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Hey I'm a 4th Year BA Chinese student at SOAS in London and want to find out what is the best place I could possibly go to in order to kickstart my career in Conference Interpreting?? |
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Hi Shadow, Sorry about the belated reply, but I was waiting for some expert advice from China to be more specific. This is what a trusted colleague/trainer from China has to say: “I would suggest that you look into the conference interpreting program at NTNU in Taiwan: Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation (GITI), National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) http://www.giti.ntnu.edu.tw/ This is a well-run program that to the best of my knowledge fully meets all AIIC criteria. The instructors are top-notch professional conference interpreters. The course leader, Dr. Tze-wei Chen, has a PhD in economics from Cornell, an MA in Conference Interpreting from Monterey, and is an active member of AIIC. The only potential drawbacks would be, because the program is located in Taiwan, that (1) the language spoken there is slightly different from the standard usage on the mainland and (2) the domain emphasis will be more on economics and business than on international politics, institutions, intergovernmental discourse... Both of these drawbacks are certainly manageable and would likely be more than made up for in quality of teaching and overall organization of the program. On the mainland, you could also consider doing either:
Personally, I would add that Monterey is a good school for English-Chinese training, but as an English A you’d be better off getting your training in China, as you’d be able to work on your Chinese. Luigi is right. With this language combination, you need to be able to work bothways, in consecutive and in simultaneous. I hope this helps... |
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Hi Shadow, I see your question has been here for a week without an answer, so let me give you a short, general one. I do not have Chinese in my language combination so I cannot give you more specific advice. Perhaps getting this thread going will attract some attention to it. First, I would assume from your comments that you are thinking of studying interpreting with just the Chinese/English combination. If that is indeed the case, you will have to become capable of interpreting from and into each of these languages. Since you say that you are now semi-fluent in Chinese, the first order of business should be to improve your level of Chinese. To do that you should consider living (perhaps even working) and studying for at least a year in a Chinese-speaking country before undertaking an MA in conference interpreting - that would certainly be the best way to improve you Chinese on all fronts. And at the same time you would likely learn more about the pros and cons of various MA programs. As for schools, search the AIIC directory of interpreting schools and programs for the pair Chinese/English. You will find one school each in China and Taiwan, and others in the UK, US , Canada and France. As I implied above, I will leave it to others to comment on specific schools. Thank you very much Luigi! Yes, I am in fact in the process of applying for a scholarship for a full year of Chinese language study at Yunnan Normal University in China. Again thank you for the advice-- I am currently just looking towards the future and trying to get some ideas as to where would be a good place to study for my Masters when the time comes. I have heard some people mentioning that Monterey Institute of International studies is a good place for the Chinese/English combination, but I haven't heard anyone explaining exactly why that is. I hope others can now tell me about specific schools.
(24 Feb, 13:05)
Shadow147
Re: Monterey. The program in general is solid, The facilities are good. I know that the Chinese program has fulltime Chinese native speakers with solid credentials on staff, and fulltime native English staff with solid credentials as well to cover the into EN side.
(07 Mar, 10:30)
Luigi
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Just a clarification: are you Chinese or English (or something else)? and are you about to kickstart a career practicing as a conference interpreter or are you looking for a place to get proper training? Can you interpret both into English and into Chinese (are you fluent enough in both languages?) and do you have any other language (passive or active)?
I'm a native English speaker. As of yet, I have no real qualifications as a professional interpreter.
I hope to practice Conference Interpreting as a full-time career in the future, and so (after further intensive pure language training), I hope to take a Masters course in Conference Interpreting.
I can interpret from Chinese into English, I hope to be able to interpret into Chinese after further language training. If I had to quantify, I'd say I'm semi-fluent in Mandarin, or a little better.
I am also semi-fluent in French and German, although these are rather rusty after years of pure Chinese study.
I also have conversational Cantonese, Japanese, Spanish and basic Arabic.