Interpreter Education

This paper reports on interprofessional education (IPE), a teaching and learning strategy that is widely used in healthcare training. IPE is structured and usually situation-based training that involves two or more groups of professionals. Desired learning outcomes for practitioners or trainees of both groups include learning how the other group works and how to optimise working with them, whilst also gaining perspectives of how others see their own group's work. Learning is achieved through participation in real or simulated activities. We address three research questions in looking at the achievement of learning outcomes for both interpreting and medical students: perceived usefulness of roleplay as a component of IPE sessions, perceived increase of knowledge bases and the perceived usefulness of pre-and postinteractional (de-)briefings. Four IPE sessions were conducted involving 153 interpreting and medical students from late 2017 to early 2019 in Australia. A data sample based on 118 survey responses shows high levels of agreement that role-plays are a useful activity in IPE. Further, students record a high level of increase in their knowledge of the other professional group as well as of their own. The value of pre-interactional briefings and post-interactional exchanges is confirmed by all groups of informants.

Resumo: No início da carreira profissional, intérpretes de Libras-Português que desejam atuar na esfera jurídica deparam-se com uma série de dúvidas e desafios no que diz respeito às decisões que competem a esse profissional. Além disso, raros são os materiais (documentos, notas técnicas, guia de orientações, artigos e outros) que oferecem subsídios eficazes para atuação dos intérpretes de línguas de sinais no meio jurídico brasileiro. Por esse motivo, discutem-se, neste trabalho, algumas contribuições de autores. A partir de várias experiências na interpretação de Libras-Português realizadas em audiências judiciais e/ou contextos que envolviam o âmbito policial entre o período de 2004 e 2018, reuniram-se, neste texto, alguns obstáculos recorrentes que emergiram dos registros sistematizados em cadernos de anotações das profissionais. Na análise preliminar, constataram-se os seguintes tópicos: as comunidades surdas no Judiciário, diferentes contextos de atuação e terminologia e seus impactos. Esses resultados podem constituir-se como ponto de partida para a profissionalização de intérpretes de Libras-Português, além de poderem incentivar futuras pesquisas sobre os temas pouco explorados nesse campo.
Palavras-chave: intérpretes; Libras-Português; esfera jurídica.

Abstract: At the beginning of their professional career, Brazilian (...)

This literature review has two purposes. First, it serves as the basis for development of an experiential learning graduation-to-certification program for American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters through both face-to-face and virtual environments. Second, it is intended as a reference on experiential learning for those working with interpreters at any stage of their training or professional development. In this context we present theoretical and practical information from the relevant literature in the hope that it will inform interpreter educators' approaches to helping learners develop the necessary skills and knowledge to become competent, autonomous professionals. To support educators and learners on this journey, this review takes as broad and inclusive an approach as possible, touching on many topics of interest in experiential learning and interpreter education, by: defining experiential learning, discussing the design of learning experiences, presenting examples of experiential learning in action, exploring field-based experiential learning, discussing assessment, and evaluating the educator's role in experiential learning. Our focus is on ASL–English interpreter education; however, much of this information is also applicable to the education of interpreters working between other languages.

The present textbook is the outcome of several years of practical experience in interpreter training in Iranian academic environments, intertwined with a number of relevant research projects. It adopts a ‘cognitive’ approach to interpreting and interpreting competence, and by taking recourse to a special version of task-based learning, which rests on communicative and social constructivist approaches to education, presents and works within a specific ‘model for interpreter training’ to develop the trainees’ consecutive interpreting competence. The theoretical underpinnings of this approach may be best summarized in the following statement: interpreting competence is translation competence plus a cognitive competence, i.e. a set of cognitive sub-competences, unique to interpreting (Mousavi Razavi, 2015).
Despite the fact that there have been a number of efforts aimed at preparing material for interpreting classes, one can dare say that this is one of the first attempts in the local environment, systematically and specifically devised to be used as a ‘textbook’ on consecutive interpreting in Iran. There is undoubtedly plenty of space for improvement after it gets tested and tried in the classroom.
As stated before and within the cognitive framework adopted, the exercises are designed to develop the trainees’ interpreting competence, and not their linguistic competence-which is only one of the sub-competences of the translation competence. This, most probably, is the major difference between this book and its few predecessors in Iran, which were mostly geared toward developing the trainees’ mastery of English language (as their L2), perhaps as a prerequisite to the practice of interpreting.
The fact that mastery over L2 has not received attention here, does not meanthat linguistic competence is not of significance; rather, the idea we are trying to advocate within this cognitive framework is that although linguistic competence, both L1 and L2, plays a vital role in interpreting, it by no means suffices to turn a trainee into an interpreter. Linguistic competence, when combined with other sub-competences, such as cultural, textual, subject matter, and transfer, makes for translation competence. Translation competence, when combined with certain cognitive competences, such as stress management, makes for interpreting competence. Indeed, language proficiency is seen here as a necessary prerequisite to starting an interpreting course, not as its aim. In other words, trainees are expected to have a reasonable mastery over both English and Persian.
So the present textbook does not attempt to teach the students words, expressions, and structures in English or Persian although this may come as a natural result of all language-related learning experiences. At the same time, the trainees are expected to develop their linguistic competence by resorting to numerous other sources available to them, such as textbooks, dictionaries, glossaries, etc. What we ultimately expect the present textbook, and in fact the approach on which it is based, to be able to achieve is to fill the existing gap in the Iranian academia between the objectives of interpreting courses and the actual performance of interpreting trainers. In other words, it seeks to develop the ‘cognitive competence’ necessary to turn a competent translator into a competent interpreter. This ‘mental preparedness’ can hopefully be brought about through application of the techniques and exercises introduced here.
The present textbook comprises two main chapters: 1. Theoretical Considerations, and 2. Consecutive Interpreting, which are further divided into separate lessons to suit class sessions. Chapter one, as the title suggests, deals with certain theoretical information and discussions and provides a brief theoretical background for the trainees. It contains three lessons, each presenting some interpreting concepts, the knowledge of which is indispensable for any interpreting student. Chapter two is itself divided into two separate sections: 1. Preparatory Exercises, 2. CI Exercises. Preparatory exercises are not necessarily concerned with translation; rather they are designed to ‘train the brain’ and prepare it for the task of interpreting. The lessons in the second section contain exercises that require the trainees to perform the task of consecutive interpreting in a real-life-like situation. The exercises will involve English and Persian in both directions. The book is accompanied by a DVD containing all the audio and video files pertaining to the exercises.
A final note to make is that although this book is written in English and deals with a specific language pair (English-Persian) when it comes to the exercises devised, it may, of course with certain modifications, be of use to students of interpreting working with other language pairs as well. The macro-structure of the book needs no change; the instructor, however, will need to be reasonably familiar with the English language and will have to replace the audio and video files in the second chapter of the book with corresponding files in the languages concerned. Ideally, it is hoped that similar textbooks and teaching materials within the same approach will be written to suit the needs of trainee interpreters with different language pairs.

Interpreters work with clients from many professions and in different contexts and settings. A facilitator of interpreters' ability to provide an optimal interlingual transfer of another's speech or signing is possessing knowledge of other professionals' perspectives and goals. Interprofessional education is a teaching or learning method that includes learning activities in which trainees from two or more disciplines interact with each other in real or simulated settings. This article reports on the participation of interpreting students in interprofessional education with medical and social work students over a three-year period. Responses were obtained from 109 interpreting students across four medicine-interpreting and three social work-interpreting sessions relating to their perception of the roles of the other student groups pre-and post-intervention and how best to work with each group. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that pre-intervention knowledge of the doctors' work was significant while knowledge about social work was varied; there were high levels of agreement that knowledge of the other group had increased post-intervention; future intentions were related to greater awareness of a briefing, applying knowledge of the relevant genre of spoken interaction, the need for the allophone interlocutors to establish rapport with each other, and awareness of source speakers' tone and intent in addition to form and content.

This study focused on burnout among sign language interpreters in Africa. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. Professional interpreters were purposively selected on the WhatsApp forum of the African Federation of Sign Language Interpreters. Eighty-seven members of the forum volunteered to participate in the study. Three research questions were raised and answered in the study. The data were collected through a Google form designed questionnaire tagged ‗Sign Language Interpreters and Burnout'. Data generated were analysed through frequency count, simple percentage, Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Multiple regression. The findings revealed a negative significant correlation between workload of interpreters (r =-0.296); a positive significant relationship between job control (r = 0.229) and burnout among interpreters in Africa. There was also a joint relationship between workload, job control, gender, working hours and burnout (F (4,86) = 2.601, p < 0.05). Furthermore, workload (β =-0.240, t = 2.069, p < 0.05) significantly contributed to burnout of African sign language interpreters. This study concluded that interpreters' workload and job control are the greatest determinant of burnout among sign language interpreters in Africa. Based on these findings, sign language interpreters in Africa should endeavour to avoid excessive work schedules and engage in team interpreting to reduce the
occurrence of burnout.

Since the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced universities around the world to engage quickly and efficiently with online teaching platforms. Yet even before the pandemic hit, many programmes had been addressing challenges related to globalisation and technologisation within the teaching and learning context by moving to online or blended teaching and learning modes. In both the immediate pre-and post-pandemic context, movement towards the use of innovative technologies such as virtual reality (VR) to enhance the student experience have occurred in disciplines that heavily rely on practice-based learning (such as the health sciences and psychology). This paper describes an innovative approach to community interpreter training, which is in high demand in Australia. The VR project under examination here aims to provide evidence-based, pedagogically-sound, authentic, situated learning scenarios in a safe, virtual environment so that students are better prepared to deal with the complexities of the role of an interpreter in family violence (FV) settings. Using the VR platform, trainees will be given the opportunity to engage in simulated interpreting tasks working with victims of FV, social workers, police and other field-specific protagonists. In this article, we outline the methodology applied to the provision of interpreter training in this specific VR context. This methodology will serve as a blueprint for other institutions-particularly those offering specialised interpreter training-looking to minimise the threat to face-to-face contexts introduced by the pandemic, but also eager to expand into more experiential teaching offerings that reach beyond traditional modes used for interpreter training.

Interpreters are expected to have an advanced command of not only the vocabulary and grammar of their working languages, but also the pragmatic norms that speakers of their working languages employ in communicative interactions. The aim of this paper is to explore the perceptions and practices of interpreters in relation to intercultural pragmatics at work in healthcare interactions. The paper employs two theoretical frameworks: the first is based on interpretations of behaviour according to speakers’ discourse-pragmatic features as representative of ‘high’ or ‘low’ context cultures (cf. Hall 1976); the second applies Celce-Murcia’s (2007) more refined notion of ‘communicative competence’. The data sample of this paper focuses on cultural-pragmatic features of two linguistic and cultural groups—25 Chinese-speakers and 24 English-speakers—and contrasts their selected responses to five features of Chinese-English interpreted healthcare interactions. Responses from 33 Chinese-English interpreters are matched against those from speakers of the two groups to examine the degree of congruence that interpreters have with the self-reported (para-)linguistic behaviour of the two groups of speakers, for whom they interpret. This study shows that the self-reported (para-)linguistic behaviour of both groups is determined by their adoption of a particular approach (doctor- vs. patient-centred approach) and other micro-level features (perceived time constraints, different notions of “small talk”) that limit elaborate pragmatic enactments. Over-arching cultural-pragmatic models based on “high” (or “low”) context communication, or “vertical” (vs. “horizontal”) hierarchical perceptions of role and status appear to have limited application to the data. Instead, local features specific to the healthcare situation co-determine both English- and Chinese-speakers’ responses to questions about their use of pragmatics. Findings indicate that interpreters attend to each group’s enactment of pragmatic features and, as expert language users, are able to recognise features and components of interactions and their functions to a greater degree than the Chinese- and English-speakers.

Narrative pedagogy is an educational method that draws on the power of stories to cultivate learning. Narrative has been described as the fundamental way that individuals "make sense" of events by connecting new information to their own lived experiences. In this article, we argue that narratives are underutilized in American Sign Language-English interpreter education, perhaps due to concerns about confidentiality. This article describes an educational project that incorporated narratives from experienced medical interpreters into an interpreting course. The primary learning objective for students was to become familiar with specific competencies necessary for successful practice in medical settings. Drawing on the document "ASL-English Medical Interpreter Domains and Competencies," students individually interviewed 17 experienced medical interpreters to gain perspectives on competencies needed to interpret in medical settings. The interviews and resulting narrative data were used in the classroom to develop content knowledge about the competencies and to cultivate critical thinking regarding issues that arise in medical interpreting. We provide two samples of narratives collected by students and discuss our instructional methods with the students. We suggest that narrative pedagogy can serve as an effective instructional method in ASL-English interpreter education.

What makes Rayco H. González Montesino one of a kind? First, Rayco was first person in Spain to make signed language interpreting a topic for a doctoral thesis. For his doctoral studies in Applied Linguistics from the University of Vigo, he created a didactic of available strategies for signed language interpreting as a dissertation study. Rayco has also worked as a Spanish Sign Language-Spanish interpreter since 2002, and since 2004 has worked as a signed language interpreter educator. Currently he is a professor at University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. We present this interview in both English and Spanish and hope you enjoy reading about our Spanish colleague as he works to advance interpreter education in Spain.

The editors of The European Legacy have expressed their interest in publishing a Special Issue on A Question of Communication: The Role of Public Service Interpreting in the Migrant Crisis, guest edited by Dr. Michal Schuster, the University of the Free State, Republic of South Africa and Dr. Lluís Baixauli-Olmos, University of Louisville (USA). The Special Issue will be dedicated to the memory of Professor Miriam Shlesinger (1947-2012).

Topics:
• Current challenges of language accessibility in Europe
• Language policy for accessibility and integration of migrants and asylum seekers
• Interpreter training and education, particularly for emerging languages
• Recruiting strategies/methods
• Turning interpreters into cultural mediators
• The use of new technologies in interpreting and translation in public services
• Cooperation between different sectors: public, private, academic and non-governmental

If you would like to contribute an article (6000-8000 words) to the Special Issue, please send an abstract (150 words) to Dr. Michal Schuster, at [email protected], by January 10, 2017.

Submissions will be evaluated by the guest editors before being accepted for publication. Deadline for submission of papers: April 10, 2017.

For further information on the journal and for Guidelines for Authors, please contact the editorial office at [email protected] or visit the website at http://issei2014.com/The_European_Legacy.html.

Edna Rosenthal, editor
Michal Schuster, guest editor
Lluís Baixauli-Olmos, guest editor