The new school year is just about upon us. In a little over a week, classes will begin again!
Here at Glendon, we鈥檙e looking very much forward to welcoming a brand new cohort of students to online classes in Year One. We鈥檙e equally thrilled to see familiar faces face-to-face in Year Two.
In no time at all, both groups of students will be away to the races. They鈥檒l be up to their eyeballs in all things interpreting. So it鈥檚 important to get things off on the right foot. For that reason, I鈥檓 writing today to share a few ideas on how you can take a disciplined approach to your interpreting practice, right from the start.
In previous posts, I鈥檝e provided some , and I鈥檝e written about the importance of taking personal responsibility for your own progress. These points are key. Becoming an interpreter is like becoming an elite, competitive athlete. We have to train our minds like, say, Olympians train their bodies. We need regular, structured practice to hit the heights. Unlike athletes, our training is 鈥 outside of the classroom anyway 鈥 self-directed.
So, how exactly do you go about setting in place a structured practice regimen? Here are a few important points.
1. Dedicated Time
I hired a personal trainer once. He told me, 鈥淚f you fail to plan, you鈥檙e planning to fail.鈥 These are words of wisdom, not just for those of us that want to build our bodies, but also our minds. If you want to progress as an interpreter, you will have to build a weekly schedule of practice. Some of the time you spend can be on your own, but it makes sense to practice with classmates too.
But how much time should you set aside?
Our standard rule of thumb in the MCI has been to tell students to spend two hours on 鈥渉omework鈥 for every hour spent in class. But 鈥渉omework鈥 can include a lot of things. For example, your instructors might ask you to familiarize yourself with key medical concepts or courtroom procedures. They might ask you to track your interpreting progress in a journal. Of course, you need to be reading your newspapers and keeping up on world events. All of these things are important, but they are not interpreting practice
per se.
At a minimum, set aside four, two-hour blocks a week expressly for interpreting practice.
If you are a Year One student鈥
You should have a one- or two-hour block for each of your interpreting settings 鈥 healthcare, court, and conference. You might also have one additional 鈥渨ildcard鈥 block of two hours that you dedicate to one of these areas if you think it needs special attention.
If you are a Year Two student鈥
All your two-hour blocks will be dedicated to conference interpreting. Devote at least one hour to consecutive and one hour to simultaneous. Make sure you cover all your language directions (A to B, B to A, and C to A, if that applies to you).
2. Appropriate Difficulty
Students are always in a hurry. Many of them want out of our program and into the real world before they have started classes with us. So they make the mistake of interpreting all the real-world material they can get their hands on. They then feel frustrated and discouraged. It鈥檚 a classic error.
You wouldn鈥檛 train for a marathon by doing 26 miles the first time you go out for a run. Likewise, you wouldn鈥檛 learn to pole vault by setting the bar at world-record height on your first try. So why be so demanding of yourself when it comes to interpreting? Instead, do what athletes do. Build your ability, slowly, incrementally, over time.
If you are a Year One student鈥
For your consecutive practice in the conference setting, begin with two-minute speeches on VERY general topics. Don鈥檛 use notes. When your instructors teach you note-taking, incorporate this into your practice, but not before. (When you first start note-taking, you will likely see yourself regress, compared to your interpreting without notes. This is normal.) By the end of the fall term, you should be able to do a good two-and-a-half-minute speech with notes. By the end of the winter term, you should be up to five-minute speeches. All the speeches you do in Year One should always be student-made or instructor-made.
For consecutive in the other settings, the situation is different. In both court and healthcare, transferring a message from one language to another is not always the most challenging part of the job. (Instead, it鈥檚 usually managing the communication between parties that keeps legal and medical interpreters on their toes.) You will want to interpret dialogues (rather than the monologues that are typical of the conference setting), so practice with other people is important. More on how you can simulate court and healthcare material in next week鈥檚 blog post.
With simultaneous in all settings, there is no point even beginning until you have a solid base in consecutive. Wait until you have the green light from your instructors until you incorporate Simo into your weekly practice. If you try Simo before you are ready, you will only further fossilize your bad habits into your interpreting. And no one wants that.
If you are a Year Two student鈥
You demonstrated on the Transition Exam that you can handle five-minute consecutive speeches and ten-minute simultaneous speeches on general topics. Your goal now is twofold: slowly increase both the length and the difficulty of the speeches. In the fall term, keep working with student-made material, but do more research when crafting speeches to include proper names, clusters of numbers,and some technical terms. By the end of the term, you should be able to easily handle seven-minute consecutive and 15-minute simultaneous speeches.
In the winter term, if your instructors agree, make the switch to start using some authentic material. Be careful not to choose material that is beyond your level. If you find a speech is too difficult, take a step backward and build your confidence with something slightly less challenging. By the end of the winter term, you should be capable of doing a 10-minute consecutive and a 30-minute simultaneous that are both fairly technical in nature.
These two points aren鈥檛 the only features of a well-organized practice plan. There is more that I have to say on this topic, but the rest will have to wait for a future post.
In the meantime, you can start the academic year off right and achieve maximum progress by using the points above. Your instructors are certainly there to help and to coach you along the way. But ultimately, becoming an interpreter requires a great deal of self-direction. By engaging in regular and structured practice, you鈥檒l be steering your own path to your newfound profession.