Aptitude for Interpreting
1st Edition
Published on 24. October 2014
V, 183 pages
978-90-272-6954-6 (ISBN)
Description
First published as a Special Issue of Interpreting (issue 10:1, 2011) and complemented with two articles published in Interpreting issue 16:1, 2014, this volume provides a comprehensive view of the challenge of identifying and measuring aptitude for interpreting. Following a broad review of the existing literature, the array of eight empirical papers captures the multiple dimensions of aptitude, from personality traits and soft skills such as motivation, anxiety and learning styles to aspects of cognitive performance. The populations studied, with experimental as well as survey research designs, include students and professionals of sign language interpreting as well as spoken-language interpreting, and valuable synergies emerge. While pointing to the need for much further work, the papers brought together in this volume clearly represent the cutting edge of research into aptitude for interpreting, and should prove a milestone on the way toward supplying educators with reliable methods for testing applicants to interpreter training programs.
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Franz Poechhacker | Minhua Liu
Aptitude for Interpreting
Book
10/2014
John Benjamins Publishing Co
€90.10
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Content
- Aptitude for Interpreting
- Editorial page
- Title page
- LCC data
- Table of contents
- Aptitude for interpreting
- References
- Aptitude testing over the years
- 1. Introduction
- 2. What to look for in an interpreting candidate
- 2.1 Ideal interpreter profiles: A consistent view over a 40-year span
- 2.2 Other contributions to the debate
- 3. How to measure interpreter candidates' skills?
- 3.1 Types of tests
- 3.1.1 Early aptitude test batteries
- 3.1.2 More recent test battery descriptions
- 4. Test validity and reliability
- 4.1 Proposals for aptitude test designs
- 4.2 Predictive aptitude tests
- 5. Conclusions
- References
- Learning styles, motivation and cognitive flexibility in interpreter training
- Introduction
- Psychological traits: Learning styles, motivation and cognitive flexibility
- Learning styles
- Motivation
- Cognitive flexibility
- Methodology of aptitude and admission research
- Lessius study programmes and student groups description
- Analysis 1: Self-selection
- Method
- Results
- Analysis 2: Prediction of successful completion of interpreter training
- Method
- Results
- Discussion
- References
- A story of attitudes and aptitudes?
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Literature
- 2.1 ID variables in second language acquisition
- 2.2 ID variables in translation and interpreting studies
- 3. ID variables examined in this study
- 3.1 Linguistic self-confidence
- 3.2 Motivation
- 3.3 Language anxiety
- 4. Experiment
- 4.1 Participants
- 4.2 Method
- 4.3 Results
- 4.3.1 ID variables
- 4.3.2 The interpreting performance
- 4.3.3 Relating interpreting performance to ID variables
- 5. Conclusions and perspectives
- References
- Appendix 1: SPCC questionnaire
- Appendix 2: Questionnaire based on AMTB
- Cognitive and motivational contributors to aptitude
- Introduction
- Method
- Participants
- Materials
- Procedure
- Results
- Type: Signed language (SL) and spoken language (SP) group comparisons
- Level: Entry-level (EL) and advanced-level (AL) group comparisons
- Discussion
- Limitations and future research
- References
- Evaluating emotional stability as a predictor of interpreter competence and aptitude for interpreting
- Introduction
- Literature review
- Personality and job performance
- Research on personality and interpreters
- Self-efficacy, goal orientation and negative affectivity
- Research hypotheses
- Methodology
- Participants
- The instrument
- Procedure
- Results
- Discussion and conclusions
- Implications for interpreter education
- References
- Domain-general cognitive abilities and simultaneous interpreting skill
- Introduction
- Method
- Participants
- Rating
- Measurements
- Cognitive Ability Measurements
- Emotion-Cognition Interaction Measurements
- Procedure
- Results and discussion
- Univariate analyses
- Multivariate analyses
- Discussion
- General discussion and future directions
- References
- Testing aptitude for interpreting
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Methods
- 2.1 Participants
- 2.2 Scoring
- 2.3 Outcome measures
- 2.4 Statistical analysis
- 3. Results
- 3.1 Scores on all variables
- 3.2 Correlation and regression analysis
- 3.2.1 Outcome measure: Examination mark
- 3.2.2 Outcome measure: Number of exam sessions
- 3.3 Sensitivity and specificity of tests
- 3.3.1 Low-mark and high-mark students
- 3.3.2 Slow and fast students
- 4. Discussion and conclusions
- References
- Assessing aptitude for interpreting
- 1. Introduction
- 1.1 Aptitude
- 1.2 Context
- 2. Approaches to aptitude assessment
- 2.1 Course-based assessment
- 2.2 Tests
- 3. SynCloze test
- 3.1 Sources
- 3.2 Rationale
- 3.3 Design
- 3.4 Administration
- 3.5 Scoring
- 4. Findings
- 4.1 Beginners vs. interpreting students
- 4.2 Results by language profile
- 4.3 Response times
- 4.4 Results by cloze item
- 4.5 Correlation
- 5. Conclusions
- References
- Putting interpreting admissions exams to the test
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Interpreter aptitude testing
- 2.1 Aptitude and aptitude testing
- 2.2 Current testing at Germersheim
- 3. The new FTSK admission test
- 3.1 Piloting the new FTSK admission tests
- 3.1.1 Correlation parameters
- 3.1.2 Institutional considerations
- 3.2 Tests chosen for our candidates
- 3.2.1 Tests in the 'A' language (German)
- 3.2.2 Tests in the 'B' language (English, French, Italian)
- Weighting
- 4. Results
- 4.1 Cognitive shadowing
- 4.2 SynCloze (A and B)
- 4.3 Personalized cloze
- 5. Discussion
- 6. Conclusions
- References
- About the authors
- Subject index
