“It’s not just words, it’s the feeling, the passion, the emotions”: an ethnography of affect in interpreters’ practices in contemporary Japan

Abstract

This article explores the discursive mediation of affect in the professional practice of interpreting in contemporary Japan. It argues that affective practices, applied to the observation of interpreters' bodily and discursive performances, show that the fabricated distinction between reason and emotion present in the professional discourse of interpreting is misaligned with the reality of interpreters’ everyday engagement. By drawing upon affect theory and practice theory, the article offers a sensory ethnography of Japanese interpreters, showing that by negotiating their ethical position as “neutral” professionals, interpreters expertly manage affects between the parties involved in the interaction, giving a discursive, political, and cultural nature to emotions. The article shows that the reality of reason and emotion enmeshing in everyday cultural life requires the interpreter to suture the practice’s artificial division back together, using their affective professional skills of feeling with the world, which ultimately positively impact users and ensure successful communication services.

Keywords:

• Japan
• interpreters
• affect
• sensory ethnography
• practice theory

Notes

Notes on contributor

Deborah Giustini is based in the Department of Sociology at The University of Manchester. Her research interests are in the sociology of knowledge, practice theory, the sociology of labour, and gender studies. She comparatively works on employment, expertise, invisibility, and cultural values of workers in the European and East-Asian contexts, with a particular focus on the language industry. She is also an active conference interpreter accredited to the Chartered Institute of Linguists.

Notes

1 Currently, research on affect also resonates with broader emphases on the intertwining of the material, the social, the biological, and the cultural, exploring processes of their joint articulation (Latour 2004). This has brought about a new focus on affect and its relationality with spaces and objects (Ingold 2007, 2008), the environment and buildings (Gherardi 2017a, b). These elements act as generators, bearers, and mediators of affect or as structures that surround people and affect their senses.

2 The interviews reported here were conducted predominantly in English. They are transcribed as they were spoken in English.

3 This role is defined as being a “practisearcher” (Gile 1994) and is very common in translation and interpreting studies research.

4 Itako (Saito 2007) are blind female spiritual mediums in Japan, whose activities include performing rituals tied to communication with the dead.

5 Urakata literally means “person behind” and can be used to indicate someone working behind-the-scenes, a scene-shifter.

6 The informant used the Japanese expression in the original interview conducted in English.

7 Fukushima Prefecture suffered in 2011 from the nuclear disaster accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant of Ōkuma and Futaba, initially generated by the tsunami which followed the Tōhoku earthquake.

8 This informant worked with a team of interpreters who translated from the local language or dialect into English, with the interpreter intervening to convey the message into and from Japanese through their “relayed” interpretation. However, some of the affected parties, as Naoko clarified in her interview, also spoke some English.