Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a critical analysis of the Japanese government’s programs supporting the development of AI-based interpreting technologies and of local governments’ use of interpreting devices in the provision of municipal services for foreign residents, including recent evacuees from Ukraine.

Paper long abstract:

Whether responding to disasters and pandemics or completing daily administrative tasks, Japanese central and local governments are faced with the need to provide translation and interpreting services for non-Japanese-speaking residents. They must also engage in effective communication in different languages to promote inbound tourism as the Japanese government maintains its goal of attracting 60 million visitors to Japan by 2030 in order to revitalize the economy. One of the major government initiatives to address these linguistic needs is the Global Communication Plan (GCP) 2025, which was launched by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) in 2020. Advancing translation technologies developed under MIC’s previous initiative (GCP, 2014–2020), GCP 2025 aims to realize AI-based simultaneous interpreting in business and other settings by 2025. Through close readings of the plan and progress reports of GCP 2025 as well as interviews with members of the consortium leading this project, this paper provides a critical analysis of the views on the role of interpreters, language learning, language problems, and user education reflected in these documents. Further, to illustrate potential benefits and issues of using such AI-based interpreting technologies in government settings, this paper examines the use of machine interpreting devices by municipalities. Utilizing the machine translation engine developed under the first GCP initiative, some companies launched these devices and actively marketed them in municipal offices where day-to-day services are provided to a range of residents, including speakers of less-taught languages such as Vietnamese and Nepali. Recently, the use of AI-based interpreting devices by local governments to serve evacuees from Ukraine has attracted attention from the media. With the limited availability of Ukrainian interpreters as well as evacuees’ aversion to speaking Russian or facing Russian nationals, municipalities have resorted to these devices for transactional communication. Based on interviews with some municipality workers and a review of the user guidelines for such devices issued by the central government specifically for local governments, this paper discusses the trust issues surrounding refugees’ use of interpreting devices as well as liability issues by referencing a British government guideline for the use of translation devices in detention services.