Memory training as part ofinterpreter’s professional competence formation

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Memory training as part ofinterpreter's professional competence formation

Holub O.

- Candidate of Science (Linguistics), Associate Professor, Department of Germanic and Slavonic Linguistics, Donbas State Teachers' Training

University

Mishyn D.

- Master's Degree Programme Student, Department of Philology, Donbas

State Teachers' Training University

The article deals with the system of training interpreters. The basic skills this system seeks to form have been outlined. Types of exercises used in training sessions have been presented. The focus of the article is on the memory training exercises. Theoretical findings have been illustrated with examples from English- Ukrainian and Ukrainian-English interpretation courses.

Key words: interpreter's professional competence, Source Language, Target Language, memory training, exercises.

Голуб О.

- кандидат філологічних наук, доцент, доцент кафедри германської та слов'янської філології Донбаського державного педагогічного

університету

Мішин Д.

- студент магістерського рівня вищої освіти філологічного факультету Донбаського державного педагогічного університету

РОЗВИТОК ПАМ'ЯТІ ЯК ЕЛЕМЕНТ ФОРМУВАННЯ ПРОФЕСІЙНОЇ

КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТІ ТЛУМАЧА

Статтю присвячено системі підготовки спеціалістів з усного перекладу. Представлено основні уміння, на формування яких спрямована ця система. Запропоновано логічну схему тренувальних вправ для підготовки фахівців з усного перекладу. Сформульовані цілі вправ з розвитку пам'яті, окреслені їхні основні види. Теоретичні положення проілюстровані прикладами вправ з курсів усного перекладу в англо-українській мовній парі.

Ключовіслова: перекладацька компетенція, вихідна мова, мова перекладу, розвиток пам'яті, вправи.

Голуб Е.

- кандидат филологических наук, доцент, доценткафедры германской и славянской филологии Донбасского государственного

педагогического университета

Мишин Д.

- студент магистерского уровня высшего образования филологического факультета Донбасского государственного педагогического университета

РАЗВИТИЕ ПАМЯТИ КАК ЭЛЕМЕНТ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ

ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОЙ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТИ ПЕРЕВОДЧИКА

Статья посвящена системе подготовки специалистов по устному переводу. Представлены основные умения, на формирование которых направлена эта система. Предложена логическая схема тренировочных упражнений для подготовки специалистов по устному переводу. Сформулированы цели упражнений по развитию памяти, очерчены их основные разновидности. Теоретические положения проиллюстрированы примерами упражнений из курсов устного перевода в англо-украинской языковой паре.

Ключевые слова: переводческая компетенция, исходный язык, язык перевода, развитие памяти, упражнения.

Problem statement

translator memory exercise

The formation of the interpreter's professional competence is aimed at improving habits and skills that will aid in synchronizing listening and writing, silent reading, and speaking, as well as habits and skills of listening and comprehension, content analysis, switching from one language into another, etc. During consecutive interpretation, the interpreter has to memorize long stretches of the Source Text (ST) to retrieve them from memory later. Thus, memory training becomes an essential stage in the interpreter's professional competence formation.

The analysis of recent research.The foundations of Methodology of Teaching Translation have been laid by such prominent scholars in the field of Translation Teaching as I. Alekseieva, M. Verbytska, I. Korunets, V. Karaban, L. Chernovatyi, O. I. Simkova, and others. These scholars' findings have been applied in the practice of training intended interpreters. Practical material of the presented analysis derives from courses in interpreting worked out by N. Nesterenko, K. Lysenko [4], and O. Litviniak [2].

The object of the paper.Theoretical findings in the field of Methodology of Teaching Interpreting and Translation have been applied to compiling courses in translation and interpretation. Thus, the presented paper aims at disclosing the role, goals, and typology of memory training exercises as part of the intended interpreters' competence formation.

The necessary tasks of the research to achieve this object, it is crucial to analyze the complex of exercises used for intended interpreters' competence formation; to outline the goals of memory training exercises; to illustrate various types of memory training exercises with examples from courses in interpreting from English into Ukrainian and from Ukrainian into English.

Research results

The university course in consecutive interpretation is centered on equipping students not as much with declarative (theoretical) but with procedural (habits and skills) knowledge. Language and speech habits and skills have already been formed during previous studies. Thus, the course in consecutive interpretation should focus on the formation of an entirely different set of skills. What are the essential habits and skills a modern interpreter should possess? Educators usually consider the following ones to be crucial for intended interpreters (as different from the set of skills indispensable for translators): the acquisition of selective 120

informational strategy, which is important in the perception of ST when one should focus only on the most significant notions: the habit of breaking ST into meaningful segments; the probability forecast habits; contextual prediction; the skill of sharing attention between two simultaneous activities (for instance, reading and speaking - for at-sight interpretation); developed memory skills; habits and skills employed in searching for and applying correct solutions of interpretation tasks; the habit of switching between languages; the ability to use a wide range of lexical and syntactic units; the habit of using the most appropriate equivalents; the skills of ST contraction; the articulatory habits [3, p. 264].

The list of habits and skills indispensable for the successful work of consecutive interpreters is by no means exhaustive, though it can serve well as the framework of goals for the respective system of exercises. The approximate scheme of training a consecutive interpreter from English into Ukrainian and vice versa should comprise breathing exercises, important for those who talk much and with sufficient fluency; articulation exercises, memory training, tasks aimed at improving techniques used in rendering precision data, exercises developing skills of contextual prediction, information compression skills, as well as exercises training attention, skills of compiling glossaries, tasks for at-sight interpretation, tasks for interpreting discourses of various genres and styles, which thus provide for a wide variety within the system of intensive practical training.

Thus, every unit in the comprehensive course applied for training consecutive interpreters comprises two parts. The first one embraces preinterpretation activities: breathing exercises, articulation training including tongue-twisters in SL and TL, exercises for activating mnemonic devices. Trainees are offered to repeat various types of numeric and verbal data, listen to texts, and reproduce the most significant pieces of information. One should focus on the agent - the action - the object of the action. The level of difficulty increases throughout the course, in the same way as focus on details does. The skill of sharing attention between two simultaneous activities may be developed at the same stage when the trainees are offered to listen to and memorize one text while reading another text or counting to themselves at the same time. To develop the skills of ST contraction, the exercises aimed at stating the primary information, at creating recall cues are offered. To develop the probability forecast habits, the following kinds of tasks may be used: complete the utterance; based on the headline, make up the article; based on the given words and word-combinations, make up the whole text, etc. The first, pre-interpretation, stage may also include the tasks on compiling glossaries, mind mapping, and the like. The words, word- groups, proper names, and all other lexical units included on the lists for memorizing may be checked using translation dictations.

The second part of every unit of the course in consecutive interpreting presupposes training of interpretation skills proper. To form the habit of contextual prediction, the trainees are offered to interpret sentences in which the same lexical unit functions in different meanings. Skills employed in searching for and applying correct interpretation tasks solutions are developed best by doing at-sight translations. To train the habit of switching between the languages, the following task is considered especially useful: the trainees are offered to present “an interview”, in which “the interpreter” has to render “the journalist's” questions from the mother tongue into English and the “interviewed celebrity's” answers - from the foreign language into the mother tongue or vice versa.

The series of interpretation proper exercises should comprise tasks on extending syntactic units (translation of the core of the utterance, of the whole utterance), retelling ST in the mother tongue, phrase translation, substitution of particular lexical units with their synonyms before rendering them, applying various grammatical and lexical transformations (antonymous translation, omission of words, etc.). The most practical tasks at the final stage of training are those presupposing interpretation of authentic audio and video materials. The complexity of these tasks should increase throughout the course, and the proportion of pre-interpretation activities should decrease in favor of the interpretation tasks proper.

The focus of the presented paper rests upon memory training. Exercises for memory training form an important section in every interpreters' training session. They usually perform multiple tasks. Thus, memory training exercises may aim at training memory, improving interpreters' skills of switching between verbal and numeric information, enlarging their scope. When these exercises are applied for memory training, the trainees are usually given such tasks: Repeat after the teacher or Listen, put down and repeat (at high speed). When memory training exercises are used for improving the skills of switching between different types of coding, the students may be given such tasks as: Listen, put down and translate into the Target Language (TL). To broaden trainees' background knowledge, the tasks may include such units for memorizing, which comprise some social and cultural components - names of currencies, geographical names, and nationally specific language signs.

It is easier for intended interpreters to remember chunks of words that belong to the same thematic field. But in the situations of real-life interpretation, units to be remembered rarely belong to one topic. So memory training should be structured in the following way: at the first stage, all units represent one theme; at the second stage, one word comes from a different thematic field, and at the third stage, all words to be memorized are taken from different fields. Moreover, the chunks of these words should not comprise nouns alone. One should offer rows of verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. as well.

Thus, the level of difficulty should increase in exercises of all types. The final in this section of exercises should be the so-called “Snowball repetition” done in the mother tongue as well as in the foreign language when the teacher reads a sentence, and the students have to repeat it word- for-word, and every next sentence contains some new element. The complete variant of the sentence may then be rendered into TL.

Exercise for memory training.

Repeat the figures read in English./Put down the figures read in English. Then read them aloud in Ukrainian.

Part I.

3 - 17 - 23 7 - 10 - 29 Part II.

900 - 11 - 345

0 - 765 - 34

Part III.

1964 - 765 - 25830 65099 - 7395 - 87

Put down the dates, read in English. Read your notes in Ukrainian: 19.06.1704 01.09.1939

Repeat the names. Render them into the Target Language.

Григір Тютюнник George Washington

Repeat in high speed the rows of Ukrainian and English names: Сабіна, Наталя, Ганна, Христина Микола Олександр, Володимир, Григорій Emma, Olivia, Ava, Isabella Liam, Noah, William, James

Put down the telephone numbers read in English and render them into Ukrainian:

+44 20 7942 5725 Natural History Museum +44 20 7323 8000 The British Museum

Repeat (and render into TL) the given trains of words:

Ukrainian

(All words belong to the same semantic field)

Посольство, консульство, дипломатичне представництво, місія, делегація.

Видавати, друкувати, публікувати, оприлюднювати, випускати. Книжковий, журнальний, брошурний, газетний, плакатний.

English

(Words in the row may belong to different semantic fields.)

7 palms - 23 bananas - 44 apples 346 dictionaries - 85 words - 41 windows 86 years - 36 ribbons - 43 tanks

Having listened to the ingredients of the recipe, repeat it in English and then in your mother tongue.

Pea and Prosciutto Salad

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

teaspoon Dijon mustard

3 tablespoons olive oil

Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper

1% cups shelled fresh green peas (from about 1% pounds pods), or frozen peas, thawed

12 ounces sugar snap peas (about 3 cups), trimmed

4 ounces arugula, tough stems removed (about 6 packed cups)

4 ounces prosciutto, thinly sliced

Knob of fresh horseradish, peeled (for serving)

Repeat after the teacher preserving the same order:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California,

Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia,

Repeat the counties and county towns after the teacher:

Avon - Bristol; Bedfordshire - Bedford; Buckinghamshire - Reading.Cambridgeshire - Cambridge; Cheshire - Chester; Cleveland - Middlesborough.

Repeat the toponyms in the same language and in the same order as represented by the teacher. Each row contains well-known geographical names and a less known toponym:

Суми, Чернівці, НОВІ ПЕТРІВЦІ, Миколаїв, Черкаси.

Боснія і Герцеговина, СКОП'Є, Болгарія, Швеція, Естонія.

Leeds, Liverpool, London, LANCING, Lancaster.

Lima, Caracas, BOLIVIA, Quito, Buenos Aires.

Conclusions

What results can be achieved by means of such comprehensive training? One can expect that students will be able to conduct well-grounded analysis of ST, structure the material for interpretation based on traditional and modern principles adopted by translatology; the intended interpreters will be able to speak fluently and accurately demonstrating improved speaking skills: correct breathing, voice training, distinct articulation; students will apply all possible expressive, emotive, logical language means aiming them at achieving the pragmatic effect planned. Due to such intensive training, the intended interpreters will feel less nervous, more confident, will be able to make correct interpretation decisions, will be able to operate under pressure. It has already been pointed out that the course suggested is strictly limited in time and covers thus only a restricted range of thematic fields in which the interpretation skills are expected to be formed and improved though applying the same scheme of training to the sphere of human activity in which the interpretation is required the intended interpreters will be able to develop their professional skills on their own, in the process of self-study.

Potential future directions of research should help methodologists training intended interpreters to work out such systems of exercises, manuals, and other teaching materials, which will contribute to the formation and improvement of the trainees' professional competence.

References

1. Голуб О. М. A Course in Interpretation. Слов'янськ: Вид-во Б. І. Маторіна, 2019. 206 с.

2. Літвіняк О. В. Збірник вправ для занять з усного перекладу: англо- українська мовна пара. Вінниця: Нова книга, 2019. 232 с.

3. ЧерноватийЛ. М. Методика викладання перекладу. Вінниця: Нова книга, 2013. 376 с.

4. Nesterenko N., Lysenko K. A course in interpreting and translation. Vinnytsia: Nova Knyha, 2006. 248 p.

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