George Major and Ineke Crezee, Co-Editors[1]
Auckland University of Technology
Interpreter educators will agree that curricula and pedagogies need to evolve continually in response to the demands of the changing world and the communities with which they work. In a previous issue we highlighted situated learning approaches (Valero-Garces 2017; Saltnes Urdal 2017; Burn & Crezee 2017). However, there are many other ways in which educators can respond to evolving needs. In New Zealand, government scholarships have been offered to fill the demand for interpreters in languages of limited diffusion in response to refugee and migrant needs (Enriquez, Ridgeway and Crezee, forthcoming). In countries such as the United States and Australia,the need for Deaf interpreters has been increasingly recognized and explored (Adam, Stone, Collins & Metzger, 2014;Swabey, 2017; Lai, this issue).
This issue of the International Journal of Interpreter Educationoffers several research articles which focus on how educators can work to meet such evolving needs. Such areas of focus may be identified by scholars based on their own experiences as practising interpreters (Crawley, this issue; Major, 2014), or may come to their attention based on feedback from interpreting students (Sowa and McDermid, this issue). Interpreter educators may also become aware of new emerging needs through their interactions with the communities they work with (Lai, this issue; Pozos-Quinto and colleagues, this issue).
At our own university in New Zealand, situated learning approaches to interpreter education include shared preprofessional sessions between qualified speech pathologists and student interpreters in the health interpreting course for both spoken and signed language interpreting students (Crezee, 2015). Our signed language students each complete 100 hours of practicum placements in the community, observing and working alongside professional interpreters, and reflecting on the process. A recent external review process highlighted this as one of the most valuable parts of the entire degree, which could potentially even be further expanded. Professional interpreters guide and help develop students’ professional skills while on practicum, and we believe the opportunity to debrief and discuss interpreting choices not only helps students to learn, but can help to develop interpreters’ own reflective practice skills as well (Major & Sameshima, upcoming conference presentation).[1]
All four research articles included in this issue offer suggestions which may contribute to the ongoing ability of interpreter educators to meet the challenges of the changing world. The contributions shared in this issue focus mostly on signed language interpreting, although each and every one of them highlight issues which may also be relevant to spoken language interpreting educators also. In this way,they contribute to strengthening the valuable exchange of ideas between signed and spoken language interpreter educators.
InInterpreting Between Modes: Navigating Between Signed and Spoken Language, Vicky Crawley from the United Kingdom focuses on the need for interpreters to edit the amount of concreteness, or specificity, when interpreting between English and British Sign Language in order to produce natural sounding outputs. The author expresses the hope that her findings may help interpreter educators to improve the quality of interpreter education, as her research describes natural strategies devised by interpreters for use in their practice.
InTraining Deaf Learners to Become Future Interpreters,Miranda Lai describes an innovative pilot project which was delivered at a tertiary educational setting in the Australian state of Victoria. She reports on curriculum design, learning outcomes, while also adding feedback gathered through semi-structured interviews with the educators involved, before formulating recommendations for educators wishing to run similar programs in the future.
In 2004, Bernardini proposed that translator educators should facilitate students developing into aware, reflective and resourceful practitioners. Crezee (2016) explored the benefits of reflective blogs in language-neutral translator education in which lecturers are unable to provide language-specific feedback on students’ translations, while Lee (2018) looked at the interpreting students reflecting on feedback. In this issue, Stephanie Sowa and Campbell McDermid’s article Self-Reflective Practices: Application Among Sign Language Interpretersinvestigates the benefits of self-reflection. Based on a small sample of novice and experienced signed language interpreters, they compare the reflective practices between the two groups.
In their article entitled Beyond bilingual interpreting, David Pozos-Quinto, Marcus Martinez, Alexis Suarez and Roxanne Zech report on a study of how interpreter training programs in the USA are responding to the growing need for multilingual interpreters, including those working with Spanish, English and ASL. Their paper provides a number of recommendations for educational institutions wishing to provide interpreter education for multilingual student cohorts.
In keeping with the multilingual theme of the work by Pozo-Quintos and colleagues (this issue), Sandra McLure, Brenda Nicodemus and Gustavo Navarrete Gastella interviewed Rayco H. González Montesino, and present an interview in both English and Spanish in our Open Forum section. Rayco is a Spanish sign language interpreter and interpreter educator, and was the first person in Spain to dedicate his doctoral thesis (University of Vigo) to signed language interpreting. Rayco is currently a Professor at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, and we are happy to offer you the opportunity to read about the work that he does to advance interpreter education in Spain.
In our Commentary section, Elisabet Tiselius provides an insightful review of Jack Hoza’s book Interpreting in the Zone: How the Conscious and Unconscious function in Interpretation, which was published by Gallaudet University. In this book,Hoza focuses on the cognitive processes that take place in the interpreter’s mind when making professional and ethical decisions, especially when the interpreter is ‘in the zone’, which Hoza describes as the interpreter’s ideal mental state when interpreting. The reviewer describes and critiques the two studies conducted by Hoza which underpin the findings presented in the book.
The Dissertation Abstract section offers our readership the exciting opportunity to acquaint themselves with the work of interpreting scholars of the future. In this volume includes abstracts from graduates of Gallaudet University, all focused on topics relating to signed language interpreting. Their studies focus on important themesincluding the work of Deaf interpreters (Naomi Sheneman’s PhD thesis), Educational interpreters (Stephen Fitzmaurice’s PhD thesis), turn-taking in courtroom interaction (LeWana Clark’s PhD thesis), and domain-specific activities practiced by expert interpreters (Krista Adams’ MA thesis). We really appreciate receiving abstracts of recently completed theses – it is enlightening to learn what topics students are looking at in the field of interpreter education. We would remind readers to continue to send in their own abstracts and to put us in touch with those who have recently completed postgraduate theses or dissertations on topics of interest to the readership of this journal.
We recently spoke to an experienced interpreter educator about a comprehensive indigenous interpretertrainingprogram that has just been completed, including a 600-page finalized manual and workbook of exercises. We hope to offer you an interview with the authors in a forthcoming issue. This is but one example of interpreter educators, in collaboration with a non-profit organization, responding to the demand for trained interpreters to serve the needs of new immigrant communities in the United Stateswhere indigenous languages are spoken. We would welcome interviews with other educators undertaking innovative work of this nature.
Thinking ahead to the next few issues of IJIE (a second issue later this year and of course the 2019 issues), we warmly invite educators and researchers to continue to send in manuscripts that introduce, discuss, critique and reflect upon topics of interest to interpreter educators internationally. We welcome research articles as well as offerings in other sections,such as Commentary (practice-based reflections, book or curriculareviews) and Open Forum (interviews, case studies, or reflections on events such as relevant conferences). Please see our website (http://www.staging2.cit-asl.org/new/ijie/) to learn more about the different sections, and encourage your graduate students to consider making a submission to the Student Work section too. We look forward to future submissions that will move the field forward through reflective, challenging and insightful discussion of issues relevant to interpreter education.
We would like to take you back to the theme of this editorial with a quote from a European educator:
[…] education has to confront uncertainties. We should teach strategic principles for dealing with chance, the unexpected and uncertain and ways of modifying these strategies in response to continuing acquisition of new information. We should learn to navigate on a sea of uncertainties, sailing in and around islands of certainty (Eystein Arntzen, 2014, p. 3).
References
Adam, R., Stone, C., Collins, S.D. & Metzger, M. (2014) (Eds.). Deaf interpreters at work: International insights. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
Arntzen, E. (2014). (Ed.). Educating for the future. Proceedings of the ATEE 38th Annual Conference, Halden 2013. Brussels, Belgium: Association for Teacher Education in Europe. Retrieved 16 May 2018 from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/817e/e284abf8cec913da5afb880c4007e323a827.pdf
Bernardini, S. (2004). The theory behind the practice: Translator training or translator education? In Kirsten Malmkjaer (Ed.), Translation in Undergraduate Degree Programmes, pp. 17–30. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Burn, J. A. & Crezee, I. (2017). That is not the question I put to you Officer”: An analysis of student legal interpreting errors. International Journal of Interpreter Education 9(1), 40-56.
Crezee, I. (2016). The benefits of reflective blogs in language-neutral translator education. FITISPos International Journal, 3, 28-41.
Crezee, I. (2015). Semi-authentic practices for student health interpreters. Translation & Interpreting, 7(3), 50-62.
Enriquez, V.,Ridgeway, Q. & Crezee, I. (forthcoming). Translation and interpreting as ethical values in plurilingual societies: professionalizing professionals and non-professionals in New Zealand. Translation and Interpreting Studies.
Lee, J. (2018). Feedback on feedback: Guiding student interpreter performance. Translation & Interpreting, 10(1), 152-170.
Major, G. (2014). “Sorry, could you explain that?” Clarification requests in interpreted healthcare interaction. In B. Nicodemus & M. Metzger (Eds.), Investigations in healthcare interpreting(pp. 32–69). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
Major & Sameshima (forthcoming). Practicum: Developing professional skills and reflective practice in new interpreters.Retrieved June 30, 2018 from: https://www.2018oceaniaconference.com/program/
Saltnes-Urdal, G. H. (2017). Conquering the interpreter’s operational space: Sign Language interpreting students and their acculturation to Deafblind clients. International Journal of Interpreter Education 9(2), 21-35.
Swabey, L., Olson, A., Moreland, C. & Drewek, A. (under review). Deaf healthcare professionals’ perspectives:
understanding the work of ASL healthcare interpreters. In Ji, M., Taibi, M. & Crezee, I. (Eds.). Cross-cultural and cross-lingual health translation, interpreting and communication. London, England: Routledge.
Valero-Garces, C. (2017). Training translators and interpreters in Spain’s Asylum and Refugee Office (OAR): A case study. International Journal of Interpreter Education 9(2), 5-20.
[1]https://www.2018oceaniaconference.com/program/
[1] Correspondence to: CITjournaleditor@gmail.com