From Admission Testing to Final Exams. Interpreting teaching strategies at the SSLMIT of the University of Bologna

The demand for interpreting services is constantly diversifying. Alongside conference interpreting, liaison and community interpreting is gaining ground in Italy too. This new trend coupled with the introduction of the Bologna Protocol envisaging a 3-year undergraduate degree program plus a 2-year post-graduate degree has led the Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Intepreti e Traduttori of the University of Bologna at Forlì to revise its training curricula. The paper will discuss the interpreting skills required to meet the demand for high quality interpreting performance and our global training goals. The presentation will particularly focus on the post-graduate interpreting degree program directed by the author. A brief description of the curriculum developed over the years will be provided as a general background. Considering that in a training course such as ours a low trainer-to-trainee ratio is crucial for successful skills acquisition, particular attention was devoted to introduce an adequate aptitude test to select only the promising would-be interpreters out of the dozens admission candidates that we receive every year. A description of the design, procedures and evaluation criteria of our admission test will be provided, together with preliminary results of the correlation between admission results and school efficiency. This will be followed by a detailed description of the training objectives and strategies implemented in the 2-year program during which our students learn to master not only interpreting techniques (sight translation, consecutive, simultaneous, chuchotage), but also computer-aided terminological and documentation abilities, interpreting theory, stress management, public speaking skills and a strong intercultural awareness. A mention will also be made to our final exams which test how our advanced interpreting students are able to face a one-day in-house multilingual conference where we invite members of the civic society as speakers. These exams are the final stage of an intense two-year training which allows our students to gain interpreting competence and become aware of the theoretical and professional aspects of what it means to be a good interpreter.