АЛЕКСАНДРА МИЛ

ПРАКТИКУМ по ПЕРЕВОДУ

Магистратура

Английский язык

MAGISTRATE COURSE

in

Interpreting

Book 1

2012

THE SHOLOKHOV UNIVERSITY

Part 1 ACTIVITY BOOK

Introduction

	Dr Peter K.Kornakov Associated Professor, St.Petersburg State University, Russia University Teacher in Interpreting and Translating, University of Bradford, West Yorkshire http://www.brad.ac.uk/staff/pkkornakov/META.htm
FIVE PRINCIPLES AND FIVE SKILLS FOR TRAINING INTERPRETERS (extracts)

One of the first deficiencies which attract notice is a lack of experienced interpreters working as experienced instructors. There are some basic reasons for that: like good athletes, not all good interpreters (or athletes) can work successfully as good instructors. Secondly, the practice of simultaneous interpreting is significantly more financially rewarding than the teaching of it.

The first principle:

Train yourself to improve full attention and concentration*

The second principle:

Train your memory on exercises with interesting or funny data which is used in order to demonstrate that you can easily remember quite complicated data so long as it is important or interesting to you.

The third principle:

Work with distracting elements, like extra sounds, excessive gesticulation, etc. and train in distracting environment. This kind of “distractive modeled environment" can be called “training in obstacle conditions”.

List of extra-difficult conditions:

• Speed (too slow – too fast) or volume (too low – too high)

• Clarity (radio recordings from intentionally badly tuned stations with interference)

• Extra background noise (knocks, speech, music, etc.)

• Unexpected change of task (consecutive interpreting training: first the task is to take notes, but when the delivery is required notes are not allowed)

• Use of recording with defective speech (both articulatory and syntactically) or heavy local accents (Glaswegian, Liverpudlian or Cockney in English, Cuban in Spanish, etc.) or heavy foreign accents (Chinese or Japanese in English, etc.).

The 4th principle:

A new exercise has to be very clear and straightforward in order to be understood and worked through. Next time, the training exercise has to be difficult (an authentic or nearly real-life level of difficulty).

The 5th principle:

The trainee interpreters studying the MA in Interpreting de facto have to have a “sufficient” level of proficiency. It is a waste of time to teach new vocabulary on a word-to-word basis. It is the student's responsibility to do it all the time if they want to be professional interpreters.