Andrei Nosov

Mistakes based training for simultaneous interpreters

Simultaneous interpretation is one of the most sophisticated domains in Translation Studies. It is highly complex psychological process under extreme conditions. Even experienced interpreters could not avoid mistakes that causes misunderstanding. The awareness of the mechanisms of aberration, as well as the enabling of the appropriate interpreting strategy, could become guidelines to avoid mistakes that distort an original meaning.
Nowadays Translation Research and Translation Training should be complementary. I find this assumption instructive. My research aims to bring them together. I focus on the identification and classification of mistakes occurring in the process of simultaneous interpretation with the purpose to develop training exercises. This complex task requires both analytic and systemic approaches. I also use methods of semantic, grammatical, discursive and contextual analysis. The target group are master’s students in Translation Studies (SIMULTAANI-TULKKAUS II), University of Tampere, Finland.
Analyzing mistakes, I found out that they could be classified into two types: meaning mistakes and language mistakes. The firsts include distortions in pragmatics of original and stylistic corruption that have a misleading effect on the recipient. The second ones, in turn, do not have a considerable influence on the conceptual content of the original. They affect mainly the perception of the source by the audience of the target cultural model.
Taking into account this classification, I modeled four types of exercises on syntactic, lexical-semantic, stylistic and discursive patterns. The material for these exercises were the examples of mistakes committed by students-interpreters during the practical trainings in simultaneous interpretation.
My research and its practical part should contribute to the process of optimizing the trainings in the simultaneous interpretation, as well as provide a material for the development of theoretical and methodological guidance for Interpreting Studies.