Partial Non-use of Interpreters in Japanese Criminal Court Proceedings

Abstract

This paper reports findings of a study which examined court proceedings with the presence of an interpreter in Japanese criminal courts. With the increasing awareness of language rights over the last decade and the recent introduction of the saiban-in (lay judge) system, courtroom discourse involving non-Japanese speaking background (NJSB) people is increasingly under scrutiny as an issue of language in public spaces, and improvements have been made in provision of legal interpreting. The present study focuses on partial non-use of the interpreter, an aspect of court interpreting that has been little discussed and hidden behind the published statistics and public discourses on legal interpreting in so-called ‘foreigner cases’. It examines which stages of trials are interpreted and which are in Japanese only, and presents an analysis of courtroom interaction involving an NJSB defendant without interpreter mediation. Using Halliday's register framework, the paper discusses courts' decisions regarding partial non-use of interpreters and problems associated with it. While the partial use of interpreters for the highly technical legal genre indicates the courts' effort to provide fair trials for second language speakers, it is argued that a simplistic view of register overlooks the risks involved in not using an interpreter in ostensibly non-technical questioning of the defendant.