NEWSNATIONAL / SOCIAL ISSUES

Silent heroes: Sign language interpreters give voice to Japan's top
government spokesman
BY TOMOHIRO OSAKISTAFF WRITER

AUG 18, 2019

Kohei Ehara sits quietly in the far corner of the spacious conference room in the Prime Minister’s Office,largely unnoticed by a group of reporters waiting for Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga to start his daily
briefing.
When he is told of Suga’s imminent arrival, Ehara stands, stretches his arms momentarily and steps toward
the stage as Suga walks in from the other end of the room. He then positions himself right next to Abe’s
taskmaster as he turns to face the press.
So starts one of the sign language interpreter’s most challenging tasks: conveying the words of thegovernment’s top spokesman.
“It’s a high-pressure but very fulfilling job, interpreting the words of the government for those who cannot
hear,” he said.
Ehara, 43, is among dozens of professional signers tasked with interpreting Suga’s twice-a-day briefings, a jobthat pushes their skills to the limit.
Before a briefing, “I try to do quick stretching exercises to relax my body, because I sometimes need to movemy hands quite fast to keep up with the pace at which the chief Cabinet secretary reads out his statement,” hesaid.
Some might call them unsung heroes, given they are treated as all but invisible by the TV stations, which tend
to zero in on Suga.
Unless natural disasters or other emergencies occur, interpreters seldom appear in news footage and their
exposure is largely limited to videos of past briefings on the website of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Sign language interpretation was added to the chief Cabinet secretary’s news conference in March 2011, whena mega-quake, tsunami and three core meltdowns wreaked havoc on the Tohoku region, leaving thegovernment scrambling to ensure those unable to hear would be kept abreast of the situation. Their presence
has since become the norm, with sign language interpreters available 24/7 for any emergency that mightstrike.
Ehara is an industry veteran. His normal gigs include translating for the deaf at hospitals, court trials,
municipal offices and corporate meetings. But every two weeks or so he is hired to interpret Suga’s news
conferences.
Even for experienced signers like Ehara, interpreting for the government spokesman is no cake walk.

The jargon permeating his briefings sometimes leads to an encounter with phrases for which there is nocorresponding sign language, forcing him to improvise with yubimoji — a form of fingerspelling — to denote,character by character, such terms as “Aegis Ashore,” for example.
The fact Suga’s briefings cover a wide range of topical affairs requires interpreters to scour newspapers andthe internet for stories that can prepare them for questions reporters might ask.
“It is imperative we peruse newspapers and closely monitor comments made by the chief Cabinet secretaryon a daily basis, because any issue or incident has some necessary background information we need to beaware of beforehand,” says Tomomi Hagino, another sign language interpreter.
Hagino, 36, recalled the dread she felt upon interpreting for Suga for the first time three years ago.
At the time, the mere act of standing side by side with him under the gaze of reporters gave her stage fright,
she said. Although now less nervous than before, Hagino says she still hasn’t quite got the hang of thebriefings.
“When I interpret at hospitals or something, a deaf client I’m interpreting for is always in the same physicalspace as I am, which means they can give me instantaneous feedback” if they have trouble understanding,she said.
“But here at the Prime Minister’s Office, I can only address an audience beyond the camera, so I’m constantly
left unsure whether my sign language is making perfect sense.”
Simultaneous interpretation is such an exhausting exercise in concentration that Ehara often brings alongchocolate so he can take a bite whenever he feels his brain needs a sugar boost.
The form of sign language used for the briefings has a linguistic structure different from Japanese — meaning
the interpreters are essentially translating Suga’s words into another language. This is partly why, he says, thesigners always work in pairs, allowing one to work for no longer than 10 consecutive minutes before the othertakes over to “prevent the quality of our interpretation from deteriorating.”
Of all the briefings Ehara has worked in his eight-year career, few left as lasting an impression as the special
news conference held in April to unveil the next imperial era name — Reiwa, meaning “beautiful harmony.”At that news conference, an incident befell Ehara that threw his profession into the national spotlight.
The controversy broke out when NHK, which was televising it live, accidentally ran an inset of Ehara in theexact spot where Suga held up the calligraphy for the era name, momentarily blocking the much-awaited
kanji from view.
That the era name was covered by Ehara’s face the instant Suga unveiled it arguably took some shine off ahistoric moment. Social media immediately lit up in disbelief and amazement at the glitch.
Ehara said he feared the accident would turn public sentiment against sign language interpreters.
Of all the TV stations that broadcast the news conference, “I think it was NHK alone that devoted a picture-inpicture (format) to us,” he said. “I would consider it very sad if what happened at NHK made otherbroadcasters think they had made a wise decision by not giving us any coverage.”
Sign language is virtually nonexistent on Japanese television, with an internal affairs ministry survey showingthat in fiscal 2017, just 0.1 percent of all airtime used by the five major broadcasters in Tokyo had signers
present — although the percentage of subtitled programs rose to 61.4 percent, up 1.9 percent from a year
earlier.

Underlying this underrepresentation is the media’s misunderstanding of its role in keeping those with
impaired hearing involved in society, said Yumi Suzuki, a board member of the Japanese Association of Sign
Language Interpreters.
The fact that signers at Suga’s briefings rarely make it into the news “shows how little attention broadcasters
pay to the existence of sign language interpreters, and attests to their failure to imagine what inconvenience
those unable to hear would incur if the chief Cabinet secretary’s face monopolized the camera’s attention,”
she said.
Suzuki said the underappreciated nature of the job is particularly evident in their predominantly unstable
employment status and the fact they can be denied workers’ compensation for injuries caused by theirintense hand and arm movements, which strain their necks and shoulders.
A 2015 survey by the National Research Association for Sign Language Interpretation found that 82.1 percentof the 1,099 sign language interpreters employed nationwide in the fields of welfare, health and education are
hiseiki (nonregular workers).
The government, for its part, claims it is doing what it can to raise public awareness of their presence at Suga’s
news conferences.
Although they used to stand a good deal away from the spokesman, “we’ve adjusted their standing position soit’s much closer to the chief Cabinet secretary … they can’t get any closer to him now,” said Chise Tahara, aCabinet Secretariat official. “We’re hoping this will make it easier for TV stations to include the signers infootage.”
Progress might be glacial, but both Ehara and Hagino believe their job can make a difference.
“In the age of digitization, it’s true that more and more TV programs are subtitled, but there are certain people
among the deaf community who depend primarily on sign language instead of Japanese for communication,and for them, sign language is crucial,” Ehara said.
“I believe conducting the chief Cabinet secretary’s briefings in the presence of signers is the government’s wayof saying it is committed to keeping those deaf people informed. I think that’s very significant.”
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