This paper proposes a possible architecture of conceptualization processes constituting thinking for interpreting, paying due attention to the distinction between langue and parole on the one hand and between speaking/hearing in general and the act of interpreting on the other. While static knowledge of language should be included in the capacity of an interpreter, his/her online conceptualization of dynamic linguistic expressions in source and target utterances is at stake during the act of interpreting particularly in the simultaneous mode. Some authentic samples of simultaneous interpreting are cited to support the proposed version of the conceptualizer for interpreters, which contains at least such planning processes as segmentation, selection, structuring and linearization. Research on thinking for interpreting is to be promoted to an academic area dedicated to interpreting studies.

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This paper describes the current status of automatic simultaneous interpretation research. First, the configuration of a simultaneous interpretation systems and its technical issues are discussed. Next, as an example of automatic simultaneous interpretation research, the technologies for incremental parsing, transfer and generation are explained, and then the implementation of a prototype system is introduced. Finally, the future research tasks for advancement of simultaneous interpretation systems are shown.

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This paper demonstrates the usefulness of social semiotic linguistic anthropology’s communication theory, for example, metapragmatics and linguistic ideology, for court interpreting studies. On the basis of a literature review and an analysis of data collected by the author, the paper puts forth the following arguments: Referential linguistic ideology, which considers verbatim translation to be the most accurate, constitutes a court interpreting ideology that tends to define the normative role of court interpreters. Monolingualism ideologies like national language ideology, which equates a language with a nation, and standard language ideology, which disregards other language varieties, prevail in court, but various language varieties are actually used. There is a gap between these ideologies and the discursive practice in court. Therefore, selecting court interpreters on the basis of “linguistic community” (Gumperz, 2001/1968) may serve to create “linguistic minorities” who are linguistically underprivileged and vulnerable. This paper concludes that, in order to guarantee justice in court, it is necessary to assign interpreters on the basis of “speech communities” (Gumperz, 2001/1968). This is because members of the same linguistic community do not necessarily share metapragmatic norms and thus belong to different speech communities.

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The purpose of this article is to propose an application of the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) theory to the training of Japanese students in interpreting speeches in Japanese to English. We examined 429 samples of output in English produced by 38 participants, focusing on how they interpreted source speech before conversion. Our analysis has shown that the CMM Level s used by interpreters do affect their performance. It indicates that the application of the theory can help us in giving more specific and effective instruction in Japanese-to-English interpretation.

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This paper studies interpreting norms held by Japanese-Chinese interpreters, focusing specifically on their “professional norms” to see if their actual practices adhere to their norms or deviate from them. The research method employed for this purpose is oral history of Japanese-Chinese conference interpreters, and the notion of norms presented by Chesterman (1997) is used as a theoretical framework. The data collected by conducting life-story interviews are analyzed to illustrate the interpreters’ values and beliefs, presumably fostered by their cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The findings obtained from the study are twofold. First, interpreters tend to uphold two kinds of norms, namely “faithfulness” and “neutrality,” as their guiding principles. Depending on the situation, however, the “internalized norms” such as communication adjustment take over and influence their practices. Second, such internalized norms seem to derive from interpreters’ linguistic and social backgrounds, as well as values and beliefs formed by empirical interpretation practices.

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This article aims to provide a description of interpreters’ conceptual processing in English-Japanese simultaneous interpreting (SI) drawing on the conceptual complex (CC) model introduced by Funayama (e.g. 2005, 2007). CC is a concept-based descriptive device used to trace utterance comprehension in online discourse processing. Differences between source text (ST) and target text (TT) are analysed to explore the interpreter’s cognitive status, one main focus being repetitive translations of one element in the ST into two or more places in the TT. Observing repetitive translations during the SI performance makes it possible to analyse the formation and transformation of CCs, as well as the contribution of various cognitive resources and other relevant phenomena. Through a description of the SI process, this article also demonstrates how the SI performance is supported by interpreters’ conceptual processing. This is an attempt to substantiate deverbalization (Seleskovitch, 1978/1998) as an essential stage of the interpreting process.

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Interpreter training in Japan is markedly distinct in where and for whom the training is conducted. While interpreting programs in a number of Western and Asian countries are mainly offered for carefully selected students in higher education, for-profit schools operated by interpreting agencies, which may not be as selective in admitting students, are the main providers of interpreter training in Japan. This paper explores historical, social and cultural factors that may have shaped these different institutional foundations for interpreter training in Japan and other parts of the world, with the aim of providing information and analysis that can be used for addressing current issues in interpreter education in Japan. The factors discussed include: the AIIC “school policy”, multilingualism in international organizations and the EU, the dominance of agencies in the Japanese interpreting market, and the academic backgrounds and career orientations of pioneer interpreters in different countries.

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Contemplating on the fundamental interpreting process essentially amounts to revisiting the ‘sense’ theory of Danica Seleskovitch (& Marinne Lederer), and the 3-party 2-language communications model of Hella Kirchhoff and of M. Kondo. This first part of the essay attempts to deepen the sense theory, and refute the oft-made criticism against the de-verbalization phase in Seleskovitch paradigm by, among other points, a very useful tool privately proposed by F. Pöchhacker of establishing different categories of ‘senses’ and ‘das Gemeinte’ and placing them along a continuum. The second and last part of this essay (to appear in the next issue of this journal) will posit that there are several additional statements that Japanese-speaking interpreters should propose, and will describe them substantively.

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This paper describes the trend of legal interpreting research conducted in Japan from 1980s to 2012. Focusing especially on research methodologies and frames of theories, it consists of three parts: the overall trend of legal interpreting research in Japan, possibilities of applying corpus linguistics and statistical analysis based on mock trials and court experiments, and possibilities of applying approaches of social linguistics and linguistic anthropology.

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For many years now, issues raised by self-translation have been given insufficient attention in both translation and literary studies. Though recently some works like The Bilingual Text: History and Theory of Literary Self-Translation (2007) and Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2011) have dealt with the problems of self-translation, it is difficult to systematically account for the diversity of interesting features of self-translation. One of the reasons is that self-translation often becomes “invisible” for some personal reasons of writers. This paper outlines the invisibility of literary self-translations in the 20th Century by examining some specific cases: James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jerzy Kosinski, Andreï Makine, Marina Tsvetaeva, Nancy Huston, and Fernando Pessoa. This overview leads us to conclude that self-translation is a major topic of twentieth-century literature and such inquiry and research is essential in its applications for both translation studies and literary studies.

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This paper focuses on the relationship between translator’s preface and translation strategy according to the analysis on the first Chinese translation of Sasameyuki. In the preface written by Zhou, the heroine Yukiko was described as an unfortunate person who failed to control her fate, whilst Taeko was featured with the characteristics like an independent and progressive modern woman. It was also demonstrated through the example analysis that the translator tended to feature the characteristic of Yukiko with negative emotional words, whilst positive presentations for Taeko. In conclusion, the preface is the most important material for learning ideology of translator. The means of expression in the work was affected consciously or unconsciously by the translator’s understanding and attitude to the heroine, thereby, the heroine’s character was rewritten.

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In the field of advertising translation, advertising copy is often misunderstood as mere transfer from one language to another. For a copywriter who performs advertising copy translation, it requires many context analyses. This study aims to clarify what kind of context is required in copy translation and proposes a new method of advertising copy translation. The author proposes new translation method, “5 CACT model” which includes five context analyses. This framework will help not only students in the field of translation studies but also general public to understand what copy translation really is.

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This paper aims to identify the expectations of film audiences for Japanese subtitles and explores measures subtitlers can take to meet those expectations. According to a survey conducted on a group of 50 audiences, even though the use of subtitles is widely accepted, people tend to have a rather negative opinion regarding the quality of subtitles. This is because they attach great importance to the dialogue coming from the screen. Subtitlers are aware of people’s mistrust of the quality of subtitles but it is not easy for them to cope with such issues because of the time and space constraints associated with subtitling. However, film subtitles for DVDs are gradually changing by adopting some fansub features (subtitling by fans for fans), such as glosses and headnotes, and this trend could lead the way to meeting audiences’ expectations for subtitles.

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This paper studies two translations of Haruki Murakami’s Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech in 2009. Murakami originally wrote the draft of the speech in Japanese, and later had it translated into English by Jay Rubin. The transcript of his actual speech was translated into Japanese by Hiroshi Hosokawa. The two translators differ in terms of their intentions while translating Murakami’s speech. Drawing on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this study analyzes how the two translators dealt with the linguistic metaphors used in the speech. It argues that the two translators’ intentions while translating seem to have affected their translations of the linguistic metaphors, and accordingly, the conceptual metaphors coined by Murakami. It also shows that Hosokawa’s translation, in particular, influences the audience’s view on the core content of Murakami’s speech by explicitly explaining one idea conveyed by a conceptual metaphor regarding Murakami’s criticism of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip. 1.

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In the present research, we conducted a questionnaire survey and a perception experiment on the identification of American English “can/can’t” contrast with Japanese English-Japanese interpreters. The present research was initiated by the personal comments that were made by a staff member of an interpreter agency and by professional interpreters. The results of the questionnaire indicate that almost all the professional interpreters have had difficulty identifying the contrast in their careers. According to the results of the experiment, the professional returnee interpreters identified the contrast perfectly while the professional non-returnee interpreters did not do so perfectly.

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Developing more systematic and effective training programs for healthcare interpreters has been a significant issue for the delivery of safe and smooth communication between healthcare providers and patients who face language and cultural barriers. This paper reports the research protocol based on an action research approach to improve medical interpreting skills of the participants of Healthcare Interpreting Training Group (HIT), which is an ongoing private study group that meets monthly for the purpose of training in Japanese–English language interpretation in a healthcare context. This research protocol includes the followings: a description of action research, the process of identifying problematic areas of the current training programs, research question, and hypotheses, and implementation and evaluation plans.

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Through comparative analysis of two Japanese versions of Relance d'alma japonesa, which was published in Lisbon in 1925 and written by Wenceslau de Moraes, a Portuguese ex-diplomat who had lived in Japan for approximately 30 years, this paper seeks to clarify a fact that the target text in translation is affected by ideology and poetics that are either arbitrary or democratic. In this paper two Japanese versions of Relance d'alma japonesa are analyzed. One was published in 1935, when the dominant ideology in Japan was imperialism. The other was published in 1969, when the dominant ideology in Japan was democratic. The author draws the conclusion that both of them have been influenced by the dominant ideology in their respective times.

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The aim of this paper is to report on the subtitling class conducted by the authors in 2011 and to evaluate it from the following parameters: (1) increase in students’ English proficiency and (2) their understanding of the subtitling norms and translation methods. The TOEIC IP test scores show that the English proficiency of students of the class did not improve considerably compared to that of those who did not take the course. However, the end-term reports of students (in which they described the aspects of translating and subtitling they enjoyed or found difficult through a series of group work experiences) indicate that their understanding of translation skills and subtitling norms improved to a certain extent. Although more research is needed, this study serves to shed further light on how the concept of Translation in Language Teaching (TILT) can be applied in the Japanese university context.

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