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Training of Interpreters: Some Suggestions on Sight Translation Teaching
Key Words: Sight translation, interpreter training, teaching
methods, simultaneous interpretation, consecutive interpretation.
Abstract: Sight translation has been considered
as a part of simultaneous and consecutive interpretation.
However, due to recent developments in the fields
of business, finance, international trade, science
and technology and due to changing market demands,
sight translation has gained an extra place beyond
consecutive and simultaneous interpretation. This
paper aims at laying a groundwork for teaching sight
translation, based on concepts and strategies of skill
training. Introduction Recent developments in many fields such as international
relations, business, trade, social sciences, and technology
and the need for accessing information in the shortest
possible time necessitate an active and effective
communication medium. Translation, notably interpretation,
is one of those communication media. The term "interpretation" generally brings
simultaneous, consecutive or liaison interpretation
to mind. Sight translation has mostly been considered
as a supportive interpretation method for simultaneous
and consecutive interpretation. Jean Herbert (1952)
characterized sight translation as a type of simultaneous
interpreting. For many scholars, sight translation
is just a pedagogical exercise for getting started
in the techniques of consecutive interpreting and
simultaneous interpreting, an exercise by which interpreter
trainees can learn to react quickly and improve their
oral skills (Spilka 1966; Curvers et al. 1986; Weber
1990; Falbo 1995; Viaggio 1995). However, sight translation,
consecutive interpreting and simultaneous interpreting
are performed under different conditions. Even though
there are similarities in the mental process, the
overall process is different. In sight translation,
the translator reads a written text, whereas the interpreter,
in both consecutive and the simultaneous modes, listens
to a speaker. Due to the differences in the process,
the methods and strategies that an interpreter trainee
uses in sight translation will change. This paper will present some suggestions for sight
translation teaching. However, sight translation will
not be considered as a supportive method for simultaneous
and consecutive interpretation but a sole interpretation
method that can be used by the interpreter trainees
in various fields. Pre-Exercises Sight Translation (ST) is generally taught in the
second semester of the second year or in the first
semester of the third year in the departments of translation
and interpretation in Turkey. The main reason is that
general skills such as reading, writing, textual analysis
and vocabulary are taught in the first two years.
The first exercises to be used in a sight translation
course will be directly related with those basic skills. The first two weeks of the semester can be devoted
to fast reading, skimming, scanning and reading comprehension
activities. Those activities will enable students
to speed up their reading and get the gist of the
text that they are working on in the shortest possible
time. Exercise 1 In the beginning, the students are given a text (250-300
words) in their native language and are asked to read
the whole text in 20-30 seconds. Then, they are asked
general questions about the subject of the text. In
the second phase, they are asked more specific questions
(such as names, dates, places, etc.) before they are
asked to read the text for the second time. This time,
they are given 10-15 seconds to find the specific
information. Lastly, the students are given enough
time to read the text thoroughly. This time, they
are asked comprehension questions. The same exercise
is repeated with the texts written in L2. The aim
of this exercise is to develop reading comprehension
and fast reading skills. Exercise 2 In the following weeks, the instructor chooses texts
from various fields and gives only the titles of the
texts and asks students to use their passive knowledge
on the subject. For example, the instructor asks students
what they expect from a text entitled "Painful
changeover to Euro". The students produce key
words by brainstorming on the subject. In the beginning
they may wander from the subject and produce irrelevant
keywords. However, as they begin to use their passive
knowledge and make logical connections they will come
to the point. Then, the instructor randomly chooses
keywords from the text and asks students to make logical
connections between those keywords and form a bold
outline of the text. The aim of this exercise is to
enable the students to use their passive knowledge
and make logical connections between the facts. Following
this exercise, the students are handed out the original
text and are asked to check if their outline and assumptions
are correct. Then they read the text one more time
by using fast reading techniques and mark the unknown
words. However, the instructor does not explain those
unknown words at this stage. The same text used in the previous exercise will
be used in this exercise. This time, the students
are asked to analyze the text in detail. What is the
type of the text? Is it informative? Is it vocative?
How is the form of the text? Does it include titles,
subtitles, articles, tables, graphs, etc? What is
the message of the text? Does the text include technical
words, jargon, abbreviations, etc? Are the sentences
complex? Those questions will prepare the student
for the translation process. The following exercises
will enable students to develop their own strategies
to deal with language-specific problems. One of the problems that perplex students is the
presence of unknown words. This problem also slows
down the reading speed of students and disables them
to deal with other problems they face in sight translation.
In fast reading process, when the student encounters
an unknown word, or a word that is difficult to pronounce,
his/her reading speed will slow down. However, in
a slow and meaningful reading process, he/she either
will be able to guess the meaning of the unknown word
by using contextual clues or will realize that the
word is not crucial for understanding the message
of the whole text. In some cases, however, the word
may be directly related to the message and it may
cause problems in translation if the word is omitted
or ignored. Bearing this in mind, the lecturer may
choose texts that may help students to deal with unknown
words. The following strategies can be applied on
the sample texts:
Exercise 5: Another language-specific problem that may cause problems in the process of sight translation is complex sentence structures. Long, complex and compound sentence structures generally slow down the reading speed and increase the risk of wrong interpretation. Using "parsing" and "chunking" methods may eliminate this problem. For this exercise, the students are handed out texts, which are written in complex sentence structures. The students are asked to parse each sentence in order to work out to what grammatical type each word and clause belong. Then, they are asked to determine the smallest semantic units in each sentence. Depending on the sentence structure of the language they are translating into, they restructure their sentences. However, it should be noted that the aim of this exercise is to analyze the sentence structure and to re-formulate it in the target language. The aim is not to use the same grammatical structure but to give the same message in the target language. Exercise 6:This exercise will help students to focus on the meaning rather than the structure and the words of a given text. The students are given texts written in their native language and they are asked to "paraphrase" each sentence. They are expected to use their own words to give the same message. They try to re-express each sentence in 2-3 different ways without changing the meaning. They are allowed to make additions and omissions, to break a long sentence into smaller sentences, to combine short sentences and make a longer sentence and to change the sentence structure (e.g. active sentences to passive, passive sentences to active sentences). The only rule is not to change the meaning. Suggestions The above-mentioned exercises aim at enabling students to produce correct, coherent and fluent translations. However, all those exercises are in-class activities. It is obvious that real-life conditions will be different and sometimes more difficult. Therefore, the students should be prepared to solve various problems before they work in real-world conditions. For example:
In order to expose the students to different styles of writing and document structures, texts of considerable difficulty and complexity should be chosen. Though text types and topics may vary according to market demand, a sight translation course syllabus design should include the following text types: Commercial and economic texts, e.g. real-world texts on current world economic and financial issues, international trade and business, scientific and technical texts, e.g. medicine, environment, computer science, journal articles, manuals, patents, political and legal texts. In conclusion, it should be noted that training time is the time to introduce students to the real-life process of translation. They should be made aware of the fact that there are many factors which may act as constraints on the process. Their role is to make certain decisions in order to maneuver among those factors. References Curvers, P., Klein, J., Riva, N. & Wuilmart, C. (1986). La traduction а vue comme exercice préparatoire et complémentaire а l'interprétation de conférence. Cuadernos de Traducció e Interpretació no. 7, 97-116.Doğan, A. (1996). Yazılı Metinden Sözlü Зeviri ve İlgili Eğitim Programı İçin Bazı öneriler. Çeviribilim ve Uygulamaları no. 6, 25-34. Falbo, C. (1995). Interprétation consécutive et exercices préparatoires. The Interpreters' Newsletter no. 6, 87-91. Gile, D. (1995). Basic Concepts and Models For Interpreter and Translator Training. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Herbert, J. (1952). Manuel de l'interprète. Comment on devient interprète de conférence. Geneva: Georg. Spilka, I. (1966). La traduction а vue: instrument de formation. Meta 11 (2), 42-45. Viaggio, S. (1995). The praise of sight translation (and squeezing the last drop thereout of).
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