Interpreting the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal

Cover

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pp. i-ii

Title Page, Copyright

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pp. iii-iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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pp. v-vi

Acknowledgements

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pp. vii-viii

Introduction

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pp. 1-9

...“Impartiality and avoidance of conflict of interest” is a canon universally found in codes of ethics for court interpreters today. Some codes provide a list of circumstances that potentially create perceived or real conflicts of interest for interpreters, as when, for example, the interpreter is a friend, associate or relative of a party ...

CHAPTER 1 The Trial

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pp. 10-15

China—met on July 26, 1945, and issued the Potsdam Declaration on the Japanese surrender. This document included a reference to the “stern justice” that was to “be meted out to all war criminals, surrender was broadcast to his subjects on August 15. The official ending of hostilities was marked when the Instrument of Surrender ...

CHAPTER 2 The Interpreting Arrangements

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pp. 16-51

The aim of this chapter is to describe the overall interpreting arrangements at the Tokyo Trial in detail, including the languages used, how the court handled “non-official” languages, how the linguists were recruited and assigned, their compensation, their equipment, the modes of interpreting they engaged in, the challenges ...

CHAPTER 3 Profiles of the Linguists

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pp. 52-66

...without the work of the interpreters. However, despite the critical linguists, with the exception of David Akira Itami, have remained largely unknown. This chapter focuses on the personal profiles of the main linguists who worked at the Tokyo Trial, in the hope of shedding light on political, social and cultural conditions in Japan ...

CHAPTER 4 Hierarchy and Learning Process

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pp. 67-90

Broadly speaking, there were two major factors that contributed to the uniqueness of the process. The first is that, like the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Tokyo Tribunal was an unprecedented international court where novel language requirements had to be met. The other is the extraordinary circumstance that people who had once worked ...

CHAPTER 5 Tojo's Testimony

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pp. 91-130

This chapter describes and analyzes the behaviour of the interpreters, monitors and language arbiter by focusing on the interpretation of the testimony given by General Hideki Tojo, who had been Prime (having taken office on October 18, 1941, and left office on July 18, 1944). The linguistic quality of the interpreting is not covered ...

CHAPTER 6 Sociopolitical Perspectives

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pp. 131-146

...languages and cultures throughout the history of humanity. Indeed, the history of interpreting is much longer than that of translation, institutionalized in international settings until the middle of the 20th century, when the profession of conference interpreting started to be developed and the need for training of interpreters grew in response ...

Conclusion

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pp. 147-151

This book has described the interpreting arrangements at the Tokyo Trial and presented a sociopolitical analysis of their distinctive features and of the behaviour of some of the linguists, in particular during the testimony of Hideki Tojo. Drawing on a wide variety of materials, including previously classified documents and interviews ...

References

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pp. 152-159

INDEX

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pp. 160-183