Understanding how affects operate socially, and being reflexive about what our bodies sense and register are more than relevant to interpreting practice. This chapter is a reflection on affect as a critical concept and pedagogical tool in community interpreting. Relying upon interviews with one research participant in British Columbia, Canada, and applying Koskinen’s (2020) “affective view” to community interpreter training, it argues that introducing affect-oriented approaches—such as reflexivity, empathy and vulnerability—into interpreting curriculum can help students and interpreters navigate potential rough waters, and that being an affectively competent interpreter is a crucial prerequisite of accountable professional behaviour and performance as it encourages creativity and ethical reasoning that machine translation and other translation technologies lack for the time being. Furthermore, linking these skills to students’ and practising professionals’ own practice and experiences is crucial for a full engagement with social justice issues as it can not only offer critical methods to address the structural oppression and white privilege that continue to dominate translation and interpreting practices and policies, but also provide practical explorations into the biases, prejudices, and preconceived notions perpetuated and normalized by machine translation tools.