About This Project
With the number of foreign residents in Japan surpassing 3.77 million in 2024, the country is fast becoming a multicultural/multilingual society. While Japanese society welcomes foreign workers as a solution to labor shortages, the structures for integrating them as members of society face many challenges.
It is well known that community interpreting is essential to coexistence, but social recognition remains plagued by three issues:
1) Due to a shortage of qualified interpreters specialized in the medical, judicial, administrative, and educational fields, untrained "ad hoc" interpreters are used even in critical situations, 2) low public awareness of community interpreting as a quasi-public good hampers its functioning as social infrastructure, and 3) until now there was no graduate program in Japan that integrated remote interpreting and AI and machine translation into a practical training system.
Educating talented personnel to deal with a multilingual, multicultural society is essential to bring about social change.
With its high numbers of foreign residents, Aichi Prefecture is the right location for this project.
Background
- Rapid rise in number of foreign residents and increasing multilingualism and multiculturalism
- Dependence on non-expert ad hoc interpreting
- Course in Portuguese-Spanish for Medical Fields (2007–2021) at Aichi Prefectural University
Current Status and Issues
- Establishing Japan’s first Community Interpreting Studies Course in Aichi Prefectural University’s Graduate School of International Cultural Studies in 2022
- Lack of experts and instructors in Japan
- Using technologies such as remote interpretation and AI or machine translation, and teaching interpreter ethics
- Underdevelopment of community interpreting as social infrastructure and low social status of interpreters relative to their expertise
Program Mission
Develop professional human resources in community interpreting in collaboration with overseas and domestic partner institutions. Build community interpreting as new social infrastructure in Japan.
Vision for Our Graduates
- Top level community interpreters in the medical, judicial, administrative, disaster prevention, education, and welfare fields
- Managers and designers of community interpreting social infrastructure
- Researchers and instructors in the field of community interpreting
Achievement Targets for Graduates
- At least 70% certified as Consultation Interpreters or Coordinators by the Institute for Multicultural Society Professionals
- At least 70% employed in their field as interpretation providers,entrepreneurs, civil servants involved in institutional design, and specialized staff
- At least 30% presenting research at academic conferences and in related organizations
Career Paths
- Professional community interpreter (e.g., employed by interpreting company)
- Administrative staff responsible for institutional design of community interpreting
- Social business entrepreneur
- Foreign resident help desk staff
- Medical and legal staff
- Researcher and instructor
