The MCI is a multilingual program. We have seven working languages — Arabic, English, French, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish — and we try to give equal opportunities to all our students, regardless of their language combination.
That said, there are sometimes challenges. Glendon as a whole is bilingual. Classes, meetings, and social
activities here are conducted in both English and French. As a result, when the MCI interprets live events held on campus, it often means that our French team gets the spotlight.
But not this week. Glendon welcomed the Red de Talentos Mexicanos (the Mexican Talent Network), an organization that helps Mexicans living abroad connect with one another and promote Mexico’s contribution to the knowledge economy. The Red held a public lecture and business meeting that was interpreted by the Year Two MCI students. We had all our language teams working, but the Spanish team took centre stage.
In short, the students with Spanish in their combination worked onsite from the main booth in our Amphitheatre, and the other language teams interpreted remotely from the Interpreting Lab. It was an opportunity to gain precious work experience. But at the same time, it was also a chance to see our pathways more clearly.
1. “Purposeful” Interpreting
In our classes, we are all about objective-setting. Before a classroom performance, students set (at times with assistance from their teachers) a goal that they will work on in their interpreting. For example, a student might say, “I want to get all my numbers right”. Consequently, we tailor our feedback after the performance to this objective. The student may have let other aspects of their interpreting slide for the time being, but we focus on how he or she did with numbers. Over time, we rotate the objectives so that the student works on all aspects of their performance. It’s a principle that was taught to us by our colleagues at the European Commission (SCIC), and it works well for us. In fact, our students report to us that it makes their practice seem “purposeful”. But of course, you can’t only concern yourself with one part of your performance when you are working for a live audience…
2. Putting it All Together
As I listened to our students working during the event, I noticed how, in some ways, their progress was evident. For example, the members of the Spanish team, almost without exception, have calm and velvety radio voices that they use to great effect when interpreting. But paying attention to voice quality seemed to come at the detriment of other components of their interpretation. For example, using the “salami technique” to speak in short sentences and pausing between ideas (and not in the middle of them) — both of these strategies
seemed to be falling by the wayside. It’s not that students aren’t capable of using salami and proper pausing. Indeed, in the classroom, we have heard them use these techniques successfully many times. So in our debriefing after the event, we spoke a lot about returning to the basics of longer lag, more reformulation, and careful pacing. We also spoke a lot about the challenges of “putting it all together” in real life, whereas their in-class approach has been focused on taking things one at a time.
3. The Road Ahead
In a few short months, our Year Two students will have completed their training. After that, depending on how they do on their Exit Exam, they may very well find themselves on the professional market. Our experience this week showed that, in some ways, they are ready. When it comes to the various component skills of interpreting, they do very well. But under the stress of working for real clients, they have trouble wrapping it all up and delivering a total package. For that reason, in the weeks and months ahead, we will focus our efforts on being uniformly good, across the board — especially when they are outside the safe and familiar confines of the classroom. In other words, we are able to see the road ahead much better now, thanks to the clarity that this week’s live event
offered to us.
Long story short, we get a lot out of interpreting the goings-on here at Glendon. Obviously, students benefit from experiential learning. But if this week is any indication, we also get something more valuable: a chance to measure how far a distance our students have already travelled, and how far they have yet to go.