores a possibility of re-defining the role of court interpreters from two different perspectives of intercultural communication and linguistic anthropology. It first identifies a gap between a) awareness toward communication, language use, and interpretation and b) practice of the court participants, such as judges and interpreters. Then, it demonstrates that the awareness most shared by court participants is that of the “conduit model,” in which interpreters are situated between two monolingual participants of different languages, and are understood as a mere machine or conduit with no right to participate in the interaction. In practice, however, the interaction mediated by a court interpreter creates two quasi-autonomous discourses under different social and cultural constraints. That is, interpreters are the only ones who participate in both discourses, and, they are, indeed, NOT functioning as a mere conduit, but they try to render “compensatory translation” in order to translate the whole of the speech event. Based on the analysis and insights above, the paper suggests that the role of court interpreters should not be delimited to translating what has been said, since communication is mostly defined by what has not been said.

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Listener impressions received from simultaneous interpreter's utterances differ from those received from normal/ordinary speech. In this paper, we investigated the relationship between “fillers” appeared in simultaneous interpreter's utterances and listener impressions on interpreting performance by conducting a number of experiments. The results of these experiments indicated that the more frequently the fillers appeared in the middle position of interpreter’s utterance units, the more unfavorable listeners’ evaluation of overall interpreting performance became. In comparing simultaneous interpreter's utterances with ordinary speech for the purpose of defining the characteristics of the fillers that appeared during simultaneous interpreting, it also became clear that the fillers appeared more frequently in simultaneous interpreter’s utterances than in ordinary speech. These findings suggest that the fillers appeared in the middle position of interpreter’s utterance units must have provided one of the reasons why listener impressions received from simultaneous interpreter's utterances differ from those received from ordinary speech.

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This paper discusses comparative analysis of word-level time delay between Japanese-English and English-Japanese simultaneous interpretations. For this investigation we used the Simultaneous Interpretation Database of Nagoya University in order to conduct quantitative analysis that requires a large scale corpus. Since temporal information was provided only to each utterance in this database, the effective use of it by providing word-level temporal information on the introduction of speech recognition techniques enabled us to observe a large amount of interpreted words with time delay. We analyzed 4,468 pairs of interpreted words retrieved from Japanese- English (J-E) interpretation data and 2,629 pairs of those from English- Japanese (E-J) interpretation data. As a result, it became clear that time delay in E-J interpretation was shorter than that in J-E interpretation and that part-of-speech and grammatical function of words of the source language made distinguished distribution of time-delay in the interpretation.

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This article examines how interpreters acquire intercultural communication competence, which consists of attitude, knowledge and skills. Participatory observation and journal methods were used to study six students participating in an interpretation training class at university. The results suggest that interpretation experiences develop intercultural communication competence. The article also argues that intercultural competence specific to interpreters is, in essence, not different from what is generally required of direct participants in intercultural communication. The competence is gained through five major steps: basic knowledge of languages and cultures, basic language skills, interpersonal commnication competence, intercultural communication competence, and, finally, willingness to understand people of different cultures and to take positive actions to solve misunderstandings. Consideration for others and imagination to think of their needs are essential in developing intercultural competence.

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In this paper,ｗ e examine the first step of conference interpretation training at ESIT: message comprehension and restitution without note taking, in other words, the acquisition of the basic interpretation process. We first present some findings from the recording of two Japanese-French interpretation classes in the first term. The second part is devoted to theoretical analysis based on the Interpretative Theory of Translation (TIT), to which some recent findings in cognitive science have been integrated (Ito-Bergerot, 2005a). In the last part, we propose an Interpreter’s Speech Comprehension Model. This model derives from the text comprehension model proposed by Ericsson and Kintsch (1995), which can be compared to Lederer's “unité de sens”. We also refer to the comprehension model of Gernsbacher (1990), who stresses the importance of suppressing irrelevant information during story understanding. In our model, the interpreter listening to a speech in X language, in order to translate it into Y language, constructs a situation model, which becomes a multi-layered complex structure of mental representations as the story develops. These mental representations have, under certain conditions, links with either the Y language system or the X language system, corresponding to the interpreter’s awareness of specific words in the Y language that come to mind while listening to the speech, or the recall of an expression used by the speaker in the X language. This model can be used to describe students’ errors, as well as experts’ skillful processing.

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This paper examines ‘point of view’ in a narrative and its translations. If ‘point of view’ appears differently between narrative and translation, does that make any difference between the context of an original text and that of its translations? After making a distinction between ‘point of view’ and ‘narrative voice,’ I claim that the former plays an important role in identifying what is called ‘grooves of expression’ as found in each language. Also studied is the relationship between ‘point of view’ and the use of personal pronouns, tenses, and various speeches, as well as the types of ‘representations of speech’ and ‘representations of thought.’ Based on these theories, I have analyzed the German narrative Momo and its English and Japanese translations. This paper concludes with a proposal that there are some types of ‘point of view’ which have not been identified so far.

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When teaching audio visual translation in a university setting, collaborative approach enhances learning. Cooperative learning is effective especially in the case of subtitling, where its constrained nature provides too much of a challenge to undergraduate students. Furthermore, research has shown that cooperative learning results in greater efforts to achieve the task at hand and bring about more positive relationships among students. This article examines some of the positive effects of incorporating cooperative strategy into audiovisual translation classes.

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This paper examines the backgrounds and characteristics of the publicly certified Translators and/or Interpreters in Sweden, based on the fieldwork done under the commission of Japan’s Ministry of Justice. A Swedish government institution, called Kammarkollegiet, since 1994 has been conducting the first level “Certified Interpreters” exam in selected languages, and for those who have alreday passed the first level, the examinations are held for “Certified Court Interpreters” and “Certified Medical Interpreters.” On translation, the examinations are in two folds, one from Swedish to a foreign language, and another from a foreign language to Swedish. In 1996, the Kammarkollegiet also issued “God tolksed” (i.e., guidelines for good interpreting practice) for the practitioners. Sweden would give important lessons for Japan, in case the latter considers the introduction of a certification system in order to guarantee the quality of professional interpreters and translators for the public interests.

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Recently the number of penal cases with foreign defendants is increasing in Japan and the Japanese courts started to notice the importance of the quality of the performance of court interpreters, although the screening for qualified interpreters and training are still on-going process. In the United States of America, on the other hand, the Court Interpreters Act, established in 1978, stipulates various regulations, including the Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination Program, for the quality and services which court interpreters should posses. After reviewing its history, contents and actual examination status, this paper examines the Consortium for State Court Interpreter Certification Program in details. At the end of the paper, some suggestions are presented for those concerned with the Japanese court interpreters system.

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This paper is a case study which examines a multi-party interpreting situation. Functions of an interpreter in such a situation appear to be more expanded and intricate than in dialogue situations, reflecting the dynamic and complex nature of the communicative interaction. For instance, the interpreter examined undertakes extensive editing activities, and reporting and summarising are components of the successful communication. The study is based on a naturalistic recording of a meeting with a number of participants, as well as on a stimulated-recall interview conducted right after the recording. The interpreter’s actual behaviour is discussed in terms of her participation in the interaction as a listener and speaker, utilizing the framework presented by Clark (1996).

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This paper aims to suggest potential links between e-learning and translator education for Japanese learners through e-learning experiences at Macquarie University. It has been pointed out that current professional education in various domains at tertiary educational institutes tends to be incapable of providing professional trainings which meet requirements set by professional communities. This concern appears to be consistent with translator education due to its ongoing dominant use of ‘transmissionist’ approach (Kiraly, 2000). This paper suggests one way of improving learner autonomy, learner interactions and learning in authentic settings through the introduction of e-learning in the domain of translator education.

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The Master's Program (in Interpreting and Translation Studies) at Osaka University of Foreign Studies (OUFS) Graduate School and the Master's Program in Simultaneous Interpretation at Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) entered into an academic exchange agreement in 2005. As the first (Fall 2006) exchange student from OUFS, I attended the BLCU program, which is receiving great attention as the first to train Chinese-Japanese simultaneous interpreters at the graduate school level in China. I describe the BLCU program and the survey data from its students. In comparison, I note the BLCU’s superiority in practical coursework and the OUFS's superiority in theoretical coursework. Finally I offer proposals for the future based on the complementary natures of the programs. The author hopes that this report will not only provide detailed information about the BLCU program, but also help contribute to promoting further mutual understanding and cooperation between the two universities.

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