Teaching English to Interpreters

Abstract

Armenia, being a developing country, relies heavily on international communications. The need for qualified interpreters is high. However, the interpreting cluster is not well-developed, namely there is a lack of institutions training interpreters, teaching interpreters the nuances of advanced language skills, issuing international/national qualifications and granting professional degrees in simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. This project aims to fill in a gap in this field by providing a course full of practical activities related to pragmatics, higher order language skills, paralinguistic elements such as intonation, pronunciation, pitch, volume; and interpreting strategy and skills development. This course is a demonstration version of a full course intended for both novice and practicing interpreters who a) are starting their careers as interpreters, b) are developing it to a higher level, c) need to improve their rhetoric skills, pronunciation and intonation, d) want to improve speaking and listening fluency, e) need to master topical vocabulary and figurative expressions related to conference interpreting, and f) want to develop higher order language skills. The project aims to reveal the needs of the interpreting market, analyze the underlying challenges it faces, choose the best methodologies for solving these problems, design and pilot a course attacking the issues and evaluate the results.

Keywords: Interpreting, equivalence, coherence, culture, Skopos theory, mimesis, imitatio (lat.), shadowing, sight translation, intonation, register, pitch, volume, décalage, anticipating, English as a Foreign Language (EFL), first language (L1), second language (L2), Content Based Instruction (CBI).