 Description:
| Aims:
This unit is designed to introduce students to the principles and techniques of simultaneous interpreting, with a view to equipping them for a career as a professional linguist in this particular field. The aim is to maximise each student's potential so that as many as possible of the group progress to the next stage of preparation for professional work.
Learning Outcomes:
After completing the unit, students should have assimilated the basic principles and techniques of simultaneous interpreting. They will understand how to approach the tasks involved and be able to work on their own initiative to improve the skills that are required. They will have started to develop a strategy for dealing with different contexts and scenarios and to acquire an awareness of the interpreter's relationship with the clients or users. Students will understand and be equipped to deal with the various practical issues and expectations that this entails. In practice, students will be able to produce a satisfactory interpretation of a non-specialised speech lasting several minutes.
Skills:
Simultaneous interpreting is an exercise in direct communication between individuals that involves transferable key skills such as listening, analysing arguments, oral expression and an awareness of one's own performance. The main intellectual skill developed in this unit is the ability to cope with the highly challenging task of conveying the substance of a spoken message in one language while it is being delivered in another, applying sophisticated linguistic knowledge to provide a satisfactory service for the audience. All these skills are developed progressively through classwork and constructive feedback.
Content:
The teaching programme begins with a short series of classes involving listening skills and discourse analysis, as an introduction to the practical exercise of simultaneous interpreting. Students move quickly on to "shadowing", on-sight exercises and then interpreting in the booth. The materials used are graduated in difficulty. A programme of practice materials will be provided for students to work on in their own time; as they become more proficient, the simulated conferences are a further opportunity for realistic practice. By the end of the unit, students will be expected to have enhanced their ability to convey shades of meaning, tone and register. To facilitate this, a combination of native speakers reading a wide variety of transcripts plus live recordings covering different fields will be used. The focus of the methodology is to enable students to evolve their own practical interpreting techniques.
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