Both online and onsite, classes got into full swing this week at the MCI. After some initial time spent organizing and doing some asynchronous activities, the new Year One students had their first real-time class meets. As for the Year Two students, they got down to brass tacks with some serious booth time.
Some of the Year Two students had a little trouble getting going again. After all, they had allowed themselves a well-deserved break from interpreting practice this summer. So they felt a little rusty. It should also be said that they have to travel a longer road when it comes to simultaneous. Last year, most of their time was spent on consecutive, and they walked away from the experience with a solid foundation. They spent less time on simo, and their skills consequently aren’t as well developed.
Interestingly, this fact made itself known when we tried to do some peer evaluation. At one point during class, I sent half the group into the booths to do a simo exercise. The other half remained around the conference table to listen and to later provide feedback to those who interpreted. For the peer evaluators, this turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Just how do you evaluate simultaneous anyway?
Of course, my students know how to evaluate an interpretation more generally. We’ve spoken about criteria like Message Accuracy, Quality of Delivery and Reading between the Lines (for more on these, have a look at “Become the Interpreter You Want to Be“).
But how can you, as students, apply these criteria when you are peer reviewing your classmates’ work in Simo? It’s hard enough to do simo. Assessing Simo adds an extra level of difficulty.
This is because, as an assessor, you have to listen to the original, think about what you would have said, and compare this to what the interpreter actually said, all in real time. Essentially, it’s like taking the complexities of Simo and piling one more task on top.
Over time, things get easier. As you develop you own abilities as an interpreter, assessing others becomes less of a problem. But in the meantime, here are a few different strategies that you can use to give your classmates useful feedback.
1. Be a pure customer
When you are assessing, put both headphones on and listen to the interpreter only. In this way, you will be like an actual client, depending on the interpreter to allow you to understand what is going on. Obviously, you won’t be able to check for accuracy, because you won’t be listening to the original. So instead, concentrate on your own understanding. Do your best to follow the gist of the argument or position as the interpreter is relaying it, and be ready to flag the points in the interpretation when your ability to understand breaks down. Say things like, “You lost me when you started talking about GDP,” or “It got a bit wooly in the second point about capital accounts”. Comments like these will help the interpreter identify where she or he lost the thread, and likely where his or her own comprehension faltered. (NB: At Glendon, we were taught the value of being pure customers by our colleague Helen Campbell, who is pictured in the virtual classroom above.)
2. Focus on numbers, numbers, and more numbers
Dealing with a speech full of figures? Perhaps a financial report or a budget speech? Then listen to both the original and the interpretation, but limit yourself to checking the accuracy of the numbers. Get ready to write them all down as you hear them in the source speech, and compare them to what the interpreter is saying in the target language. This assessment strategy has two advantages. First, interpreters, generally speaking, tend not to be mathematically oriented. (There’s a reason why many of us go into languages.) So, some added attention on numbers is helpful for the interpreter. Second, as the assessor, you are also getting a workout. Jotting down all the figures and cross-checking them is easily as difficult a task as interpreting them in the first place. So this practice will actually boost your interpreting, too.
3. Listen for Delivery
One of the most difficult things for the interpreter to do is sound calm, cool, and in control. But conversely, this is one of the easiest things for an assessor to hear. Most of us, within a few seconds of listening to an interpreter, can judge whether she or he is delivering the speech well. Indeed, even when we are listening to our B or C languages, we can form an opinion on this front very quickly. Just ask yourself these questions. Does the interpreter sound stressed? Is the delivery monotone? Is the interpreter speaking too quickly or too slowly? Are there pauses in odd places? Does the interpreter sound unconvincing (i.e., like she or he is unable to embody the speaker)? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then you need to flag this for your classmate.
These three strategies will help you break down the daunting task of assessing SIMO into smaller, and more manageable components. And over time, as your skills grow, you will find this easier to do. But when you become a more proficient assessor, remember this. The interpreter’s job is not to reproduce an exact equivalent of every syntactical form uttered by the speaker. Instead, we are there to pass along an accurate and effective message, in a way that won’t drive our clients to drink if they have to listen to us all day long.
In the same vein, the assessor’s job is to check that the facts, figures, logic, and positions are all conveyed properly. (And not to see whether every single fragment of form finds its way into the interpretation.) Keep this in mind, and evaluating your peers will help you fuel your own development as an interpreter, too.