AIRA dispatches interpreters at the request of the municipal office, etc. and holds training classes for them in order to improve their skills. (No.21-6)

Date & Time of : June 12th(Sat), 2021 13:30～16:00
Venue: Chiba Prefecture Fureai Plaza( Keyaki Plaza), Training room
Lecturer: Mr. Rhys Moses

AIRA holds the interpreter training class four times a year for the participants to practice both Japanese-to-English and English-to-Japanese interpretation covering daily conversations, city tours, guidance of Japan, greetings at the events and so on under an American instructor.
There was no request for the dispatch of interpreters because events were cancelled and foreign visitors decreased due to COVID-19 last year.
However, AIRA is trying to resume its regular activities this year in the pandemic. Abiko City is scheduled to receive Slovenian athletes who are going to have a training camp in the city to participate in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
It is also expected AIRA’s regular activities and events will be getting increased gradually if the number of Coronavirus patients reduces as the vaccination speeds up.
The training class was held in English. Following the self-introductions, the participants started to interpret English texts read by the lecturer. The theme was about double meanings, puns, jokes, etc.
One of the passages that they interpreted was like this: In some stores in the US you may see a sign that says “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service.” This may be difficult for many Japanese to understand, but this means, if you don’t have a shirt and shoes on, they won’t accept you as their customer. Through this drill, they learned about wordplay, jokes, humors, etc. in English.
Following the English-Japanese interpretation drill, the Japanese-English drill started. The topic was “Variants of corona virus and vaccination”. Like the former drill, after listening to a short text read in Japanese, they interpreted the contents to English by turns. The texts included lots of medical or biochemical technical terms, so the key vocabulary list was sent to them in advance by Mr. Hesaki , the coordinator of the class.

(Translated by Katsumi Nakajima)