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On a conference interpreter training course, students have to deal with many issues on a daily basis: broadening their general knowledge, polishing their active and passive languages, learning new skills, dealing with nerves, learning time and workload management, etc. What did you find was your greatest concern while training to become a conference interpreter? As a trainer, I sometimes spend a lot of time focussing on skills development, but it's quite possible that the students themselves are more worried about dealing with stress or learning how to manage their time effectively. Or maybe they are all worried about the level of knowledge of their passive languages but are afraid to admit it. Asking my students directly will not necessarily give me the answer I need, since I've often found that they do not want to reveal their "weaknesses", for whatever reason. So I've decided to ask the question here, and see what sort of response I get. |
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So many... But here's a very interesting piece about some of the less obvious, but no less important, problems students face...
Thank you very much for the link, Andy, I had never read this great text by Chris :-) il s'y trouve tout craché :-).
(23 May '12, 10:17)
msr
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I agree with Sirpa. I will be graduating in a couple of months and my biggest fear is actually getting work. I've already done some work on mic as well as dummy boothing; when it comes to the booth, preparing a conference, drawing up an invoice, etc I feel more or less in control. This being said, I wish I had more training in negotiating and networking. Obviously, interpreting is a 'small world' and our trainers are able (and perhaps even willing!) to recommend us to people, let us know of opportunities etc - but I feel the 'business dimension' is missing from the training I received. ...your mentioning drawing up an invoice made me think of the other end of the stick, as it were, ie drawing up an estimate... an "art form" which, to my surprise, many colleagues are woefully unfamiliar with (let alone students, although they'll probably be recruited for their first jobs as opposed to recruiting others)and one which could indeed benefit from actual classroom work, in anticipation of such day...?
(23 May '12, 10:24)
msr
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So many... But here's a very interesting piece about some of the less obvious, but no less important, problems students face... la majorité des étudiants d’interprétation de conférence trébuchent sur les difficultés insoupçonnées, d’ordre émotionnel et psychique... http://interpreters.free.fr/misc/difficultspsychiques.pdf |
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I think one of the greatest challenges is the entry to the interpreting market, this is not necessarily related to training but I assume most students have this in mind. Apart from this a challenge, depending on the training program, is to find suitable real life practice situations, say events, semi-official conferences where students can practice their skills before they go out in the wild. I know that anxiety and worry can be a big hurdles for many students yet skills development generally help overcome these. Finally, time management is an important challenge because time is always limited and skills development and specialization do really take considerable amount of time therefore trying to fit everything into a conference interpreting training may be daunting. |
