CLINA Revista Interdisciplinaria de Traducción Interpretación y Comunicación Intercultural

Teaching and Evaluation of Specialized Translation and Interpreting

2023-07-10T09:00:05+02:00

Cross-curricular Training of Specialized Translators: an Interdisciplinary Didactic Experience in Economic and Technical Translation

2023-08-28T13:21:09+02:00

The recent changes in the translation market call for a review of the teaching and learning methods used to train new professionals. The rigid traditional division of specialized translation into fields of knowledge does not correspond to market needs, which often involve working with texts that combine content from different disciplines. In this paper, we present an interdisciplinary didactic experience carried out during two consecutive academic years in which students and teachers of two specialized translation modules cooperated in an economic and technical translation project. Specifically, a research article on economic growth and human capital that combined economic content with statistical analysis methods was chosen as the source text. The design of the project required considering the competencies and learning outcomes planned for each module in order to enhance the establishment of connections between specialties. In addition, it was necessary to consider a variety of aspects related to the planning and development of the different project phases, because not all students were enrolled in both modules. For evaluation, a rubric was constructed with five criteria that were adjusted to the requirements of specialized translation and the translated genre. For each criterion, five levels of achievement were defined, four associated with the levels of evaluation of research articles, and a fifth one aimed at rewarding excellence. Both the academic results of students and their evaluation of the learning experience suggest that the method used could be a good option for meeting their interdisciplinary training needs and enhancing their motivation and involvement in learning. For the above reasons, the relevance of including modules based on the development of cross-curricular translation projects in future translation and interpreting curricula should be assessed.

Wine-related Translation: A Special Case of Specialised Translation with Many Educational Applications

2023-08-28T13:21:05+02:00

The wine sector plays an important role in the Spanish economy and in other countries and requires multilingual communication, which generates a large number of texts that make up a varied and interesting corpus for translatological research and for the teaching of specialised translation. The aim of this article is to explore the didactic possibilities of wine translation both in the context of the Degree in Translation and Interpreting and in the context of lifelong learning through standalone courses and workshops. To this end, after defining wine translation as a specialised translation, we will outline a classification of textual genres in order to select those that can be most productive in a didactic environment and we will propose a series of activities and resources for the practice of wine translation, based on texts with different degrees of specialisation and with special characteristics that bring various translator competences into play. In conclusion, we believe that a genre-based approach is highly suitable for teaching not only translation but also languages and terminology, as it allows texts to be approached through pragmatic, socio-cultural, macrotextual, morphosyntactic and lexical-semantic aspects.

Download IATE as a Resource for Teaching Names in the Translation and Interpreting Classroom

2023-08-28T13:20:58+02:00

Proper names are a minoritarian yet fairly controversial topic in translation and interpreting literature. Some authors believe that they have been traditionally disregarded, becoming «one of translation’s coziest fortresses» (Albin, 2003); however, a number of prominent translation and interpreting scholars have explicitly studied proper names (Hermans, 1988; Moya Jiménez, 2001; Nord, 2003), and a stream of recent publications underline the challenge they represent in fields as varied as biomedicine (Cariello et al., 2021), literature (Jouini, 2020; Sarmaşık, 2022) and the law (Tang, 2021), among others. This paper proposes the integration of terminology databases and onomastics for interpreter and translator training. We will adopt a constructionist approach (cf. Goldberg, 1995). The download functionality of the terminology management system IATE is employed to extract a reliable English-Spanish dataset of 3,997 organization names, which is first analyzed in a quantitative-qualitative manner, and then exploited to design three templates (easy, medium, and advanced) aimed at bilingual naming practice. Results show a generally rich and robust dataset, with 96% cascading domain names, 66% marked as very reliable and only 8% as deprecated or obsolete. By contrast, most names (75%) were labelled as terms, which shows no consideration for their onymic nature and small or no relevance of other specialized knowledge representations (abbreviations, phrases, short terms, and non-linguistic forms). The proposed templates extensively develop a Goldbergian-style notation system for construction, and their flexibility and replicability make them a good candidate for automatization and/or combination with documentation resources and NLP-based tools throughout the learning process.

Errors in Specialized Translation Training: A Corpus-Based Study on the Sight Translation of a Popular Science Article

2023-08-28T13:21:12+02:00

In recent years, sight translation (SiT), the oral translation of a written text, has received little attention in the sphere of translator training. Rather, this practice has been almost exclusively studied within the framework of interpreting. Yet, based on the examination of the master’s programs in translation (Giancola, 2022) recognized by the European Master’s in Translation (EMT) (European Commission, 2022c), SiT is used, although rarely, as a course per se or as occasional exercises in translation training. Additionally, Dragsted and Hansen (2009) have emphasized its relevance and its benefits for translation students, which include improving speed rate, acquiring automatisms, and being more fluent. Based on these preliminary observations, the present study focuses on error patterns and speech disfluencies in SiT as part of specialized translation training. The study rests upon a corpus of twenty English-to-French SiTs of a popular science article about astrophysics performed by specialized translation students (Meyers, 2022). Building on existing work on errors in SiT, this study aims to find out the different error patterns observed in the corpus and the impact of speech disfluencies on the overall quality of the output. To analyze the corpus, an error typology in line with SiT has been developed based on established error analysis frameworks, such as MQM (Lommel et al., 2015) and Falbo’s typology (1998), combined with new categories. Analysis of the corpus demonstrated the significant prevalence of meaning errors (p < 0.05), with a high number of terminological issues. This study also established the statistically significant association between errors and speech disfluencies (p < 0.05). The results suggest that SiT error patterns in specialized translation training differ from the observations made in the context of interpreting and that speech disfluencies negatively influence the overall performance. On this basis, it is recommended to explore SiT in specialized translation training independently and target speech disfluencies to enhance performance. Future research is needed to identify the ins and outs of SiT as part of specialized translation training —for instance, in legal translation training— and to determine whether it should become an integral part of the curriculum.

Delving into the Business-Interpreting Profession: Tracking Key Challenges to Train Interpreters for Today and Tomorrow

2023-08-28T13:21:15+02:00

This article delves into the intricacies of business interpreting with the intention of integrating the demands of the profession in specialized interpreting courses. With this objective in mind, we depart from the challenges identified in a business interpreting corpus, where we observe real phenomena that demand the intervention of the interpreter so as to foster the efficiency of the communication. As our study highlights, business interpreting intervention areas combine time constraints posed by the dialogue with the interplay of cultures and business approaches. In light of these phenomena, the interpreter needs to activate a decision-making process to overcome such limitations and convey the message, while preserving not only the content of the utterances, but also the intentions of the speakers. In this perspective, we approach the notion of ‘competence’ from a practical point of view, understanding that a competent interpreter must be capable of overcoming the difficulties entailed by the profession. Thus, this proposal considers the usefulness of resorting to real interpreter-mediated situations to train interpreters prepared to meet the needs of the profession, aligning market needs and training.

Developing and Using an Ad Hoc Corpus to Teach Specialized Interpreting: A Case Study of German Embassy Speeches

2023-08-28T13:21:02+02:00

This article describes a corpus-based approach to specialized interpreter training, advocating for the compilation and use of ad hoc corpora to support trainers when developing training materials for specific domains. To do so, this article presents a case study to illustrate the utility and the subsequent analysis of an ad hoc corpus for specialized interpreting training, which is conceived of as a complement to current training practices for diplomatic interpreting. A specialized German language corpus of embassy speeches and interviews was compiled based on freely-available data and subsequently analyzed to identify genre- and domain-specific features of these types of addresses. By identifying discourse, text type, and specific terminology and expressions, trainers can develop domain- and genre-specific materials for training that align with the types of discourse that are likely to be encountered when working in these specialized domains. These materials can be used as part of courses in addition to self-study. This corpus-based approach to materials development can complement current training practices for specialized interpreting and enable authentic materials to be integrated into the interpreting classroom.

Reflective Approach in Teaching Note-Taking

2023-08-28T13:20:51+02:00

Interpreter training represents a crucial period for discussing one’s strengths and weaknesses, introducing new skills, and applying those successfully. Assessment of students has already shifted from being the sole privilege of teachers to emphasising the role of peer assessment and also self-assessment, all kinds being crucial not only for the overall performance but also in learning individual skills. This paper focuses on the role of self-assessment and reflective approach in teaching note-taking. The empirical research was carried out over the course of four semesters with four different groups of students, each comprising approximately twenty students with various backgrounds in note-taking (theoretical knowledge, self-taught, or no experience at all). Students started with taking notes using their own style, then followed a short course introducing the theoretical framework and explaining the principles, which were gradually introduced and practised. After each session, the notes were archived and, with active participation of students, analysed in class. After five sessions, students were asked to analyse their own notes and set their goals. This strategy positively affected their motivation and led to better results. After another five sessions, the students once again carried out self-assessment, this time reflecting on their improvement, contrasting their first and last/best notes. This strategy resulted in a boost in motivation and confidence, and overall improvement.

Teaching Interpreting in German-Spanish: Proposal of an Interactive and Situated Methodology with Elements of Gamification

2023-08-28T13:20:54+02:00

For the effective preparation of future translation/interpreting professionals it is necessary not only to have a good domain of foreign languages and oral fluency, but also to know advanced translation strategies and trends adapted to current professional challenges. As the task of the social interpreter increasingly takes over the role of intercultural mediator, it is also necessary to develop additional social competences with elements of empathy, emotional control and self-intervention in high-pressure conditions. These skills prove to be of vital importance especially in cases of interpreting in social emergency situations (hospitals, psychiatric clinics, care of refugees, victims of gender-based violence, in penitentiary institutions, etc.). Advance practical training is most effective if the situation and the environment for learning foreign languages and interpreting are as close as possible to the real situation, e.g. during role-plays with theatrical attributes, special effects, transmission of one’s own experience and in staging. The fundament of such an interactive didactic approach with gamification elements is based on the latest developments in cognitive science and neurodidactics, which advocate embodied learning (Shapiro & Stolz 2019) as a motivating methodology (Grein 2021). This approach consists in offering learners practical experience: self-experience, being-in-the-real-world. This is in line with the theory of situated simulation (Barsalou 2020) and the need for learning embedded in the close-to-real context to achieve conceptual fluency (Danesi 2017). It also facilitates the effective terminology management (Faber 2022) necessary for the task of interpreting. After previous experience as a professional interpreter and teacher, it can be affirmed that the proposed methodology accelerates the development of the linguistic, social, terminological, empathic and emotional control skills necessary for future interpreters. It is an effective interactive and practical methodology oriented towards action and the promotion of new interpreting skills that represents a holistic process making use of the postulates of aesthetic didactics and ecological interpreting.