Visibility of Interpreting in Japan

There is no equivalent of ESIT or Geneva school in Japan, except maybe the Kobe College three years program for interpretation and translation. Based on the online literature, this program is part of a national ambition to train at high levels Japanese people and turn them into very competent English speakers. The program's ambition is therefore not limited to nurturing interpreters but the accent on interpretation practice looks very strong. The site highlights 3 parallel objectives : 仕事で英語が使える日本人の育成, 通訳トレーニング法を活用した英語教育, 英語運用能力向上. Of much interest the second theme 通訳トレーニング法を活用した英語教育 has transpired into commercial books within the arena of 英会話 as well recently in other languages pairs like Japanese-Chinese or Japanese-Korean. The promotion of shadowing as a method to progress is probably a marketing by-product of that governmental effort. The site architecture is a little bit flawed so much that I can't find back some pages of much interest I navigated into almost by chance. There is somewhere a reference about a computer aided interpretation training system the students can access even outside the campus to practice on video documents. There is a reference to two major functions : a slowing down feature and a recording device that allows to record the student's voice for further analysis and discussion. These functions are readily available in market software so that building a makeshift platform for self-training may be quite easy. As the Kobe College program is nestled within the faculty of English, it is possible that the level of English required to register is not stellar, so much that the school trains in parallel English competences with interpretation techniques. This would therefore set apart the school from the ESIT and the likes who stress that they are no language school. Doesn't this parallel approach fit better with reality? Around me, among the interpreters I know more or less, some went through the Simul school training courses. Simul is the historical private school for interpreting training catering for more than English. But many never went to any specific training courses. I don't know whether this profile of no-training interpreters is to be turn into something of the past. It could, in Japan at least where interpreting training is publicly very visible. Even at Simul, I have heard that they provide entry level courses for those students who still struggling very much with their language B. The self-training interpreter faces the same issues and the same two objectives : raising in B language competences and learning interpreting techniques. Although the consumer books in Japanese covering interpretation are not thorough - much like introductory books with step by step explanations and examples - they provide nonetheless a public view to what interpreting training is all about. Interpreting is therefore very much visible in society, offering many vistas into some of the realities of the profession (a plural should be required here). This fact probably sets apart Japan from many Western countries where reference material accessible in the public market is scarce. For what it is worth, a search of books with the term 通訳 in the title yields no less than 463 results. As the word does not carry the multiple meanings of interpreter in English (what about Bible interpreting?), the figure is indeed impressive.