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Problems of Interpretation Teaching
作者:邹蕴慧 发表时间:2020年01月07日 浏览量:15 分享到空间
With the development of economy, the communication and cooperation between China and other countries is flourishing in fields of economy, politics, diplomacy, culture and education, which leads to a wave of interpretation learning in metropolis like Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou. China is in urgent an need of interpretation talents, therefore, the training of interpretation cannot wait any longer. The training of interpretation talents which follows the trend of social development, does achieve pleasant results in colleges as well as in society, but the current condition of interpretation teaching and training is not so optimistic. There is still much to be done in fields of teaching programs, modes of teaching, material of interpretation and tests of interpretation.
The interpretation syllabus is the fundamental law of interpretation teaching, which is regarded as the vital reference for teaching guidelines, teaching arrangements, teaching standardization, and teaching evaluation. If without it, the teaching and test will be ineffective. However, in China, the teaching of interpretation is in the primary stage of attempt and exploration, with no unified and complete syllabus as references.
Because of our urgent needs of interpretation talents, the scale of interpretation becomes larger and larger. Under such circumstance, colleges and universities arrange courses of interpretation not only for undergraduates, master students and doctoral students of English major, but also for those in non-English majors as their elective courses.
Due to the lack of one unified curriculum, the teaching of interpretation is in a fragmented and chaotic situation now. Furthermore, diversified trends begin to emerge in interpretation teaching, training and testing. For example, a) "National Accreditation Examination for Translators. And Interpreters"(NAETI), charged by Ministry of Education, China. b) "China Aptitude Test for Translators and interpreters (CATTI)", planned by the State Ministry of Personnel and organized by the Foreign Bureau, China. c) "English Interpretation Accreditation Examination", put forward by Pudong Continuing Education Center of Shanghai Higher Education. These tests accelerate the flourishing and development of interpretation in China, but, at the same time, put the problems under the sun. All these tests go their own ways with different requirement and outlines of their own exams while with no definite curriculum.
In America, the term "certified" is often used as a catch-all phrase to refer to any interpreter who works in a courtroom, but standards are far from being uniform, and court interpreting is still partly an unregulated profession. State and federal courts have different qualification procedures and different performance standards.
Properly speaking, a certified interpreter is one who passes an examination mandated by legislation to assess interpreter competency for court proceedings. On the federal level, the Court Interpreters Act of 1978 mandated that a national certification examination be developed to test for knowledge of both languages and interpreting skill, administered through the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The federal interpreter testing program was developed in 1980 and over the past 19 years, out of a nationwide pool of 18,350 candidates, 750 have been certified as Spanish interpreters. At present, the only other languages tested are Haitian Creole and Navajo. Interpreters of all other languages are qualified differently in each district, due to the fact that there is no nationally recognized court interpreter test in most languages. Currently the states have several different kinds of interpreter testing, but not all tests are recognized by law as certification tests. In New York State, interpreters who work full time or per diem are tested and approved by the state, but the state does not certify interpreters. New York State currently tests in 12 language combinations. New Jersey also has a program for qualifying interpreters, but it is not a certification exam.
a) Traditional modes with different form of courses
The mode of interpretation teaching differs a lot from other modes of teaching. Teachers should not treat it as a kind of teaching of oral practice, listening comprehension, or mere translation, nor should they regard it as a course of intensive or extensive reading, which focuses on the of language points. In the process of interpretation teaching, teachers who mistake interpretation courses for oral course, listening course, translation course or intensive course are never few.
b) Teaching goes far away from reality and lacks mutual communication
In the history of interpretation teaching, the traditional mode is ”teacher + student + textbook + blackboard & chalks”, which puts more emphasizes on the instruction and input of teachers than their “organizing and guiding”. Students receive information passively with no passion or anticipation.
c) Monotony of means with no flexibility
In the process of traditional teaching of interpretation, the modes and means were usually much too mechanical and procedural, making no difference from lectures, dialogues and role-playing, with the stereotyped topics ranging from commerce to cultural education, then to diplomatic policies. Under such circumstances, students inevitably fell dull and bored.
d) The teaching methods are out-of-date and lack scientific contents
Various traditional means of interpretation teaching have been out-of-date and have no guidance of scientific theory. According to the theoretical study of cranial nerve science, cognitive neuron-linguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, pragmatics, the application of new teaching methods is absolutely imperative.
e) Static teaching alone with little practice
The characteristics of interpretation determines it to be a complicated and dynamic process, the success of which depends on a fine combination of language ability, communication awareness, knowledge level, reasoning ability, interpretation skills, self-adaptability, psychological qualities as well as applications of other relevant strategies. Seen from the above, we come to the conclusion that the teaching of interpretation is also a dynamic process rather than a static one. Therefore, the training of comprehensive ability should be put on top of the list and the reform of traditional and static modes of teaching is essential.