Abstract
What insights might a focus on interpreters give us on disasters, and our capacity to respond to disasters, in a ‘global age’? In this chapter, Bouterey aims to shed some light on these and other such questions by examining the role of Japanese interpreters in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake. Drawing on the author’s own experiences and those of other fellow volunteer interpreters, this study considers the challenges faced by the Japanese interpreters as they assisted the New Zealand Police, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other parties in working with the families of the Japanese victims. Bouterey concludes with some reflections on lessons to be learned and possible future directions.
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Notes
- 1.
Christchurch is New Zealand’s second largest city with a population of around 370,000. It is located on the east coast of the South Island in the province of Canterbury.
- 2.
Most of the city’s high-rise buildings and a large proportion of the 4000 buildings within the CBD have been demolished (Bray et al. 2016, 234). Factors behind the massive scale of damage caused include the extreme shallowness of the earthquake at around 5 km, and intensity of the ground movement, or ‘peak ground acceleration’ (PGA).
- 3.
Chateau on the Park.
- 4.
For the purposes of this study, JMFA includes diplomats and other staff from the Japanese Embassy based in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, as well as those dispatched to assist from Japanese diplomatic posts in Australia. It does not include members of the Christchurch Consular Office of Japan who, while being heavily engaged in attending to the daily needs of the Japanese families, played no role in recruiting or supervising the interpreters. Nor were they directly involved in the communications between the respective parties during or following briefings. It should perhaps be noted that Consular Office staff were, like the local volunteer interpreters, attending to the needs of others while also being victims of, and struggling to recover from, the Christchurch earthquake.
- 5.
Heartland Cotswald Hotel.
- 6.
The other building was the Pyne Gould Guinness (PGG ) building. The New Zealand Police considered laying criminal charges over the collapse of the CTV building. After a long-running investigation, however, it was announced on 30 November 2017 that they would not be pursuing any prosecution. This made headlines in New Zealand, Japan, and elsewhere around the world, and was top news the following morning in Christchurch’s daily newspaper, The Press , which declared, “After six years, four investigations and millions of dollars, no-one will be held criminally liable for the collapse of Christchurch’s Canterbury Television (CTV) building in the February 22, 2011, earthquake” (Wright/ The Press 2017). It is doubtful that this will be the end of the matter.
- 7.
“Inside the meeting room, the atmosphere was incredibly tense. The families all turned to look at me, their gazes hard and critical. The content of the police report was formidable and required very careful choice of words. At times, words completely failed me.” “It was clear that there were many things that the JMFA staff member should have conveyed to me prior to the main briefing.”
- 8.
One can’t help asking why it was that Ms. X had been enlisted in the first place to do the interpreting when there were many people from JMFA who were surely in a better position—indeed, trained—to do interpreting on such occasions.
- 9.
The bus was scheduled to depart from an inner-city location at 10 a.m. At this stage, the families were still being accommodated in Methven. Any delay, therefore, in notifying them may well have compromised their ability to participate.
- 10.
Greenstone offers some ‘specific guidelines’ in his paper on the use of interpreters with crisis intervention teams, behavioural health units and medical strike teams. The guidelines include the following: “The interpreter only acts as a ‘word machine’ for the primary provider – nothing more”; “Interpreters must say to the person exactly what the healthcare provider says and in the same way as the provider says it – word for word”; “Always remember: The interpreter only translates. Nothing more” (Greenstone 2010, 80–81).
- 11.
Their study focused on medical interpreters.
- 12.
Bulut and Kurultay’s study examines the role of interpreters assisting search and rescue teams after the 1999 earthquakes that devastated part of Turkey. They point to the need to plan for interpreting services within the overall process of disaster management (Bulut and Kurultay 2001, 249).
- 13.
In Powell and Pagliara-Miller’s study, 40 per cent of the volunteer interpreters sought some form of support or counselling even though many had prior disaster training and the majority (95 per cent) had received an orientation.
- 14.
My work on this project is only in its early stages. It is my hope that eventually it will help raise awareness of the important role played by interpreters in disasters where foreign nationals are involved and thereby improve our capacity to respond to any such future events.
References
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Greenstone, James L. 2010. “Use of Interpreters with Crisis Intervention Teams, Behavioral Health Units, and Medical Strike Teams: Responding Appropriately and Effectively.” International Journal of Emergency Mental Health 12 (2): 79–82
Powell, Clydette and Claire Pagliara-Miller. 2012. “The use of volunteer interpreters during the 2010 Haiti earthquake: Lessons learned from the USNS COMFORT Operation Unified Response Haiti.” Disaster Medicine Journal 7, no.1 (Winter): 37–47.
Shiu-Thornton, Sharyne, Joseph Babalis, Kirsten Senturia, Aracely Tamayo, and Mark Oberle. 2007. “Disaster Preparedness for Limited English Proficient Communities: Medical Interpreters as Cultural Brokers and Gatekeepers.” Public Health Reports 122, (4): 466–471.
Wright, Michael. 2017. “Why is no-one being prosecuted for the CTV building collapse tragedy?” Stuff. November 30, 2017. URL www.stuff.co.nz/national/99420943/why-is-noone-being-prosecuted-for-the-ctv-building-collapse-tragedy
The Press. Friday, December 1, 2017.
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Bouterey, S. (2019). Interpreters at the Front Line: Some Reflections on the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake. In: Bouterey, S., Marceau, L. (eds) Crisis and Disaster in Japan and New Zealand. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0244-2_9
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