Expertise has been an object of research since the first studies and textbooks on conference interpreting were published more than fifty years ago. Investigations concentrated mainly on simultaneous interpreting (SI) given the multi-task competence required from professionals during this type of interlinguistic oral translation. Its peculiar and double nature of being both a process and a product attracted scholars’ interest: while listening to the delivery of simultaneous interpreters it is indeed possible to perceive how the input in one language is processed to produce the output in another language. The product cannot be separated from the process because evidence of the background process constantly surfaces in the use of language. This is the reason why simultaneous interpreting has been used as a research paradigm in cognitive sciences. At the same time it is also the reason why investigation on quality in SI is such a daunting task, due to the many variables implied. The way in which expertise has been investigated so far reflects to a large extent the evolution of the discipline on the whole: from individual reflections and theories, to empirical studies with different cognitive and linguistic approaches and, finally, the inclusion of the sociological dimension of the profession. Several lines of study can be identified within the field of expertise research such as the expert-novice paradigm and the progression of expertise, interpreting skills, quality, strategies, norms, competence, workload management, speed and working memory load management, professionalization and expert performance. The interest in defining expertise first arose within studies designed to analyse the cognitive components, processes and skills that come into play in SI by comparing the performances of novices and experts. This line of studies followed on from the work carried out within expertise research to understand what distinguishes an expert from a novice in a specific domain, with a view to developing methodologies and tools to detect the particular aspects that make up expertise in interpreting. The studies were mainly training-oriented and aimed at examining expertise and related skills either for refining aptitude tests for the selection of interpreting candidates or for understanding how interpreting skills develop so that interpreting expertise can be achieved in the most efficient and rapid way (Moser Mercer 1997; Moser Mercer et al. 2000). The aim of more recent studies on expertise is to examine and analyse how professional interpreters consider the concept of expertise, thereby integrating the socio-cultural professional dimension into the concept of expertise and investigating how professional thinking and acting is felt among conference interpreters. This special issue on Expertise in Conference Interpreting includes six papers which focus on some sociocultural, cognitive and linguistic aspects that are connected to the concept of expertise. The study carried out by Tiselius aims at ascertaining whether expert interpreters make use of deliberate practice as part of the process of expertise acquisition as defined by Ericsson. Through in-depth, unstructured interviews, the author investigates to what extent her interpreter subjects adopt deliberate practice, to improve their current level of performance. Expert interpreter competence is investigated in Albl-Mikasa’s paper through semi-structured in-depth interviews of ten professional interpreters giving special attention to what is considered necessary or useful in terms of formal learning, informal learning and implicit learning reflecting a transitional process from novice to expert. Quality is a crucial element in interpreting expertise and Macdonald’s contribution contains a very critical stance on how it is defined in Interpreting Studies and inquires whether the methods adopted, such as user satisfaction surveys, can produce reliable results considering its subjective, ineffable and cultural nature. He then proposes alternative approaches to investigating quality applying methods from the social sciences. Martellini analyses the prosody of professional interpreters as a feature of expertise. In her study the prosody of an impromptu speech dense in information and its SIs performed by six professional interpreters is analysed with the aim of acquiring data to integrate, confirm or confute previous studies. The criteria of analysis chosen are speech rate, pauses and syllable lengthening, intonation and prominence. A pilot study is presented by Scaglioni on the relevance of preparation for the SI of speeches dense in cultural items with the aim of examining to what extent preparation affects SI, since cultural items are not always easily inferred from the context alone, thereby leading to possible disruptions or infelicities in the interpreter’s output. The strategies adopted by interpreting students and professional interpreters were analyzed to ascertain similarities and differences related to the kind of preparation adopted. Xiangdong Li’s contribution is of a didactic character and investigates to what extent strategies as part of interpreting expertise are teachable and whether the use of strategies by students is related to their teachers’ inclusion of strategy training in the consecutive interpreting classroom. Retrospection was used to collect data from the student-interpreters and questionnaires were administered to elicit data on teachers’ inclusion of strategies in class and to detect possible correlations. On the whole, the six authors of this special issue provide original empirical contributions but also challenging, even provocative thoughts that enrich the on-going debate on expertise in conference interpreting. So much so that concerning the research paradigms and methods, a first reaction already appears in this special issue from a member of the Advisory Board (Letter to the Editors). We wish to dedicate this special issue to our beloved late friend and colleague Francesco Straniero Sergio who was extremely interested in the novice-expert paradigm and launched the idea of bringing scholars together in a collective effort. References Moser-Mercer B. (1997) “The expert-novice paradigm in interpreting research”, in E. Fleischmann, / W. Kutz / P.A. Schmitt (eds) Translationsdidaktik. Grundfragen der Übersetzungswissenschaft, Tübingen, Gunter Narr, 255-261. Moser-Mercer B. / Frauenfelder U. H. / Casado B. / Künzli A. (2000) “Searching to define expertise in interpreting”, in B. Englund Dimitrova / K. Hyltenstam (eds) Language Processing and Simultaneous Interpreting, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 107-131.
Expertise in conference interpreting. Special issue, The Interpreters’ Newsletter 18
RUSSO, MARIACHIARA
2013
Abstract
Expertise has been an object of research since the first studies and textbooks on conference interpreting were published more than fifty years ago. Investigations concentrated mainly on simultaneous interpreting (SI) given the multi-task competence required from professionals during this type of interlinguistic oral translation. Its peculiar and double nature of being both a process and a product attracted scholars’ interest: while listening to the delivery of simultaneous interpreters it is indeed possible to perceive how the input in one language is processed to produce the output in another language. The product cannot be separated from the process because evidence of the background process constantly surfaces in the use of language. This is the reason why simultaneous interpreting has been used as a research paradigm in cognitive sciences. At the same time it is also the reason why investigation on quality in SI is such a daunting task, due to the many variables implied. The way in which expertise has been investigated so far reflects to a large extent the evolution of the discipline on the whole: from individual reflections and theories, to empirical studies with different cognitive and linguistic approaches and, finally, the inclusion of the sociological dimension of the profession. Several lines of study can be identified within the field of expertise research such as the expert-novice paradigm and the progression of expertise, interpreting skills, quality, strategies, norms, competence, workload management, speed and working memory load management, professionalization and expert performance. The interest in defining expertise first arose within studies designed to analyse the cognitive components, processes and skills that come into play in SI by comparing the performances of novices and experts. This line of studies followed on from the work carried out within expertise research to understand what distinguishes an expert from a novice in a specific domain, with a view to developing methodologies and tools to detect the particular aspects that make up expertise in interpreting. The studies were mainly training-oriented and aimed at examining expertise and related skills either for refining aptitude tests for the selection of interpreting candidates or for understanding how interpreting skills develop so that interpreting expertise can be achieved in the most efficient and rapid way (Moser Mercer 1997; Moser Mercer et al. 2000). The aim of more recent studies on expertise is to examine and analyse how professional interpreters consider the concept of expertise, thereby integrating the socio-cultural professional dimension into the concept of expertise and investigating how professional thinking and acting is felt among conference interpreters. This special issue on Expertise in Conference Interpreting includes six papers which focus on some sociocultural, cognitive and linguistic aspects that are connected to the concept of expertise. The study carried out by Tiselius aims at ascertaining whether expert interpreters make use of deliberate practice as part of the process of expertise acquisition as defined by Ericsson. Through in-depth, unstructured interviews, the author investigates to what extent her interpreter subjects adopt deliberate practice, to improve their current level of performance. Expert interpreter competence is investigated in Albl-Mikasa’s paper through semi-structured in-depth interviews of ten professional interpreters giving special attention to what is considered necessary or useful in terms of formal learning, informal learning and implicit learning reflecting a transitional process from novice to expert. Quality is a crucial element in interpreting expertise and Macdonald’s contribution contains a very critical stance on how it is defined in Interpreting Studies and inquires whether the methods adopted, such as user satisfaction surveys, can produce reliable results considering its subjective, ineffable and cultural nature. He then proposes alternative approaches to investigating quality applying methods from the social sciences. Martellini analyses the prosody of professional interpreters as a feature of expertise. In her study the prosody of an impromptu speech dense in information and its SIs performed by six professional interpreters is analysed with the aim of acquiring data to integrate, confirm or confute previous studies. The criteria of analysis chosen are speech rate, pauses and syllable lengthening, intonation and prominence. A pilot study is presented by Scaglioni on the relevance of preparation for the SI of speeches dense in cultural items with the aim of examining to what extent preparation affects SI, since cultural items are not always easily inferred from the context alone, thereby leading to possible disruptions or infelicities in the interpreter’s output. The strategies adopted by interpreting students and professional interpreters were analyzed to ascertain similarities and differences related to the kind of preparation adopted. Xiangdong Li’s contribution is of a didactic character and investigates to what extent strategies as part of interpreting expertise are teachable and whether the use of strategies by students is related to their teachers’ inclusion of strategy training in the consecutive interpreting classroom. Retrospection was used to collect data from the student-interpreters and questionnaires were administered to elicit data on teachers’ inclusion of strategies in class and to detect possible correlations. On the whole, the six authors of this special issue provide original empirical contributions but also challenging, even provocative thoughts that enrich the on-going debate on expertise in conference interpreting. So much so that concerning the research paradigms and methods, a first reaction already appears in this special issue from a member of the Advisory Board (Letter to the Editors). We wish to dedicate this special issue to our beloved late friend and colleague Francesco Straniero Sergio who was extremely interested in the novice-expert paradigm and launched the idea of bringing scholars together in a collective effort. References Moser-Mercer B. (1997) “The expert-novice paradigm in interpreting research”, in E. Fleischmann, / W. Kutz / P.A. Schmitt (eds) Translationsdidaktik. Grundfragen der Übersetzungswissenschaft, Tübingen, Gunter Narr, 255-261. Moser-Mercer B. / Frauenfelder U. H. / Casado B. / Künzli A. (2000) “Searching to define expertise in interpreting”, in B. Englund Dimitrova / K. Hyltenstam (eds) Language Processing and Simultaneous Interpreting, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 107-131.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
