Aptitude for Interpreting

190 Pages·2014·0.96 MB·English

by  Franz Pöchhacker

Aptitude for Interpreting
Benjamins Current Topics
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Volume 68
Aptitude for Interpreting
Edited by Franz Pöchhacker and Minhua Liu
These materials were previously published in Interpreting 13:1 (2011)
and 16:1 (2014)
Aptitude for Interpreting
Edited by
Franz Pöchhacker
University of Vienna
Minhua Liu
Monterey Institute of International Studies
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Aptitude for Interpreting / Edited by Franz Pöchhacker and Minhua Liu.
p. cm. (Benjamins Current Topics, issn 1874-0081 ; v. 68)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Translating and interpreting--Study and teaching. I. Pöchhacker, Franz, editor. II. Liu,
Minhua.
P306.5.A68 2015
418’.020711--dc23 2014022642
isbn 978 90 272 4256 3 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 6954 6 (Eb)
© 2014 – John Benjamins B.V.
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Table of contents
Introduction: Aptitude for interpreting 1
Franz Pöchhacker and Minhua Liu
Aptitude testing over the years 7
Mariachiara Russo
Learning styles, motivation and cognitive flexibility in interpreter
training: Self-selection and aptitude 33
Šárka Timarová and Heidi Salaets
A story of attitudes and aptitudes? Investigating individual difference
variables within the context of interpreting 55
Alexandra Rosiers, June Eyckmans and Daniel Bauwens
Cognitive and motivational contributors to aptitude: A study of spoken
and signed language interpreting students 71
Sherry Shaw
Evaluating emotional stability as a predictor of interpreter competence
and aptitude for interpreting 87
Karen Bontempo and Jemina Napier
Domain-general cognitive abilities and simultaneous interpreting skill 107
Brooke N. Macnamara, Adam B. Moore, Judy A. Kegl and
Andrew R. A. Conway
Testing aptitude for interpreting: The predictive value of oral
paraphrasing, with synonyms and coherence as assessment parameters 129
Mariachiara Russo
Assessing aptitude for interpreting: The SynCloze test 147
Franz Pöchhacker
Putting interpreting admissions exams to the test: The MA KD
Germersheim Project 161
Catherine Chabasse and Stephanie Kader
About the authors 177
Index 181

Introduction
Aptitude for interpreting
The abilities and skills required for interpreting have been a topic of special inter-
est ever since the very first scientific investigation into the professional occupation
of conference interpreting by Jesus Sanz (1930). In the 1960s and 1970s, AIIC,
the International Association of Conference Interpreters, made serious efforts to
tackle this issue and come to a better understanding of the prerequisites for a ca-
reer in professional interpreting (see Keiser 1978). Attempts to put the selection
of candidates for interpreter training on a more scientific footing have been made
since the 1980s, often drawing on insights from cognitive psychology (e.g. Moser-
Mercer 1985). And yet, relatively little empirical research on aptitude for inter-
preting has been carried out to date, despite recurrent doubts over the reliability,
validity and predictive power of tasks designed to test candidates for interpreter
training programs (e.g. Dodds 1990). What is more, those studies that do exist do
not yet provide us with sufficient guidance on the effective screening of applicants.
This dearth of evidence-based methods of admission testing is all the more prob-
lematic when one considers the growing demand for highly qualified interpreters
as training institutions face increasing pressure to make the most efficient and
judicious use of their limited resources.
It was against this backdrop that an initiative to organize an international sym-
posium on aptitude for interpreting took shape. Interpreting scholars in Europe
and the US joined forces to convene a group of leading researchers and educa-
tors specializing in the study of aptitude testing for interpreter education. The in-
ternational symposium, “Aptitude for Interpreting: Towards Reliable Admission
Testing,” was held on May 28–29, 2008, at Lessius University College in Antwerp,
Belgium, now part of the KU Leuven Faculty of Arts. Based on a thorough screen-
ing process, the organizers — Heidi Salaets and Šárka Timarová of Lessius/KU
Leuven, and Sherry Shaw of the University of North Florida — put together a pro-
gram consisting of ten presentations, all of them centering on the enigmatic con-
nection between means of evaluating aptitude(s) at the entry phase and students’
prospects of success in ultimately joining the ranks of the interpreting profession.
One of the admirable attributes of the event was its success in bringing together
leading scholars from the signed-language interpreting community as well as their
spoken-language counterparts.
2 Franz Pöchhacker and Minhua Liu
Seven of the papers presented at Antwerp were made available as a Special
Issue of Interpreting (13:1, 2011), co-edited by the late and greatly missed Miriam
Shlesinger. Two of the scholars present at the Antwerp Symposium went on to
publish further research on aptitude in Interpreting (16:1, 2014). These papers
complement those in the Special Issue and are offered in the present volume to-
gether with the set of seven papers published three years earlier.
One can safely claim that the contributions brought together here represent
the cutting edge of research into aptitude for interpreting, and the community of
interpreting scholars and educators owes a debt of gratitude to the organizers of
the landmark symposium in Antwerp. At the same time, the work collected in this
volume points to the need for much further research, as, in many ways, the paucity
of conclusive findings appears to persist.
Those interested in the state of the art in the field of aptitude testing will appre-
ciate the highly productive integration of work done by interpreter educators, on
the one hand, and insights gleaned from other disciplines, chief among them ex-
perimental psychology, on the other. Moreover, as reflected by the chapters in this
volume, the role of personality traits in the composite profile of a likely candidate
has gained prominence alongside the traditional focus on cognitive skills. No less
important, the reader will come to see the many similarities (and few differences)
between aptitude testing in the fields of spoken- and signed-language interpreting.
The volume opens with a sweeping chronological overview of the field, in-
cluding a survey of those characteristics that a prospective interpreter is expected
to possess and the means of measuring them, by Mariachiara Russo. Delivered
as the keynote address at the Antwerp Symposium, the paper draws attention to
the rather consistent perception of the ideal interpreter profile over the years and
offers a succinct review of test designs that allow for the identification of statisti-
cally significant predictors of examination results and program completion rates.
One point that emerges from this comprehensive presentation of the state of the
art is the neglect in most entrance examinations of applicants’ ‘soft skills’ such as
motivation and other personality traits. These are effectively explored in some of
the following chapters.
In a study which grew out of an ambitious project investigating both cogni-
tive abilities and soft skills, Šárka Timarová and Heidi Salaets use a learning style
inventory, a test of motivation and a cognitive flexibility task to explore the charac-
teristics of undergraduate students who decide to enrol in an interpreter training
program. The authors also investigate the relationship between students’ success-
ful completion of training, on the one hand, and their scores on each of these, on
the other. They find that students who self-select for interpreting tend to show
higher cognitive flexibility and achievement motivation and to be less susceptible
to debilitating anxiety.
Introduction: Aptitude for interpreting 3
Anxiety levels and motivation also figure in the study by Alexandra Rosiers,
June Eyckmans and Daniel Bauwens, which centers on the different profiles of
translation and interpreting students. Based on standard tests of self-perceived
linguistic competence, particularly oral skills, as well as psychological instruments
testing anxiety and integrative motivation, the two groups of students are found
to differ with regard to these individual traits. Nevertheless, going on to relate
these differences to the students’ interpreting performance as measured in a sight
translation task, the authors do not find any significant correlations between per-
sonality and performance.
The two chapters focusing on spoken-language interpreting students, by au-
thors based in Belgium, are followed by a multi-center study investigating soft
skills in both spoken- and signed-language interpreting. Working with inter-
preting students at training programs in four countries of the European Union,
Sherry Shaw administered a neurocognitive test battery as well as a psychological
instrument measuring personality traits relevant to interpreting skill acquisition.
Differences were found in both cognitive performance parameters and motiva-
tional personality traits of entry-level and advanced students of interpreting and
between participants in the spoken- and signed-language programs.
Yet another aspect of personality, emotional stability, is investigated by Karen
Bontempo and Jemina Napier in a study of accredited sign language interpret-
ers in Australia. The authors used a questionnaire to measure self-efficacy, goal
orientation and negative affectivity, all constructs for which valid and reliable
psychometric tools are available and considered predictive of performance in a
variety of contexts. While goal orientation was not significantly related with self-
rated interpreter competence, and self-efficacy proved to be of only minor interest,
negative affectivity correlated significantly with interpreters’ own perceptions of
their performance.
Following the four empirical chapters primarily concerned with soft skills
and personality traits, the remaining four shift the focus to the role of cognitive
skills, which have traditionally been foregrounded in the literature on aptitude.
The first of these, by Brooke Macnamara, Adam Moore, Judy Kegl and Andrew
Conway, takes a broad perspective on cognitive components, addressed under
the heading of domain-general skills, in conjunction with aspects of personal-
ity. In a study conducted among sign language interpreters in the United States,
the authors employ instruments designed to measure such cognitive abilities as
processing speed, task switching and working memory, as well as certain person-
ality measures. In their comparison of highly skilled and less-skilled professional
interpreters, the authors find the two groups to differ in both dimensions. Among
other things, the highly skilled interpreters exhibit greater mental flexibility, faster
cognitive processing speed and less anxiety about taking risks, supporting the