Typology of mistakes in consecutive interpretations and the way to overcome and eliminating them
§1.2. Overview of consecutive interpreting teaching
Karimova Dilyora 02.05.2023 (2)
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Overview of consecutive interpreting teaching |
Though there are many conference interpreting schools, not all of them provide education in both simultaneous and consecutive mode of interpreting. Those that do are ETI (Geneva University), ESIT (Paris, Sorbonne University), and the University of Queensland Japanese Course (Taylor- Bouladon 2011:77). In the past, there was no education for interpreters, most of them were self- taught. “In the old days, before the times of interpreter/translator training courses (the AIIC Schools Committee was set up in 1957), especially in the days of consecutive when int erpreters were the élite globe-trotting jet -set, the distinguished, elegant, witty actors on the world stage, interpreters and translators were self -taught ” (Taylor- Bouladon 2011:32). As Pöchhacker (2004:28) says: «The brilliant example of Paul Mantoux interpreting for the Allied Leaders at the Paris Peace Convention in 1919 marks a fundamental turning point in the modern history of international interpreting: the transition from ‘chance interpreters’ (i.e. more or less bilingual individuals who happen to be on hand) to the corps of specially skilled professionals working at the League of Nations and its affiliate, the International Labour Office (ILO), in Geneva». The first interpreting and translation school was established in Mannheim in 1930, and was later transferred to Heidelberg. In the 1940s, two more interpreting schools were set up in Vienna and Geneva. To list some of the first and most famous and important books on interpreting published, Jean Herbert’s The Interpreter’s Handbook (Manuel de l’interprète) appeared in 1952 and had pedagogical orientation, while Rozan’s La prise de notes en interprétation consecutive, a book on note-taking published in 1956, was specifically didactic. Even today, Rozan’s book is held to be one of the most useful ones, and is used in note- taking teaching8.
This is a very brief description of consecutive interpreting for the non-initiated, and does not claim to cover everything. There are a large number of books that have been written on consecutive interpreting in general and on note-taking specifically, where much more detailed information can be found.
Consecutive interpreting is a mode of interpreting in which the speaker makes a speech (or says a few sentences) whilst the interpreter takes notes. The interpreter then reproduces what the speaker has said for the audience. He is normally standing or sitting close to the speaker, uses a pad and pen to take notes and uses the microphone (if there is one) only once the speaker has finished and it is his turn to speak.
In order to be a good consecutive interpreter you must be able to listen very actively, analyse what the speaker is saying, make useful notes which will jog your memory of the speech as you give it back, and then be able to make the speech as if it were your own in your active language.
The three main actions are:
1) listen actively (understand)
2) analyse (take structured notes)
3) reproduce (communicate)
A number of different skills are involved – beyond the understanding of the passive/foreign language.
A consecutive interpreter first has to learn how to 'listen actively'. This might sound straightforward but interpreters listen in a very different way to other people (just as a psychoanalyst also has a special way of listening to people talk) – because the purpose of the listening is different. Interpreters are not listening to react or join in the conversation, they are listening to be able to remember and reproduce accurately and faithfully in another language what was said (and psychoanalysts are listening for clues as to the mental state of their patient).
Rozan based his note- taking on a thorough linguistic, semantic and cognitive analysis of the original, together with his own perceptive way of dealing with equivalent reformulation and effective communication. Above all he stressed the importance of abbreviating intelligently, keeping symbols to a mere handful … (Ilg and Lambert 1996:71)9.
Most of the books written on consecutive interpretation are in fact books on note-taking, a skill essential for good interpreting in this mode. One of the interpreters who also contributed greatly to the field is Danica Seleskovitch, whose doctoral thesis finished in 1973 was on note- taking in consecutive interpreting. In 1975, she published the book Étude de la prise de notes, in which “she focused on cognitive aspects and dismissed retention and recall as automatic by - products of the comprehension of meaning” (Ilg and Lambert 1996:71). As stated in Ilg and Lambert (1996:71,73) authors like Wilfried Becker (1972), who “has contributed a useful, very straight forward booklet in German”, Heinz Matyssek (1989) who “opts for a very systematic and detailed code of drawings and symbols” also have to be mentioned. Sergio Allioni (1989) “defined a fairly structured ‘grammar of consecutive interpretation using English and Italian syntactic rules together with a moderate number of symbols”; Ruth Willet (1974) and Helene Kirchoff with her unpublished book Didaktik des Dolmetchens and article Notationssprache (1979) “provided a counterweight of sorts to Matyssek’s more extreme views.” There are also David and Margareta Bowen (1980) and Laura Gran (1979) (Ilg and Lambert 1996:72)
We approach interpreting and teaching with a view that meaning is created and co-constructed by participants in the interaction/conversation (Halliday, 1976; Mishler, 1986; Roy, 2000; Schegloff, 1982), and interpretation is a “meaning-making event.” During an interaction, participants and interpreters rely on contextual knowledge, schemata or interpretive frames (Goffman, 1974), and linguistic and cultural knowledge. This meaning-making process takes time, in order to work with all of these variables, and underscores the need for consecutive interpreting. We define consecutive interpreting as the rendering of interpretation after the participant has produced a complete response, question, or idea(s). Using this frame of reference, we want students to:
• consider the mode to be used, the rationale, and how to incorporate consecutive and/or simultaneous modes throughout an assignment according to a meaning-based model (Russell, 2005; Shaw, 2007)
• assess the requirements of an assignment prior to accepting it (this requires obtaining sufficient information)
• analyze the impact of their decisions and actions before, during, and after assignments
• provide effective consecutive interpretation.
To learn consecutive interpretation, students must first acquire the theory and experience of using CI. Students gain fundamental skills by studying and applying discourse and text analyses. With this foundation, students are ready to acquire additional interpreting skills. Our first step is to help students understand the evidence from spoken/signed language research that supports the use of CI for accuracy, precision, and effectiveness. Next, we link research with practice, through educators modeling CI, students practicing CI, and educators and practitioners sharing their CI experiences. This approach assumes the instructor has an understanding of CI research; that research should include work by Alexieva (1991), Bruton (1985), Cokely (1992), Gile (1995), Leeson (2005), Mikkelson (1995), Napier (2003), and Russell (2002a, 2002b, 2005). The instruction should also have the ability to link evidence to practice, model consecutive interpretation, and analyze student work per a meaning-based model. In the next section, we describe how we structure teaching activities10.
Consecutive interpreting skills form the next major subset, which is introduced after discourse/text analysis and translation skills are achieved. Our philosophical approach here is that we want students to see consecutive interpretation as a viable approach throughout their careers, not just for learning simultaneous interpreting. Once more, we bridge research and practice by exposing students to existing research in both spoken and signed language communities. Consecutive interpreting competencies require students to (a) appropriately describe the need for CI in both languages and culturally appropriate ways, (b) create effective recall notes, (c) chunk or segment participant messages appropriately, (d) use culturally appropriate signals to have participants pause at appropriate points, and (e) use strategies to create meaning-based interpretation while minimally altering participants’ interaction patterns. Simultaneous interpretation skills are taught once students have a solid base in consecutive interpreting. If students are permitted to move to simultaneous interpreting prior to internalizing the consecutive process, we see typical error patterns emerge, including the absence of construal and comprehension due to short processing times resulting in lexical transcoding and absence of meaningful linguistic use. Finally, based on this progression, students are ready to practice blending consecutive and simultaneous interpreting within a given interaction. This requires (a) application of discourse/text analysis skills, (b) consecutive and simultaneous interpreting abilities, and (c) decision-making schemas. Beginning in the foundational courses, students are guided through analysis of their work. Self-analysis is an essential learning component.
Interpreting and translation (‘Translation’ with an upper-case T) are practiced under a wide variety of conditions. Many interpreters and translators work full-time. Others such as housewives, students, medical practitioners, engineers and journalists work part-time for supplementary income (see for instance Katan 2009). Interpreting and translation work can also be assigned occasionally or regularly to employees whose official duties bear no relationship to such tasks but who happen to speak one or more foreign languages. Translators can be required to perform highly creative work, as when they translate poems or other literary texts. At times, their work involves the acquisition and some deep processing of specialized information, in particular – but not exclusively – in scientific and technical translation. In other circumstances, it involves rewriting into a target language business letters, road signs, directions for hotel guests, information for tourists, etc. Translators may have to accept much responsibility, for instance when translating or interpreting important political speeches and legal texts. In other cases, they have a modest role, for instance when translating the menu for a cafeteria in a small town. Their educational level varies from top academic qualifications to a modest primary school level.
Some enjoy high social prestige as ‘creators’ in their own right or highly skilled language mediators, while others are viewed as minor clerical staff. Their work may be intended to serve a single person, for instance a foreign guest at a specialized conference, or be subject to much exposure, for instance when they interpret for television or translate a best-selling book. Some earn a great deal of money, and others have very low salaries. In other words, although their activity is given the same name – ‘interpreting’ or ‘translating’– intellectually, technically, socially, economically, it is far from homogeneous and perhaps these two words could be seen as hypernyms covering a rather wide range of distinct occupations.
Socially and economically, this situation is not favourable to top-level professionals: their status and working conditions tend to be dragged down by the existence of interpreters and translators at ‘lower’ levels rather than the other way around. Because there are so many self-proclaimed interpreters and translators whose level of performance is very low and so many ‘bilinguals’ who engage in translation without any training, 6 Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training many a layperson is not in a position to (and does not necessarily wish to) see and defined as performing essentially the same function, namely re-expressing in one language what has been expressed in another for communication or other purposes11.
At the lowest levels of performance requirements, this function can be fulfilled by persons having a minimum knowledge of the languages involved and no specific training. As quality requirements become more stringent, performance problems arise in connection with comprehension of the source Text, linguistic reformulation in the target language, behavioural issues (including compliance with norms of appropriate professional conduct), technical issues, ethical issues, psychological issues (in particular in public service interpreting)… Some of these are solved naturally: Translators (translators and interpreters) extend and deepen their knowledge of the languages and the subjects they deal with while Translating and by seeking to learn more through books, newspapers, other periodicals, lectures, workshops etc. Their technical and other skills also improve with practice.
Some, perhaps many, actually reach top-level performance through experience and self-instruction. Others encounter obstacles which halt their progression. I have been told by some experienced translators that they somehow never manage to free themselves from the source-language structure when writing target-language sentences, and by several experienced conference interpreters that they feel they do not perform well enough in consecutive interpreting because they have had no formal training in notetaking techniques. Other colleagues reach a certain level of proficiency with which they are comfortable but do not know how to move up, from instance from general translation to specialized translation, from sentence-by-sentence interpreting to ‘true’ consecutive interpreting, from consecutive to simultaneous interpreting.
This is by no means an absolute rule. I have had the opportunity to meet and sometimes work with self-taught interpreters and translators who have developed bad habits, but my experience does not match that of Wilhelm Weber, former dean of the Translation and Interpreting Division of the Monterey Institute for International Studies, who writes:
Only exceptionally gifted people (of whom I have only met one or two during my professional career) can hope to accede to these professions on their own without developing serious bad habits and making mistakes that will tarnish their professional performance for the rest of their careers. (1984: 2)
Theoretical components in interpreter and translator training In this context, the sometimes heated debate on whether “translators are born, not made” (Nida 1981) or “made, not born” (Healey 1978) seems rather pointless, at least if taken literally. While certain ‘natural’ aptitudes are prerequisites to high-quality translation – especially literary translation – or to simultaneous interpreting, it makes little sense to challenge the idea that guidance into Translation can be useful, be it for the purpose of helping natural talents unfold and develop or for instruction in technical procedures (see for instance Tetrault 1988; Viaggio 1988) and in the acquisition of linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge.
Interpreter and translator training can usefully be considered against this background. Formal training is not mandatory, but it can perform at least two important functions. One is to help individuals who wish to become professional interpreters or translators enhance their performance to the full realization of their potential. The other is to help them develop their Translation skills more rapidly than through field experience and self-instruction, which may involve much groping in the dark and learning by trial-and-error.
Formal training programmes also have other functions, more social or professional in nature. In particular, they can help raise general professional standards in the marketplace by selecting the best candidates at admission and the truly skilled at graduation. This in turn may help raise the social status of Translators, especially if standards are set at postgraduate academic level. Through the professional circles they are connected to, training programmes can also help beginning interpreters and translators start their professional careers by introducing them to professional organizations and clients. This is a particularly important function in conference interpreting, as interpreting schools maintain close links with major international organizations and other institutional clients, and invite their representatives to take part in graduation examinations. Training programmes may also help standardize working methods (which may or may not be desirable), give Translators the comforting feeling they belong to a genuine profession, and provide good observation opportunities for research into interpreting and translation. Indeed, the vast majority of research projects on Translation are planned and carried out by academics who teach translation or interpreting (see Pöchhacker 1995 for interpreting), and a considerable amount of research uses the training environment for reflection, observation and experimenting12.
All these social functions are important. However, they are to a large extent contextdependent and vary considerably from one country to the next and from one market to the next. In contrast, the didactic function of formal training is essentially invariant, although the application of common principles is also context-dependent, as operational aims vary according to the nature, duration, resources and baseline status of the relevant training programmes.
Principles which apply to general, non-specialized translation, to technical and scientific translation, to conference interpreting and broadcast interpreting are presented and discussed; the book does not address systematically the specific needs and circumstances of dubbing, subtitling, localization, public service interpreting and of various signed language interpreting contexts. While I believe that students and practitioners studying and/or working in these areas can also benefit from the concepts and models presented in this book, and references to them can be found in works on signed language interpreting (see for instance Bélanger 1995, papers in Janzen 2005, books by Carol Patrie) and on public service interpreting (see for example Collados Aís & Fernández Sánchez 2001), each of these Translation sectors and modalities has technical, sociological and other idiosyncrasies, in particular with respect to the role of the translator or interpreter, and deserves additional teaching materials which are found in sector-specific literature.
2. The components of Translation competence
In order to plan a syllabus and/or assess the value of a training programme, it is necessary to analyze what knowledge and technical skills are required for interpreting and translation (interesting practical suggestions on how to go about it are found in Kelly 2005). Over the years, authors have attempted to describe the components of Translation competence in many ways (see inter alia Roberts 1984; Nord 1991: 235; Kiraly 1995; Hansen 1997; Schäffner & Adab 2000; Hansen 2006b)13.
Theoretical components in interpreter and translator training the basic informational meaning of texts, but also fine shades of meaning as expressed by subtle choices of words and expressions, as well as by their rhythm, music, and images – and be highly aware of cultural facts, norms, trends and atmospheres.
Interpreters and translators need to have good command of their active working languages. In top-level interpreting and translation, this requirement is set at a very demanding standard. Basically, technical translators are required to be able to write publishable texts, that is, to have professional writing/editorial skills besides their trans-linguistic communication competence. As for literary translators, their writing skills must indeed be of the same nature as those of literary writers. Likewise, conference interpreters are required to be able to make speeches at a language quality level expected from the personalities they interpret, be they diplomats, scientists, politicians, artists or intellectuals, and appropriate for the relevant circumstances: press conferences, political speeches, scientific presentations, intellectual discussions etc. This requirement goes much beyond the ‘natural’ command one acquires over childhood and adolescence in one’s native language.
Interpreters and translators need to have sufficient knowledge of the themes and subject-matters addressed by the texts or speeches they Translate. This third requirement is formulated above in general and somewhat vague terms. Indeed, needs are highly variable, depending on the level of translation required, the subject-matter at hand and working conditions – hence the less than explicit “sufficient knowledge” qualification. Depending on their existing thematic knowledge and on the availability of documents and of human help, Translators can tackle more or less specialized subjects. ‘Extralinguistic Knowledge’ or ‘World Translators must have both declarative and procedural knowledge about Translation the Translator’s declarative knowledge about Translation includes knowledge about the marketplace, about clients, about behavioural norms governing relations between Translators and clients and between Translators and other Translators, knowledge about information sources, about tools used in Translation, about the clients’ specific expectations for each assignment etc. ‘Procedural knowledge’ is the ability to actually perform actions; the Translator’s relevant procedural knowledge refers to ‘technical skills’ such as the ability to follow in one’s decision-making the principles governing fidelity norms, to use techniques for ad hoc Knowledge Acquisition.
Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training for language enhancement and maintenance, for problem-solving, for decision-making, for note-taking in consecutive, for simultaneous interpreting, as well as, increasingly so, to mastery of modern translation technology and of technical skills required for specialized forms of translation, in particular localization, web translation and audiovisual translation. Chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8 address the most fundamental of these technical skills, though, as mentioned in the introductory section to this chapter, they do not cover translation technology or the specifics of public service interpreting, audiovisual translation and interpreting, signed-language interpreting and localization.
Beyond translation competence, interpreters and translators need to meet some intellectual criteria and apparently to have some personality features. These have been listed and discussed intuitively by translator and interpreter trainers.
They are sometimes seen as prerequisites for admission into Translation schools, but are not directly addressed by training, although training should improve the subjects’ capacity to use them more fully.
The diversity of training requirements of the components of knowledge and skills listed above, only the fourth is specific to Translation. Knowing foreign languages, being able to write texts of good editorial quality in one’s own language and having general and specialized knowledge in one or several subjects are qualifications that can be found in many individuals, inter alia among international civil servants, international lawyers and journalists as well as expatriates working in many fields.
It also seems clear that journalists, scientists, international civil servants, international lawyers, engineers or scientists wishing to become interpreters or translators would not require the same training as language teachers who do not have much general and specialized knowledge, and requirements would differ for experts in a field of human activity who have good thematic and linguistic knowledge but lack editorial skills on one hand, and first-year university students in any discipline on the other. All such candidates to Translation could benefit from training in translation and interpreting techniques, but their needs in terms of language skills, editorial skills and knowledge build-up would differ greatly.
For the sake of optimization, variability in these parameters would call for a variety of training programmes, both short and long, full-time and part-time, studentoriented and professional-oriented, but basically two prototypes of formal training programmes can be defined.
Initial training programmes for newcomers to Translation
These are designed for regular (young) students who wish to become interpreters or translators through a formal training programme. Although some of them may already have some professional experience, they accept both beginner status in the course and the idea of a considerable time investment – several years. In most of the major schools of interpreting and translation in the ‘West’, which, incidentally, are part of or associated with universities, programmes last 2 to 4 years of full-time studies (generally 2 years at graduate level or 3 to 4 years at undergraduate level). There are or have been some shorter programmes as well, such as an intensive 6-month syllabus in conference interpreting at the University of Ottawa, 6-month in-house training programmes in conference interpreting at the United Nations and at the Commission of the European Community, and one-year programmes in some universities such as ETI (Geneva), but the vast majority of programmes with a solid reputation extend over two to four years14.
In such programmes, students are involved full-time in training over a relatively long period and are therefore in a position to devote thousands of hours and considerable effort to all four components of Translation competence.
Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training abstract to beginning students and require more explanations and more class time. It follows that course design should differ in both content and approach depending on whether training aims at introducing beginning students to Translation or at strengthening a practicing professional’s expertise. In the latter case, training may consist of customized efforts focused on particular sub-components of Translation competence as opposed to full coverage of the whole range of knowledge and skill components: for instance, individual courses and workshops may focus on note-taking in consecutive, on fundamental concepts and principles in legal interpreting, on translation in computer science, on patent translation, etc.
The need for optimization in formal Translator training In very short programmes designed for professionals, optimization is desirable as it can be for any endeavour which costs time and money, but it is perhaps not essential.
If a bit of time is lost, it is not critical time, and professionals who feel they are not gaining much from the programme can stop attending it. In initial training programmes, the situation can be viewed differently in view of their duration and of the fact that formal training is but one way to access the Translation professions, two other choices being the no-training option and the in-house on-the-job training option; by the latter I mean learning by Translating for a company under the supervision or guidance of experienced colleagues.
The no-training option is probably weaker than the other two because it provides no outside guidance to the beginner who may thus be deprived of good advice and fall into bad habits. However, it is by no means clear that formal training is necessarily a better option than the in-house alternative. Some factors may make the latter more desirable than the former:
– Both options involve progress under supervision. Theoretically, formal training provides closer supervision by qualified training experts (the teachers). In real life, the quality of supervision is not always better in formal training. When Translation teachers are professionals who teach part-time, which is the case of many instructors in many schools that train professional interpreters and translators, their (more lucrative) professional Translation work does not necessarily leave them much time to devote to supervision. Moreover, such professional Translators have generally not been trained for teaching and do not necessarily have pedagogical skills. When trainers are full-time academic instructors rather than professional Translators, they may be out of touch with professional reality and their guidance may become less relevant or even misleading (see for instance Bouderradji’s 2004 survey on the relevance to the marketplace of translator training in certain French training institutions). In the in-house option, supervisors are generally not trained teachers either, but they are familiar with the market as it is
While interpreting and translation exercises always make up the core of the curriculum, a number of other subject-matters and activities revolve around them. Besides language enhancement and thematic courses in economics, political science, technical and scientific subjects, etc., skills around Translation are also taught in many programmes. Public speaking, documentary and terminological work, précis writing and technical writing are some examples. Theoretical courses on linguistics or interpreting and translation theory are also found in an increasing number of syllabi. However, the usefulness of such theoretical courses is often challenged on the grounds that they are too abstract or remote from actual Translation practice and are therefore not useful to students.
Courses in Translation theory can serve functions other than the purely pedagogical purpose of helping future interpreters and translators advance faster and better toward mastery of their professional skills. Some theoretical courses are a necessary part of academic programmes leading to BA or higher degrees. Incidentally, some research may also be part of the requirements. Such functions are legitimate in the academic context and may also serve useful purposes in enriching the future Translators’ conceptual frames of reference and knowledge – and in raising the social status of the Translation professions.
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