Leveraging Virtual Learning Environments for Training Interpreter Trainers

While the demand for conference interpreters in traditional language combinations (the more widely used languages) is decreasing, the need for experts in less widely used languages is rapidly increasing with each enlargement of the EU. Post-war peace-keeping operations as well as warcrime tribunals have also increased the need for high-level interpreters in languages hitherto not used in the international arena and consequently more well-trained interpreter trainers both for traditional programs as well as ad-hoc intensive programs must be available. Interpreters are a highly mobile community of professionals, unable to be physically present in a university for long periods of time to be trained as trainers. The Certificate course for Interpreter Trainers at ETI (University of Geneva) has been offering the only postgraduate course for training interpreter trainers since 1996. To meet the demand for training around the world the Certificate course is now offered in a blended format: Nine months of distance learning are blended with one week of faceto-face learning. The portal (www.unige.ch/eti/certificate/training) offers a rich learning environment with a number of tools to implement the philosophy of collaborative learning. With its public access and a special section for students of interpreting the portal has become an international meeting point for interpreter trainers where participants in the Certificate course interact with interpreting students at ETI, and interpreter trainers from schools around the world can interact with the Certificate teaching staff and students. This paper reports on the first systematic assessment of both the learning environment and the learning outcomes of the Certificate course.La demande d’interprètes de conférence dans les langues les plus répandues est en baisse. Par contre, la demande ne cesse de croître dans des langues moins utilisées, notamment lors de chaque élargissement de l’UE. En parallèle, sur la scène internationale, la demande d’interprètes qualifiés ne cesse d’augmenter que ce soit dans des opérations de maintien de la paix ou dans des tribunaux de crime de guerre. Cette donne contribue à un besoin accru en formateurs d’interprètes tant pour des formations traditionnelles que pour des formations intensives et ponctuelles. Les interprètes forment un corps professionnel très mobile et de ce fait, il est difficile de les mobiliser pour de longues périodes de formation. Le cours du Certificat de formateurs d’interprète dispensé par l’ETI (Université de Genève) est le seul cours postgrade du genre depuis 1996. Pour répondre à la demande venue du monde entier, le cours est maintenant offert dans un format hybride, alliant neuf mois de distance à une semaine présentielle à Genève. Le portail utilisé (www.unige.ch/eti/certificate/training) offre un environnement d’apprentissage collaboratif élaboré. De part son interface accessible à tout public et une section réservée aux étudiants en interprétation, il devient un espace de rencontre entre différentes communautés. Cet article présente les premiers résultats obtenus, au niveau de l’environnement d’apprentissage et au niveau de l’apprentissage lui-même

Student interpreters predict meaning while simultaneously interpreting - even before training

Prediction has long been considered advantageous in simultaneous interpreting, as it may allow interpreters to comprehend more rapidly and focus on their own production. However, evidence of prediction in simultaneous interpreting to date is relatively limited. In addition, it is unclear whether training in simultaneous interpreting influences predictive processing during a simultaneous interpreting task. We report on a longitudinal eyetracking study which measured the timing and extent of prediction in students before and after two semesters of training in simultaneous interpreting. The students simultaneously interpreted sentences containing a highly predictable word as they viewed a screen containing four pictures, one of which depicted a highly predictable object. They made predictive eye movements to the highly predictable object both before and after their training in simultaneous interpreting. However, we did not find evidence that training influenced the timing or the magnitude of their prediction

Unpacking the multilingualism continuum: An investigation of language variety co-activation in simultaneous interpreters

This study examines the phonological co-activation of a task-irrelevant language variety in mono- and bivarietal speakers of German with and without simultaneous interpreting (SI) experience during German comprehension and production. Assuming that language varieties in bivarietal speakers are co-activated analogously to the co-activation observed in bilinguals, the hypothesis was tested in the Visual World paradigm. Bivarietalism and SI experience were expected to affect co-activation, as bivarietalism requires communication-context based language-variety selection, while SI hinges on concurrent comprehension and production in two languages; task type was not expected to affect co-activation as previous evidence suggests the phenomenon occurs during comprehension and production. Sixty-four native speakers of German participated in an eye-tracking study and completed a comprehension and a production task. Half of the participants were trained interpreters and half of each sub-group were also speakers of Swiss German (i.e., bivarietal speakers). For comprehension, a growth-curve analysis of fixation proportions on phonological competitors revealed cross-variety co-activation, corroborating the hypothesis that co-activation in bivarietals’ minds bears similar traits to language co-activation in multilingual minds. Conversely, co-activation differences were not attributable to SI experience, but rather to differences in language-variety use. Contrary to expectations, no evidence for phonological competition was found for either same- nor cross-variety competitors in either production task (interpreting- and word-naming variety). While phonological co-activation during production cannot be excluded based on our data, exploring the effects of additional demands involved in a production task hinging on a language-transfer component (oral translation from English to Standard German) merit further exploration in the light of a more nuanced understanding of the complexity of the SI task

The role of manual gestures in second language comprehension: a simultaneous interpreting experiment

Manual gestures and speech form a single integrated system during native language comprehension. However, it remains unclear whether this hold for second language (L2) comprehension, more specifically for simultaneous interpreting (SI), which involves comprehension in one language and simultaneous production in another. In a combined mismatch and priming paradigm, we presented Swedish speakers fluent in L2 English with multimodal stimuli in which speech was congruent or incongruent with a gesture. A picture prime was displayed before the stimuli. Participants had to decide whether the video was related to the prime, focusing either on the auditory or the visual information. Participants performed the task either during passive viewing or during SI into their L1 Swedish (order counterbalanced). Incongruent stimuli yielded longer reaction times than congruent stimuli, during both viewing and interpreting. Visual and audio targets were processed equally easily in both activities. However, in both activities incongruent speech was more disruptive for gesture processing than incongruent gesture was for speech processing. Thus, the data only partly supports the expected mutual and obligatory interaction of gesture and speech in L2 comprehension. Interestingly, there were no differences between activities suggesting that the language comprehension component in SI shares features with other (L2) comprehension tasks

Interpreting at the European Institutions: faster, higher, stronger

El lugar de trabajo de los intérpretes simultáneos de conferencia parece haber cambiado relativamente poco desde que los primeros veteranos ofrecieran los primeros servicios de interpretación simultánea durante el período de entreguerras y de posguerra. Diríase que la propia tarea también ha permanecido sin cambios, puesto que los intérpretes simultáneos siguen transformando el discurso oral de una lengua a otra en tiempo real. Un análisis más detallado de esta labor y de sus restricciones inherentes, no obstante, nos muestra una situación diferente: de hecho, la interpretación simultánea actual en las organizaciones internacionales puede definirse como las Olimpiadas de la profesión. En línea con el lema olímpico, los oradores hablan todavía más rápido, la probabilidad de que estén leyendo una presentación preparada de antemano es todavía más alta y sus acentos son todavía más fuertes./nEn este artículo me propongo explorar esos tres parámetros por ser los tres retos principales para los intérpretes simultáneos que trabajan en organizaciones internacionales. El análisis comenzará con una presentación general de la incidencia de estos factores en las principales organizaciones internacionales, que servirán como telón de fondo sobre el que analizar estos parámetros en mayor profundidad./nLa discusión del primer parámetro, la velocidad, comenzará con una discusión crítica de las recomendaciones propuestas por los pioneros en el campo y que todavía mantienen muchas asociaciones profesionales, pero que parecen mostrar un drástico contraste con la realidad profesional que los intérpretes encuentran al trabajar en organizaciones internacionales./nEl examen del segundo parámetro, la naturaleza leída del discurso, subraya las características únicas de esta modalidad y traza un panorama de las repercusiones que acarrea de manera inevitable sobre el producto./nLas consideraciones acerca del tercer y último parámetro, el acento, comienzan con un análisis aislado del acento como una característica mensurable y destacada del lenguaje, independiente de otros rasgos de lo que se ha dado en llamar “inglés internacional”, “inglés global” o “inglés como lingua franca”./nCon respecto a los tres parámetros, se ofrece un análisis teórico del fenómeno que incluye su impacto en el proceso de interpretación, así como un examen en profundidad de los procesos cognitivos implicados en la interpretación simultánea de conferencias en las organizaciones internacionales.The workplace of simultaneous conference interpreters appears to have changed relatively little since early veterans provided the first simultaneous interpreting service during the inter-war and post-war period. On the face of it, the task, too, appears to have remained the same, as simultaneous interpreters continue to relay spoken discourse from one language into another language in real time. A closer analysis of the task and its inherent constraints, however, reveals a different picture: in fact, modern-day simultaneous interpreting at international organizations can be likened to the Olympics of the profession. In keeping with the Olympic motto, speakers speak ever faster, the likelihood that they will be reading a prepared presentation is ever higher and their accents are ever stronger./nIn this contribution I set out to explore these three parameters as the three principal challenges for simultaneous interpreters working at international organizations. The analysis will begin with an overview of these factors’ incidence across major international organizations as a backdrop against which to scrutinize them further./nThe discussion of the first parameter, speed, will begin with a critical discussion of the recommendations made by early practitioners and still upheld by many professional associations, as they appear to be in stark contrast with the professional reality encountered by interpreters working in international organizations./nThe examination of the second parameter, i.e., the read nature of discourse, highlights the unique features of this modality and outlines the repercussions it inevitably has on the product./nThe consideration of the third and final parameter, accent, starts with the isolation of accent as measurable and salient phonological feature of language to the exclusion of other features of what has become known in the literature as International English, Global English or English as Lingua Franca (ELF)./nFor all three parameters a theoretical analysis of the phenomenon including their impact on the interpreting process are provided in an in-depth exploration of the cognitive processes involved in simultaneous conference interpreting at international organizations./n

When the ear leads the eye – the use of text during simultaneous interpretation

In our study we analyse the online processing of visual-verbal input during simultaneous interpreting with text. To that end, we compared 15 professional interpreters’ eye movements during simultaneous interpreting with text (SIMTXT) to a baseline collected during reading while listening (RWL). We found that interpreters have a preference for a visual lead during RWL, following the pattern well-documented in silent and oral reading studies. During SIMTXT, in contrast, interpreters show a clear preference for a visual lag. We tentatively conclude that during SIMTXT the visual input might be used first and foremost to support the production of the output rather than the comprehension of the input. Importantly, we submit that the availability of the written text of the orally presented discourse might negatively affect predictive processing

The role of semantically related gestures in the language comprehension of simultaneous interpreters in noise

Manual co-speech gestures can facilitate language comprehension, especially in adverse listening conditions. However, we do not know whether gestures influence simultaneous interpreters’ language comprehension in adverse listening conditions, and if so, whether this influence is modulated by interpreting experience, or by active simultaneous interpreting (SI). We exposed 24 interpreters and 24 bilinguals without interpreting experience to utterances with semantically related gestures, semantically unrelated gestures, or without gestures while engaging in comprehension (interpreters and bilinguals) or in SI (interpreters only). Tasks were administered in clear and noisy speech. Accuracy and reaction time were measured, and participants’ gaze was tracked. During comprehension, semantically related gestures facilitated both groups’ processing in noise. Facilitation was not modulated by interpreting experience. However, when interpreting noisy speech, interpreters did not benefit from gestures. This suggests that the comprehension component, and specifically crossmodal information processing, in SI differs from that of other language comprehension.</p

Background information for participants in the Noisy and Clear Speech studies.

Background information for participants in the Noisy and Clear Speech studies.</p