| 
Sitemap 
|
|
|
| Sitemap |
|
Top Association Profession Services Tips | |
|
Top > Page |
| News
|
There are a large number of courses and schools around the world which offer young people who have completed their secondary school studies a course of language studies to become "translator-interpreters". Much of the syllabus is in fact taken up with language learning, taught in a more accessible way than in a conventional academic setting. Additionally, the syllabus usually includes a number of more general courses (economics, history, politics, sociology, etc.) which extend the students' general knowledge and prepare them for careers in a number of areas, e.g. executive secretaries, public relations, travel industry, teaching, journalism, translation, and sometimes conference interpreting. However, as early as 1970, at a symposium organized by UNESCO, organizations in the UN system arrived at the conclusion that "the training programs that best meet the needs of the major employers of interpreters are those which seek, in a relatively short period of time, to teach postgraduate students already possessing the requisite language skills, the techniques of translation and interpretation". This reflects two postulates which have always been fundamental to the stance taken by the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC):
Additionally, in order that trainees actually hear their various languages being used, it is recommended that training courses admit students having a variety of mother tongues. In the light of its experience over the past 50-odd years in interpreter training, the AIIC Training Committee has drawn up a list of ten points which set out its basic training criteria. 1. Applicants to courses in Conference Interpretation should have a university degree (three years of higher education) or equivalent training. 2. An oral selection process is essential for proper assessment of the general knowledge and aptitude for interpretation of prospective candidates. a) In the case of a course lasting for one academic year, the selection process should take place before the beginning of the course. b) In the case of those courses lasting for more than one academic year, the selection process should take place preferably before the beginning of the course, or else before the course is one-third complete. 3. The course syllabus and curriculum as well as language combinations offered should reflect market requirements. 4. Training in both consecutive and simultaneous interpretation should be included in the programme. 5. The syllabus shall include professional ethics and practice. 6. The syllabus for consecutive and simultaneous interpretation should be designed, directed and taught by practising conference interpreters, preferably AIIC members. 7. The target language of any given course on the syllabus should be the corresponding tutor’s A language. 8. At the final examination, failure to pass any one of the simultaneous or consecutive interpretation tests should be eliminatory. In the event of a resit, all parts of the final examination should be attempted. 9. The Diploma Examining Board should be made up of tutors having taught on the course and external examiners who are practising conference interpreters, preferably AIIC members. They should have the right to vote. 10. The Conference Interpreter’s Diploma must clearly state the language combination of the diplomate: i.e. which are the active and which are the passive languages for which the Diploma has been awarded. Let us take a closer look at these criteria. The oral entrance tests which each candidate must pass should be conducted by a panel of professional conference interpreters. They can not only judge the candidate's aptitude for an interpreting career but also will know whether the language combination offered is one for which there exists any demand. If this is not the case, members of the panel will be able to give advice on what might be done to improve the candidate's chances of becoming a conference interpreter. It is equally essential that the course be designed and taught by practising conference interpreters since they provide not only knowledge but also know-how. The interpreters’ experience and reputation provide the essential interface between training and the profession. As a result of hands-on knowledge of the major institutional employers of interpreters and a solid reputation, as well as knowledge of the interpreting markets in general, they are in a position to provide newly qualified interpreters with the backing they need as they start out on their careers. The syllabus should be devoted primarily to teaching the techniques of interpretation. This training should match actual conference conditions as closely as possible (meeting-rooms with booths of recent design, actual conference speeches, live audience, etc.) and should therefore be entrusted to experienced practising conference interpreters. Future interpreters trained under such conditions go out into the professional world knowing what is expected of them and able to provide it. The reputation of a course rests on the quality of its graduates. The final examination must be taken before a panel of examiners constituted not only by the interpreters teaching on the course but also by external examiners who represent the international organizations (the potential employers of the new graduates) and conference interpreters who cover the range of languages offered by the examinees. In this way new graduates make contact with future employers and are also ensured of an objective professional assessment of their abilities. The final diploma document must separately identify the active and passive languages in which the graduate is deemed to have achieved a professional standard of performance so as to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding. As stated at the beginning of this section, there are a large number of schools and courses which claim to train interpreters but which are, in fact, first and foremost language schools. To assist would-be interpreters in their choice, the AIIC Training Committee has undertaken an evaluation of interpreter training courses, based on the criteria already mentioned on previous pages. A distinction has been drawn between those courses which train candidates for the full range of interpreting markets and those which cover a more limited set of languages. In the latter case, we list the languages.
In some cases, the regulations governing higher education in a country make it impossible for a course to meet all the criteria. This list is updated regularly and the AIIC Training Committee would like to thank you in advance for any comments or additional information you may send to the AIIC Secretariat in Geneva.
|
