Aims: The aim of this unit is to provide students with realistic practice in simultaneous interpreting.
Learning Outcomes:
These conferences replicate the environment of a multilingual meeting. Students who have taken part in them will be equipped to cope with actual working conditions and therefore able to demonstrate their interpreting skills more effectively.
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.
Content:
The programme of conferences runs from late in Semester 1 to the end of Semester 2. The different language sections take turns to draw up an agenda and then chair the meeting. Students are organised into teams for the combinations of languages used at each conference (to cover all of these, four conferences are normally held on each topic, with students attending those at which their languages are represented). Native-speaker delegates play appropriate roles during the proceedings. The original speeches are recorded for subsequent student practice.
|
