The Interpreters' Newsletter n. 24 - 2019

Thirty years have elapsed since the publication in 1989 of the selected papers of the Trieste Symposium by John Dodds and Laura Gran, and in the meantime the interpreting landscape has changed dramatically. In particular, Public Service Interpreting (PSI) has entered the scene and a considerable amount of research work is devoted to the various interpreting forms and settings. Technology has also come into play with software and devices that are having an impact on the profession and seem to require specialised training or at least some adjustments to existing courses. This issue features four articles covering different aspects of interpreter training and may give an indication of the way in which things have been changing. The first contribution, by José Conde and Fanny Chouc, is a detailed account of the benefits of multilingual mock conferences in training.

What was it like to work as an EU interpreter in 1989, when The Theoretical and Prac­tical Aspects of Teaching Conference Interpretation was first published in Trieste? And what is it like in the age of digitalisation and globalisation? The use of English as a Lingua Franca has been spreading relentlessly at the European Institutions, but mul­tilingualism has not yet been lost and is still strongly promoted. This poses quite some challenges for interpreters, as a great deal of what they have to interpret is non-standard English, and at the same time they have to maintain a thorough knowledge of several passive languages. A group of European Commission staff interpreters share their views on how their work has changed over the past decades and on what this means for trainers and young interpreters wishing to embark upon a career at the EU.

This article considers multilingual mock conferences as a pedagogical tool in the training of conference interpreters, and examines the case of Heriot-Watt University’s mock conferences. This activity draws on theories of situated and experiential learning by Kolb (1984), Brown et al. (1989), Lave/Wenger (1991) and Kolb/Kolb (2005) and builds up on existing research by Ardito (1999), Kurz (2003), De Laet (2010), Alexeeva/Shutova (2011), Xiangdong (2015). A study was carried out with M.A. and MSc1 Conference Interpreting students over two academic years. These students take part in weekly simulations of multilingual conferences which bring together all language combinations taught across the programme. Students were invited to reflect upon this experience and its learning benefits as part of their training. The study was also aimed at fostering a reflection on good practice in training on their part (Sawyer 1994 and Gile 2009, 2013), by drawing their attention to the use of peer-learning strategies (Boud et al. 2001). The mixed-method approach used for this study focuses on students’ perception of the activity, and on the challenges and benefits of taking part in an interpreting task where trainee interpreters do not have a working knowledge of all the languages involved.

Numbers are the most common and complex problem trigger for interpreters. Previous research on the topic highlighted a correlation between errors and specific skill deficien­cies, suggesting that this difficulty may be overcome through targeted training. Howev­er, no systematic training method has yet been developed to address this vexing prob­lem. This article presents a constructivist, skill-based training programme designed on the basis of research findings with the aim to develop interpreting trainees’ competence in the simultaneous interpretation (SI) of numbers. The article outlines the theoretical underpinning of the training programme and its design. It then presents the results of a small-case study conducted through design-focused evaluation to explore the impact of the chosen instructional design strategies on participants’ learning process. Two groups of interpreting trainees (5 in each group) participated in the training programme and, in the end, provided the author with unstructured written feedback. The responses were analysed by qualitative thematic analysis. The analysis reveals participants’ perception of how the instructional design principles underpinning the training programme supported their learning process, leading to hypotheses for future studies on instructional design for conference interpreter training. The analysis also reports participants’ perceived training outcomes and highlights the transfer of skills and techniques to different interpreting tasks, modes and language combinations. Overall, the article aims to contribute to the field’s understanding of the difficulty in interpreting numbers and addresses the need for a pedagogical response to this challenge. It also aims to highlight the potential of instruc­tional design research to advance the current stand of interpreting pedagogy.

This paper sets to present the conclusion of a training experience involving first- and second-year conference interpreting (CI) students who attended a 12-hour module on public service interpreting (PSI) and medical interpreting. The questions we endeavour to answer are: what extra skills should be taught to this category of students to prepare them for the particular context of PSI? What information should be provided? What would be the ideal duration and content of an extracurricular module for students who already have the basis in CI? A comparison between the interpreting performance by trained master’s students and untrained undergraduate students gave us important clues as to the best answers.

Founded in 1988 as the first journal on Interpreting Studies, The Interpreters’ Newsletter publishes contributions covering theoretical and practical aspects of interpreting.