The Interpreters' Newsletter n. 14 - 2009

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

L’évaluation de l’interprétation simultanée en fin de parcours constitue encore aujourd’hui un défi tant au niveau théorique qu’au niveau de son application didactique. La définition du niveau de compétence requis en fin d’études par rapport au niveau professionnel représente le coeur du processus d’évaluation en interprétation. C’est en effet à partir de la notion de compétence qu’il sera possible d’identifier les critères et les instruments spécifiques pour la codification et la formulation des résultats des prestations et enfin pour la «certification» de cette compétence.

The present work contains a select biography of recommended short readings for interpreters training to work from English. The material selected includes institutional, literary and historic texts,many of whose contents have become an integral part of national and international language heritage.

An experimental study was carried out to investigate whether the difficulty of delivering numbers in SI is language-independent or whether some specific features – such as the different structures of the numerical systems in SL and TL – may also be relevant and influence SI performance negatively. To this end, a German text and an English text, both dense with numbers, were interpreted simultaneously into Italian by 16 students. The first language pair (ENIT) had a linear numerical system and the second one (DE-IT) did not, as in German the so-called inversion rule has to be applied. An initial analysis of the results suggested that the difficulty of delivering numbers in SI is language-independent.However, amore detailed analysis of the outcomes showed that a significant difference between the two language pairswas apparent in the distribution and typology of errors: transposition/position errors (including inversion errors) were evident in German but not in English.

This paper aims to investigate expectations and perceptions regarding the figures who mediate between healthcare personnel and foreign patients in Italy. The objective is to explore the distinction – seemingly unique to Italy – between the two terms “interpreter” and “mediator” and the reasons behind this separation. Healthcare providers and interpreters/mediators were questioned about their respective opinions through questionnaires and interviews. Both categories worked in local health units of a Northern Italian region, predominantly in the Emergency Departments. Special attention was paid to the following aspects: interpreter/mediator’s roles and tasks, invisibility versus active participation and the use of personal pronouns and indirect speech. In order to examine the level of consistency between perceptions and practice on these topics, 26 mediated encounters were observed according to prearranged parameters. These consultations involved the same subjects who had previously participated in the questionnaires. Four sessions, which proved to be particularly relevant for the purposes of this research, were subsequently transcribed and examined from a qualitative point of view. Themethod of the case study, herein adopted, allowed for the analysis of the subjects’ behaviour fromdifferent points of view, in linewith the overall objective of providing a holistic view of the themes investigated. Drawing on Inghilleri’s suggestion of “interpreting” as a “zone of uncertainty” (2005), the paper also refers, in particular, to Leanza’s newtypology of roles (2007), to Davies & Harré’s theory of positioning (1990) and to Bot’s description of reported speech (2007).