Since the economic boom in the latter half of the 1980s, the number of immigrant workers has increased and the presence of non-Japanese people who do not speak Japanese has become conspicuous. Against this background, healthcare interpreting has been a much discussed issue in recent years. Bridging the cultural gap, as well as the language gap, at healthcare encounters where a person’s life is at stake is regarded as one of the important tasks for healthcare interpreters, but to what extent an interpreter should be a cultural broker is a controversial issue. This paper analyzes the data collected through interviews and a survey of healthcare interpreters of various languages and discusses what cross-cultural problems interpreters are facing at healthcare encounters, how they cope with the situation and what roles they regard as the most appropriate for a healthcare interpreter
