Course Description
This practical course provides opportunities to develop ASL-English interpreting skills during simulated practice in the classroom and while doing volunteer interpreting in the community. Students will integrate their learning in all settings and will participate in seminars to reflect upon their professional growth and to identify focus areas for ongoing development. They will learn interpreting theory, terminology and process models, and will practice strategies for both consecutive and simultaneous interpreting.
Course Content
Cognitive model of the process of interpretation:
- Meaning-making as a shared social process of co-construction
- Variables of each cultural, situational, relational, psychological context
- Historically significant conduit models and terminology
- Linguistic and cultural mediation
Power and responsibility inherent in the task of interpretation:
- Social variables that impact meaning-making
- Awareness of privilege, intersecting identities, allyship, one’s own positionality and bias
- Challenges in aiming for dynamic equivalence and impartiality
Steps and sub-processes in interpretation:
- Predicting what to expect from the discourse
- Concentrating and attending to source message
- Representing meaning, dropping source language form
- Planning to express meaning using target language form
- Producing a clear and cohesive target message
- Monitoring and critiquing one’s own process and results
- Strategies for managing the time constraints of simultaneous interpreting
- Strategies for using consecutive interpreting and interaction management
- Criteria for opting to use either simultaneous or consecutive interpreting
- Strategies for effective co-interpreting as a team
Analysis and assessment of interpretation:
- Features of a successful interpretation
- Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) as a learning tool
- Demand-Control framework as a learning tool
- Peer feedback and shared analysis
- Self-reflection and identification of focus areas/goals for one’s own development
Professional demeanour and interaction, including:
- Clear, respectful, effective interpersonal communication
- Punctuality, effort, enthusiasm
- Patience with self, others, and circumstances
- Discretion, diplomacy, confidentiality
- Working collaboratively with peers, consumers, teachers, and others
Means of Assessment
Assessment will be in accordance with the Douglas College Evaluation Policy. Evaluation will be based on a combination of individual and group work, and at the instructor’s discretion may include presentations, written assignments, papers, quizzes and/or exams.
A typical distribution of graded assignments follows:
- Consecutive Interpreting Assignments: 30%
- Simultaneous Interpreting Assignments: 30%
- Written Analyses: 10%
- Self-reflections and Goal-setting: 10%
- Quiz: 15%
- Volunteer Interpreting Log: 5%
This is a letter graded course.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Use preparatory materials and information to predict and prepare for an interpretation task
- Apply contextual factors to the process of meaning-based interpretation
- Produce interpretations that meet the goals of the particular speakers/signers/settings
- Demonstrate interpretation into ASL that is syntactically correct and cohesive
- Demonstrate interpretation into English that is syntactically correct and cohesive
- Use rapid mental processing to manage the time constraints of simultaneous interpretation
- Use effective interaction management strategies when doing consecutive interpretation
- Demonstrate appropriate choice of simultaneous or consecutive mode
- Describe the cognitive sub-steps in the process of interpreting meaning
- Critically evaluate the relative success/effectiveness of an interpretation
- Reflect on one’s own interpreting skills and identify focus areas for ongoing development
- Demonstrate professional demeanour and effective communication in interactions with others
Textbook Materials
A list of required and optional textbooks and materials is provided for students at the beginning of each semester.