Conference interpreting in Japan

Abstract

Conference interpreting as a profession in Japan rapidly developed through the high economic growth period in the 1950s and 1960s and has continued growing steadily with economic globalization and the emergence of televised news interpreting. With Japanese-English as the dominant language pair, conference interpreters in Japan mostly work in business settings as freelancers. One distinct feature of conference interpreting in Japan is the principal role interpreting agencies play in managing and training interpreters. Professional training programmes for conference interpreters at the graduate school level do exist, but they are few in number and are not a significant producer of new interpreters. The Japan Association of Conference Interpreters (JACI) was established in 2015 and has been offering programmes to foster professional development for interpreters and advance conference interpreting as a profession. Research into conference interpreting has been centred around cognitive processing and strategies of simultaneous interpreting, interpreting incorporated in language teaching, interpreter training and the history of interpreting.