EU study on Public Service Translation in Cross-Border Healthcare is out!

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Katerina Strani

After 10 months of non-stop work, we are delighted to announce that an EU study on Public Service Translation in Cross Border Healthcare, led by Prof Claudia V. Angelelli is published. The Report, commissioned by the Directorate-General for Translation, responds to an increasing interest in the role of language provision and information access in cross-border healthcare.

Linguistic diversity permeates every thread of the European Union fabric. Cross-border healthcare is increasing among EU citizens and residents who seek care under Directive 2011/24/EU or Regulation (EC) N° 883/2004.

In a multilingual and intercultural society like the EU, patients and providers may not share a language. If patients cannot access healthcare services in a language they fully understand, equal access to safe and high-quality healthcare is not guaranteed. Through the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, this exploratory study examines language policies as well as responses provided (or lack thereof) to linguistically diverse patients in areas of Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. The cost of language provision as well as good practices are also studied.

Results show that a variety of responses, ranging from professional translation and interpreting support to informal and unprofessional ad-hoc solutions, are used to address the language needs of patients. In the absence of formal language guidance in EU legislation, in most observed cases appropriate language services are not provided for patients who do not speak the language of the Member State in which they seek healthcare. This study has implications for policy makers, healthcare providers, educators, translators and interpreters serving the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse patients.

The full document of the study is available here

Heritage research and practice

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Katerina Strani

Last week saw the launch of A Companion to Heritage Studies, a major reference work for Heritage research and practice, co-edited by Prof Máiréad Nic Craith and Prof Ulli Kockel from the IRC as well as Prof William Logan of Deakin University, Melbourne.

A Companion to Heritage Studies is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art interdisciplinary reference work for the study of cultural heritage, published in Wiley-Blackwell’s prestigious Companion series. It covers the key themes of research and practice, including cultural preservation, environmental protection, world heritage and tourism, ethics, and human rights. Accessibly organized into a substantial framework-setting essay by the editors followed by three sections on expanding, using and abusing, and recasting heritage, it provides a cutting-edge guide to emerging trends in the field that is global in scope, cross-cultural in focus and critical in approach.

The Companion features 37 contributions written by 44 leading scholars from five continents, including some with extensive experience in heritage practice through UNESCO World Heritage Centre, ICOMOS, and national heritage systems.

The book was launched in the course of ‘Our National Future: Creativity & Creative Industries’, an event organised by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Fellows’ Media, Creative Industries, Culture & Heritage Network on Friday 23 October.

Launching the Companion, RSA Scotland and MCICH Network Founder Ann Packard, said: “This book is global, diverse in content, easily accessible chapter by chapter, deals with both the tangible and intangible and above all is interdisciplinary, interdisciplinarity being at the heart of the RSA. It should be a welcome resource for all who value culture and heritage, irrespective of their discipline and whether a politician, a policy maker or a planner. It is for the lay reader as much as the heritage professional.”

Speakers at the event included Vikki Heywood CBE, Chairperson of the RSA and the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value, who spoke on the Commission’s 2015 Report Enriching Britain: Culture, Creativity and Growth; Professor Barbara Townley, Chair of Management and Director, Institute for Capitalising on Creativity (ICC), University of St Andrews School of Management, who discussed the ICC’s ESRC project Creative Industries Scotland: Capitalising on Creativity; and Janet Archer, Chief Executive, Creative Scotland, who presented on the Creative Scotland Creative Industries Draft Strategy, issued for consultation on Friday 16 September.

Signposting Professional Practice: Intercultural Communication and Interpretation

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Katerina Strani

Everyone was there.

LINCS staff from all sections, students, colleagues from universities all over the UK, Heads of Schools, Vice-Principals, technicians, photographers, interpreters, representatives from Deaf organisations, Deaf friends. A little girl with long blonde hair was laughing and signing happily with her grandparents, who were all dressed to the nines for the occasion.

It was the inaugural lecture of Prof Jemina Napier, Head of Department of LINCS, entitled “Signposting Professional Practice: Intercultural Communication and Interpretation”.

Jemina started her lecture in British Sign Language, stating, through the voice of her interpreter, Yvonne Waddell, that she would like to speak in her mother tongue. She not only has Deaf parents and Deaf in-laws (the proud grandparents of the young girl mentioned earlier), but she also comes from a family of 4 generations of Deaf people. She explained how she grew up in a bilingual, bicultural environment (English <> BSL), which led her, among other things, to feature in the Sign and Say books as a child, demonstrating everyday terms such as “doctor”, “teach”, “Australia”, all prophetic with regard to her later career development. This also led to her first BSL interpreting assignment at age 17 (!). She showed footage of her various interpreting jobs, including interpreting during Princess Diana’s funeral and for the Australian Prime Minister in 2011.

But when she was still starting out around 20 years ago, there was no formal training for BSL interpreters. Back then, unfortunately, being bilingual was enough. Later on, as a practising interpreter, she had the opportunity to study for an MA in BSL/ English Interpreting at Durham University. This sparked her interest in research and so she went to Australia to pursue her PhD in Sign Language Interpreting at Macquarie University. Along the way, she also managed to learn Australian Sign Language (AUSLAN), American Sign Language (ASL) and International Sign, which is no mean feat, as Signed Languages are by no means similar, even though some of them belong to language families like spoken languages. For example, American Sign Language and French Sign Language belong to the same language family, which is quite distinct from BSL and AUSLAN, which belong to a different language family.

At this point, Jemina switched from BSL to English. She explained that she learned to tell stories in BSL, her mother tongue, but she learned to talk about research in English. For the hearing members of the audience, it seemed that Jemina learned to tell stories with a thick Scottish accent (Yvonne Waddell!) and to talk about her research with a slight Australian twang (Jemina’s own accent, developed while living in Australia for 15 years). Yvonne was Jemina’s voice for the first half of the lecture and Brenda MacKay was Jemina’s hands for the second half.

So the story moves to research. With a PhD under her belt, Jemina started developing her research profile in intercultural communication. She established the Postgraduate Diploma in Auslan/ English Interpreting in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney in 2002, and became Head of Translation & Interpreting and Director of the Centre for Translation & Interpreting Research at Macquarie University from 2007 until 2012.

She identified policy, practice, pedagogy and provision of interpreting services as her four main areas of interest. All this research focuses on removing the barriers to allow access for and participation in citizenship for the Deaf community. Her sign language interpreting research focuses on medical, legal, education and workplace interpreting settings. Part of her research into legal settings has included running a two-day mock trial with 11 hearing jurors and one Deaf juror.

Jemina finished off by emphasising that being bilingual is not enough to become an interpreter and that interpreter education is vital for professional practice. She ended on a positive note on the potential for research collaborations between signed and spoken languages. BSL is now recognised in Scotland on a par with other minority languages, such as Gaelic, which is a huge achievement both for BSL users and for Scottish society as a whole. Jemina was asked how Heriot-Watt can capitalise on the recent BSL (Scotland) Bill. She replied that “we now have the chance to become the BSL hub for Scotland”.

The best is yet to come.

For a Storify version of the lecture, click here.

For a video of the full lecture, click here.

Aahh, the holidays… (?)

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Katerina Strani

“1859-Martinique.web” by Free On Line Photos. Licensed under No restrictions via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1859-Martinique.web.jpg#/media/File:1859-Martinique.web.jpg

June to September: Three long months with nothing to do, because there’s no teaching. So we lock up our offices with a “Back in September” sign and fly off to exotic places, or we stay here and catch up with our neglected hobbies of baking, knitting and gardening.

Aahhh…

If only that were true.

Here’s what we’ve really been doing in the summer:

CONFERENCES

Conference on Corpus Analysis and on Interpreting: Claudia Angelelli presented her work on The California Hope corpus of healthcare-mediated communication in the panel entitled „The Benefits of working with corpora in community interpreting research: from qualitative analysis to quantitative verification – and back.” Meyer and Schmitt, organizers. 1^st Conference on Corpus Analysis on Interpreting. Forli, Italy.

Prof. Angelelli was also invited to present two papers (Designing a valid and reliable measurement instrument for interpreting purposes and Teaching to their gift: the case of young bilinguals at high school) at the School of Interpreting, Forli, Italy.

A Study in Public Service Translation/interpreting in Cross-border Healthcare: Claudia Angelelli just returned from data collection for the EU Project: A Study in Public Service Translation/interpreting in Cross-border Healthcare, (which includes Germany, Greece, Italy Spain and United Kingdom), and a fellowship in China. During her fellowship at Sechuan University, Prof Angelelli lectured doctoral and master students on Translation and Interpreting Research Methods. She was also invited to give the following talks:

Invisibility Revisited: Interpreters’ Dilemmas in Healthcare Interpreting. Paper presented at Sechuan University, Chengdu, China, May 28, 2015
Bilingualism from a Different Perspective: the Case of Bilingual Youngsters Interpreting for Families and Friends. Paper presented at Leshan Normal College, Leshan, China June 5, 2015
Minding the Gaps: the Value of Grounding Interpreting Teaching in Research. Paper presented at Beijing University of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Beijing, June 12, 2015.

WASLI 2015, Deaf History International Conference and 17^th World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf: Prof Jemina Napier, Stacey Webb and three students from the BSL department participated in this year’s World Association of Sign Language Interpreters conference in Istanbul, Turkey. Jemina also participated in the Deaf History International conference in Edinburgh and the 17th World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf in Istanbul.

IATIS 2015: Dr Marion Winters participated in this year’s conference of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies in Belo Horizonte, 6-10 July. She presented a paper on “New computational tools in corpus-based translation studies” and co-convened the panel: Corpus-based translation studies: innovations in the new digital age. She also co-facilitated the Workshop: Presenting your research orally in English.

Ediso 2015 Symposium: Prof Bernie O’Rourke and Nicola Bermingham participated in this year’s EDiSo Symposium

Spanish in Society Conference 2015: LINCS hosted the 5^thBiennial Meeting of the International Association for the Study of Spanish in Society, chaired by Prof Bernie O’Rourke

MAMO 2015: Dr Kerstin Pfeiffer attended The Middle Ages in the Modern World (MAMO 2015) conference at the University of Lincoln from 29 June to 1 July. MAMO 2015 was an international conference with ca. 100 speakers from a range of fields and disciplines including History, Literature, Film, Video Games, Performing Arts & Drama, Languages, as well as Museum Studies. The papers at the conference explored the continued return to, and relevance of, the Middle Ages in the post-medieval world in a variety of areas, from popular culture to public history, from science to advertising, and from pedagogy to political rhetoric.

ECA 2015: Dr Katerina Strani presented a paper at the 1st European Conference on Argumentation: Argumentation and Reasoned Action on 11/06/2015 in Lisbon, Portugal. This international conference brought together philosophers, linguists, argumentation theorists and computer scientists and culminated in keynote speeches by John Searle, Norman Fairclough and Simon Parsons. Katerina’s paper, presented together with Dr Evans Fanoulis, University of Leicester, was entitled “Arguing in Virtual Spaces: The Social Construction of a Multilingual Virtual Public Sphere”. The paper argued that the importance of language, in particular of multilingualism, in political argumentation has been relatively underexplored by both normative and radical democracy theorists. Multilingualism constitutes an integral part of the contemporary understanding of the public sphere, in which political argumentation may defy linguistic barriers. Digital technologies have altered the ontology of the public sphere to such an extent that one can currently talk about the emergence of multilingual, post-national, virtual public spheres. For more information on the conference, please see here.

SIEF: From 22-25 June 2015, members of the Intercultural Research Centre (IRC) participated in the 2015 congress of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) in Zagreb. The papers they presented ranged across a broad spectrum of topics: Postgraduate members presented a semiotic analysis of clothing, heritage & identity of Russian Old Believers in Romania (Cristina Clopot), a case study of fundraising for the National Trust Scotland (Anna Koryczan), and ethnographic insights into Lithuanian migration to Scotland (Vitalija Stepušaitytė). Staff members explored how emotional scripts of medieval passion plays are re-imagined for and by contemporary audiences (Dr Kerstin Pfeiffer), whether Derry~Londonderry’s year as UK City of Culture 2013 succeeded in generating a shared story for the city (Prof Máiréad Nic Craith, written with Dr Katerina Strani and IRC associate member Dr Philip McDermott), and political dimensions of place and belonging among displaced groups (Prof. Ullrich Kockel, reporting on his SML-IRG funded research project on expellee and refugee youth after World War Two). More info here.

5th Cambridge Conference on Endangered Languages: Dr Ashvin Devasundaram and Anik Nandi presented their paper ‘Contesting the Conventionalising of Castilian: Galician New speaker Parents as Counter-Elites’ at the 5^th Cambridge Conference on Endangered Languages held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) of the University of Cambridge on 31^st July.

Bridging Language Acquisition and Language Policy Symposium: Anik Nandi presented a paper on ‘Speakers as stakeholders: Role of new speaker parents in creation of bottom-up language policies in Galicia (Spain)’ at the Bridging Language Acquisition and Language Policy Symposium which took place at the Centre for Languages and Literature of Lund University, Sweden between 17^th – 18^th June, 2015.

Annual Phalke Memorial Lecture 2015: Dr Ashvin Devasundaram gave the SACF’s 12^th Phalke Memorial Lecture entitled ‘Multiplicity in Motion: The Rise of India’s New Independent Cinema’. With multiple stories spanning the diverse demographic and geopolitical spectrum of everyday human experience, this lecture explores ‘the new Indian Indies as a glocal hybrid film form – global in aesthetic and local in content.’ Ashvin argues that the new Indies have emerged from a middle space between India’s globalising present and traditional past. The new Indies’ paradoxical ethos is epitomised in their circumvention of Bollywood ‘song and dance’ sequences on the one hand and their incorporation of exoteric promotion and marketing strategies on the other, unlike their esoteric 1970s and 1980s Parallel art-house cinema predecessors such as Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani. In the absence of an autonomous Indie distribution infrastructure, new independent films often have to rely on big corporate production houses or Bollywood producers and stars to enhance their visibility and saleability. However, the Indies share a common trait with their Parallel cinema forebears – they narrate both alternative narratives and narratives of alterity. Films such as Peepli Live (2010), Harud (2010), I Am (2010), Fandry (2013) The Lunchbox (2013) and Ship of Theseus (2013) all espouse themes and issues that discursively engage with the contemporary ‘state of the nation’. Some subversive Indies, such as Bengali film Gandu (2010) transgress normative notions of ‘traditional Indian values’ and hence encounter state censorship and regulation. Drawing from in-depth interviews with directors, actors, academics and members of the Indian Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) across Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai, the lecture will try to contextualise the new Indies’ emergence in a Bollywood-dominated Indian cultural milieu.

SACF’s Annual Phalke Memorial Lectures have been delivered in the recent past by well-known Indian filmmakers like Shyam Benegal and Saeed Akhtar Mirza, film archivist P.K. Nair and the documentary filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.

ECER/WERA: Emma Guion-Akdag presented her work at the Education and Transition – Contributions from Educational Research conference in Budapest.

Somali Voices at Summer School: Emma Hill represented LINCS at the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities’ (SGSAH) first national Summer School in Glasgow. Research was displayed by 13 doctoral or early career researchers from across Scotland. Emma’s exhibition display ‘Locating Somali Voices in Glasgow City’ showcased a collection of posters and postcards containing voices, commentary and opinions from different Somali groups in Glasgow.

GRAMNet Research Day: Eloisa Monteoliva and Emma Hill presented the EU-funded project RADAR (Regulating Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Racism) at the research open day of the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network on the 17^th of June. For more information on the GRAMNET research day, please see here. For more information on RADAR, either visit the project website or contact the UK Coordinator, Dr Katerina Strani.

Emma Hill and Cristina Clopot also gave individual presentations on their PhD research. Cristina’s research takes an ethnographic approach to understanding the particularities of Old Believers’ heritage and identity in the post-socialist period, whilst Emma’s is interested in the various ways in which the Somali population in Glasgow ‘have voice’. All presentations received very positive feedback and encouragement to maintain links with the GRAMNet group. For a Storify version of the event, please click here

CPD AND SUMMER COURSES

Applied English and Interpreting Summer School (3-21 August): Our Applied English and Interpreting course aims at strengthening linguistic skills, enhancing awareness of British culture and society, as well as practical interpreting skills. The first week of the course focused on English language & culture and the second week on practical interpreting skills. For more info and a detailed programme, click here.

Academic English Pre-sessional Programme (6-14 weeks): The English Section is particularly busy in the summer months running a Pre-sessional Programme for students with conditional offers who still have to meet their English language entry requirements for degree study. The Programme consists of three courses Project (14 weeks), Passport (10 weeks) and Portfolio (6 weeks). There were 330 students this year with the majority aiming to study in SML or MACS and smaller numbers going to EGIS and SLS. There was also a cohort aiming to study at Glasgow University. End of course exams were held as part of the resit diet this year, giving pre-sessional students an authentic experience of exam conditions prior to their degree studies. The pass rate this year was over 99% with only one student requiring to resit the assessment.

Along with the academic content there is also a vibrant Social and Cultural Programme with Topical Talks and a Carbon Café held each week at the Chaplaincy to promote engagement and discussion. Outdoor activities such as Go Ape and excursions to Loch Lomond, the Highlands and Whitelee Windfarm were amongst the most popular. The Heriot-Watt Pre-sessional programme is accredited by BALEAP, the professional body, and is one of the most highly respected in the sector. It is an excellent preparation for success in academic study with increasing numbers of Heriot-Watt students choosing to prepare in this way.

SCEN Early Language Learning University Partnership is a Scottish Government project which aims to link Scottish universities with local schools and enable Scottish primary school children to begin learning Mandarin at an early age. Jane Bell is the contact person for the project in LINCS. 14 UG and PG Chinese students from Heriot-Watt delivered beginner Mandarin classes to children at Bonnyrigg, Burnbrae, Hawthornden, Lasswade, Loanhead, Paradykes and Rosewell primary schools. Informal feedback from primary school head teachers has been extremely positive. As a result, the student volunteers were presented with certificates at the Confucius Institute, in thanks for the time and energy they invested in this exciting new project, which they evidently enjoyed: “This is very precious experience for me. I spend 10 weeks with these lovely children, and it helps me to improve my skill of making slides and presentation.” “Through teaching students … Mandarin, I learned how to use the resources around such as cyber resources and library resources.” “This experience helped me practice my English speaking and help me understand English culture more clearly.” “It was really enjoyable and memorable.” We plan to continue this project in 2015-2016.

Scottish Football Association referees: Dr Maggie Sargeant and Pedro Castillo ran a half-day course on public speaking and international communication to Scottish Football Association referees on Saturday 5 September.

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AND KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE

Germans in Britain: As part of this touring exhibition created by the Migration Museum Project, Prof. Ullrich Kockel gave a public lecture on “German Roots and Routes in Contemporary Britain”. This was held at New Register House on Tuesday 21 July. The exhibition was brought to Scotland on the initiative of Heriot-Watt’s Intercultural Research Centre with the generous support of the German Consulate-General Edinburgh, the National Records of Scotland and the University of Aberdeen. More info here

Hearing Loss or Deaf Gain? Imagine we are creating an encyclopaedia for extraterrestrials. An argument breaks out over how we describe deaf people: some say hearing loss and others say it’s deaf gain. In this engaging debate, Prof Jemina Napier and Dr Noel O’Connell presented arguments from each side, drawing from research in the field of deaf studies. ‘Deaf gain is defined as a reframing of “deaf” as a form of sensory and cognitive diversity that has the potential to contribute to the greater good of humanity’ (Baumann and Murray, 2009). This thought-provoking debate was presented at the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas during this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. More info here

UN meeting: Prof Jemina Napier participated at a UN meeting in Geneva to discuss development of new International Sign interpreter accreditation system. Watch this space for updates!

BSL Bill: Prof Graham Turner’s public engagement work has continued with a lot of committee/advisory work around the BSL Bill (eg for the sector’s BSL & Linguistic Access Working Group) which reaches Stage 3 in the Chamber on Sept 17^th. Graham is also developing new online info around BSL and is preparing his work as Parliamentary Fellow at the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe). It is important to note that Graham won the Principal’s Public Engagement Prize for his pivotal role in promoting BSL as a minority language.

National BSL Plan: Prof Graham Turner has also secured funding from the Scottish Universities Insight Institute for a 6-month project on ‘Planning for the National BSL Plan’. The project aims to design a blueprint for getting BSL taught as a modern language in schools under Scotland’s national ‘1+2 languages’ policy. Work has been ongoing through the summer to design the first of a series of consultative events, with Deaf international keynote presenters from the US and Finland, coming up in the autumn.

PUBLICATIONS

Philip McDermott, Máiréad Nic Craith & Katerina Strani (2015), “Public space, collective memory and intercultural dialogue in a (UK) city of culture”, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power,http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2015.1054828

Máiréad Nic Craith (2015) “‘Migrant’ Writing and the Re-Imagined Community: Discourses of Inclusion/Exclusion”, German Politics & Society, 33 (1-2), pp. 84-99 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/gps.2015.330107

Máiréad Nic Craith and Bernie O’Rourke (2015) “Anthropology and Language in Europe: Setting the Context.” Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 24 (1): 1-6.

Máiréad Nic Craith and Emma Hill (2015) “ Re-locating the Ethnographic Field: From ‘Being There’ to ‘Being There’, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 24 (1): 42-62. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2015.240104

Jemina Napier and Lorraine Leeson (2016). Sign language in action, book submitted to Palgrave.

Special Issue (number 12) of New Voices in Translation Studies, co-edited by LINCS PhD students Lee Williamson, Marwa Shamy, Penny Karanasiou and Pedro Castillo. The issue includes a selection of the best papers submitted after IPCITI 2013, organised in Heriot-Watt, and it is the result of the long standing collaboration between IPCITI and New Voices in Translation Studies.

Claudia Angelelli:

(with Colina, S.,(2015): Translation and Interpreting Pedagogy. Special issue. TIS Translation and Interpreting Studies Volume 10:2.
Journal article: Justice for All? Issues faced by linguistic minorities and border patrol agents during interpreted arraignment interviews. In MonTI Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación Special Issue on Legal Interpreting . Maribel del Pozo Treviño and María Jesús Blasco Mayor (Guest eds.) (pp.181-205).
Bilingualism and Multilingualism. In Claudia V. Angelelli and Brian J. Baer (eds.) Researching Translation and Interpreting. London/New York: Routledge. (32-42).
Translation and Interpreting Pedagogy. In Claudia V. Angelelli and Brian J. Baer (eds.) Researching Translation and Interpreting. London/New York: Routledge. (pp.108-117).
Exploring Translation and Interpreting. In Claudia V. Angelelli and Brian J. Baer (eds.) Researching Translation and Interpreting. London/New York: Routledge. (pp.5-14).
Bilingualism (Societal). In The Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies. Nadia Grbic and Franz Pöchhacker, eds. London/New York: Routledge.
Ethnographic Methods. In The Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies. Nadia Grbic and Franz Pöchhacker, eds. London/New York: Routledge.
In The Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies. Nadia Grbic and Franz Pöchhacker, eds. London/New York: Routledge.

PhD COMPLETIONS

Dr Ashvin Devasundaram

Dr Pedro Castillo

Dr Robyn Dean

Dr Xiao Zhao

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Developing new research projects and applying for funding – exact figures to be announced
Course preparation and development
MSc dissertation supervision
Exam resits
Marking
Marking
Marking

Still, some of us also managed to squeeze in a holiday.

Now let the teaching begin!

Hearing Loss or Deaf Gain? At the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas

Posted on August 12, 2015 by heathermole

On Saturday 8th August, Jemina Napier and Noel O’Connell engaged in a heated debate on “Hearing Loss or Deaf Gain?” at the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas.

We’ve asked two members of LINCS, Heather Mole, a PhD student who is part of the BSL team, and Olwyn Alexander, Director of Academic English, to review the show.

Heather Mole writes: At Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival, in St. Andrew’s Square, there is a yurt where dangerous ideas, backed by research, are being debated and discussed, thanks to the Beltane Public Engagement Network. For the third year in a row now Heriot Watt’s BSL team have picked topics of interest from Deaf Studies. This year the issue up for debate was “Hearing Loss or Deaf Gain?” Researchers Jemina Napier and Noel O’Connell took on the challenge of engaging the audience and trying to convince them that either the definition ‘hearing loss’ was sufficient for deaf people, or perhaps the term ‘Deaf gain’ would be a better alternative.

Dr Noel O’Connell and Prof Jemina Napier

Susan Morrison, our compere for the afternoon took on the role of a Martian (dressed in a woolly hat with a third eye) who wanted to find out from Earth people what this ‘deafness’ thing was and which definition the Martian’s would decide to use themselves – should she go with the positive gain of being Deaf, or the negativity of a definition which involves ‘loss’?

Susan Morrison being interpreted by Andy Carmichael

With an audience of over 50 people, Jemina (hearing) and Noel (Deaf) took to the floor. They covered various issues during their debate including: Sound, Danger, Access, Communication and Visuality. Most hearing people think that not being able to hear people’s voices, or the calming, emotive or exciting impact that music has is a loss and a disadvantage in life. Noel pointed out that deaf people can enjoy music through vibration through the feet and body if they choose to, and that they have the benefit of being able to stand next to the speakers at a concert without any difficulty or concern for their hearing! It became clear that sign language users also benefit from being able to talk without losing their voices in this type of environment too (even though strobe lighting might make them look a little robotic).

Next up was Jemina’s concern that deaf people could be in danger because they cannot hear alarms, or children crying, for example. But this was easily combatted by Noel as he explained that with strobe or vibrating alarms and child monitors there really isn’t any difficulty for deaf people to be alerted to the same dangers or concerns. And additionally it was a benefit to be able to sleep through unwanted noise, like noisy neighbours, freight trains or sirens. Something I’m pretty jealous of right now, living under a flat that hosts festival goers throughout August.

At this point, Jemina realised she needed to up her game! So she brought up the issue of access to announcements, at train stations, or in airports. Surely this was hearing loss, a disadvantage of deafness. Noel reminded her that due to new technologies and apps, plus visual information being more and more available on public transport, this really wasn’t as much of an issue as she had imagined. And at this juncture we learned that the reason texting has become so popular and so widely available across different networks (something that was restricted in the early days of mobile phones) was thanks to the deaf community campaigning. So that certainly gave the argument for Deaf Gain an extra point!

The discussion moved on to communication and the fact that deaf people need sign language interpreters to communicate which must be a loss in terms of their freedom to access everything they want. Noel agreed that this could be frustrating at times, but there is an additional benefit to using a sign language. Imagine going abroad on your holiday? If you don’t speak any other languages apart from English, you may have difficulty making yourself understood. He explained that because of the visual and iconic nature of sign languages signers are able, through gesture and visuality, to make themselves understood and create a pidgin language very easily. In fact there is a phenomenon known as International Sign Language which is in essence a pidgin and it’s used at conferences and between signers from different countries. Jemina, subverting her own argument, gave the example of the Deaflympics (the Deaf Olympics, separate from the Paralympics) where rather than seeing the teams sticking to their country groupings were mixing and using International Sign to communicate.

Noel and Jemina debating…

Finally, they turned their attention to the visuality of deaf people. Noel gave us the example of how deaf people can communicate over distances and through windows without difficulty, something hearing people cannot. Jemina countered that though signing is so useful over distances if everyone signed then nothing would be private. But we were informed of the benefits of being able to sign under water (by Jemina again) and how in one situation two signers were diving and one panicked, but the other person was able to calm them down using sign language. If it had been a non-signing person the crude and basic gestures for ‘up’ and ‘down’ would have had little effect. Jemina, at this point, was hammering nails into her own coffin…. the audience were clearly finding the arguments for Deaf Gain pretty convincing.

Susan took the microphone and offered the floor to the audience to make sure they had a chance to ask their questions. The audience were very obliging and gave countless examples of Deaf Gain :- reestablishing a friendship through train windows, the nature of Sign Language which allows the expression of concepts that spoken language cannot, the invention of the wing mirror by a deaf person (Arthur James Wilson), the benefits of babysign, cheaper car insurance for deaf people because they are less distracted (!), better napping for deaf people (!) and due to the energetic nature of sign language the health benefits (losing the bingo-wings)! Not to mention ‘sniper-heckling’ from one young member of the audience who was secretly signing her comments to the presenters. I could go on…..

It was acknowledged during the question period that if a person was born deaf they would not ‘miss’ hearing music or spoken language because they had never heard it. However for people who are losing their hearing or have become hard of hearing later in life there are of course challenges and a sense of grief in losing the ability to communicate easily or enjoy the music they once did.

At the end of questions and comments Susan-the-Martian asked the audience to vote – hearing loss or Deaf Gain? You can probably tell which way it went. It was, though, perhaps a surprise that only one person voted for ‘hearing loss’ in the entire yurt.

So who’s going to write to the Oxford English Dictionary and let them know that ‘hearing loss’ has fallen out of usage and submit the new description of Deaf Gain?

The audience in the Yurt

Jemina Napier and the two interpreters – Yvonne Waddell and Andy Carmichael

For an article about the academic concept of Deaf Gain by H-Dirksen L. Bauman, Ph.D., and Joseph M. Murray, Ph.D follow this link.

Or for a facebook site dedicated to ideas about Deaf Gain go here.

Olwyn Alexander writes: The Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas is part of the Beltane Engagement Network, which aims to make academic research accessible to a wide variety of audiences. On Saturday 8th August LINCS colleagues Jemina Napier and Noel O’Connell held a light-hearted debate on attitudes to deafness under the title Hearing Loss or Deaf Gain.

It was clear from the beginning that the audience comprised many from the deaf community as the visual cacophony before the show started was… er, deafening! The debate proceeded through a series of themes, such as sound, danger, access, communication, which enabled Jemina and Noel to tell witty stories about the benefits of signing if not the benefits of being deaf.

Jemina initially took the Devil’s Advocate position, challenging Noel to explain how he could appreciate music, listen to announcements on trains and planes or know when a fire alarm was sounding. Noel responded by explaining how he could appreciate music through vibrations and could stand right next to the speakers in a crowded bar or disco while speaking to a friend at the same time. Jemina countered with a very funny jerky display of how a signer might jumble a message on account of strobe lighting in the disco.

The two debaters then told more funny stories about their experiences of being able to communicate with friends across noisy streets or between trains passing one another or through the windows of cafés or even under water, before handing over to the audience to ask questions and tell their own stories. Members of the audience got up on stage to sign their stories and one even performed a little magic turn by pointing to a couple of women in the audience to tell them that one was called Fiona and they had met each other in Stirling. Gasps of admiration all round until he explained that he had “eye-dropped” (cf eavesdropped) on them as they were waiting in the queue for tickets.

I certainly learned some things I didn’t know before, for example about how visual and three-dimensional signing is and how signers’ peripheral vision becomes immensely sharpened so they are able to take in fast moving signals more quickly than hearing folk. I was also impressed at how much signing is a whole-body performance in a way that speaking isn’t and how much confidence that gave deaf people to stand up on a stage and tell their stories in very witty ways.

I laughed a lot and would recommend everyone to take in other sign language shows – definitely a great way to start my Festival going.

On Deafhood Space

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Katerina Strani

by Steve Emery

[English version]

Last week, I went to Paddy Ladd’s lecture. He was talking about “Deafhood – A Pedagogy”, which was about theories of teaching Deaf children.

It was really interesting, but there was one part of his lecture that really got me thinking, when he was talking about “Wounded Space”, which means “damaged space”…Well, what does he actually mean by that? This concept relates to the experiences of Deaf children through their development into adults and how the effects of oppression through oralism. The overwhelming and stifling experience of this has damaged Deaf children emotionally as individuals and subsequently as a community of adults. There’s a need to rebuild the community, to begin again.

During his lecture, Paddy Ladd explained what he meant by “Deafhood – A Pedagogy” and as he was doing this, it gave me a lot of ideas , and I was thinking about the process of change, how do we move forward and go through a transition from a Wounded Space to Deafhood? To a place where we can become healthy, where we can improve, develop and build? I began to consider what we would need to do to be able to achieve this aim.

Paddy Ladd’s lecture focussed upon how the use of appropriate teaching methods is the way to achieve Deafhood. In my view, that is one part of it, to be able to advance and move forward, however, there are a number of other factors that need to be taken into account for us to attain this.

It’s very important for Deaf people to be a part of a collective group, this is essential. Yes we are all individuals, we have our own lives, but we need to be connected to each other as a collective, this is really important for us all, it’s been recognised that we need to be a part of society.

The next thing that came to me, concerning the need to rebuild and develop a Deafhood Space, is that we need to have an input and participation from the wider community, not just from academics. Yes, academics are important individuals who have a place, but ordinary members of the community should not be excluded as the wider community of Deaf people need to participate and be involved in this process of development.

The third point I’d like to make is, that hearing people must be thinking, “Where do I fit in, into this Deafhood Space?” This is really important , to be able to build a new space, Deaf and hearing people have to work together, as allies, to be involved in making and developing this new space.

My fourth and last point is about spirituality. Paddy Ladd talked about this in his lecture. Spirituality can mean many things, it can relate to religious beliefs for example. He gave his perspective that we Deaf people are of the Earth and that we are here for a reason. Our understanding and development of what that spiritual aspect of being Deaf means is a part of the development of Deafhood Space.

His lecture gave me a lot to ponder over especially this concept of Deafhood Space. Its very important for us to reflect and recognise the idea of Damaged Space, in ourselves and in others and how we can change this and make a transition by moving to and developing a positive space. These are a few of the suggestions that I think are important for us to take into account when we are discussing moving towards Deafhood.

Justisigns: Promoting access to legal settings for deaf sign language users

Posted on May 19, 2015 by Jemina Napier

Written by Robert Skinner

Click here to see a BSL version of this blog

How accessible is your local police force? Is your local police force prepared for a situation that involves a deaf person? What about the interpreting provisions? What specific training is needed to improve interpreting standards that go on to protect deaf individual’s rights when it comes to accessing the justice system?

Legislation is in place that recognises the human rights of deaf people to ensure equal access to the legal system. On 20 October 2010 the European Parliament adopted the Directive on the Rights to Interpretation and Translation in Criminal Proceedings. This means everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights:

to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him;
to have the free assistance of an interpreter if he cannot understand or speak the language used in court

The principle that every European citizen is entitled to equal access to justice is well established and is enshrined in EU legislation and case law. EU Member State’s Public service providers are under an obligation to ensure equality of provision of their services across language and culture.

What does this mean for the average deaf European citizen? This means that your local Police Force is under an obligation to make reasonable adjustments to facilitate the provision of their service to deaf people. Before this can be acted upon police forces first need to know what equal access means, what steps need to be taken and how this can be delivered.

Justisigns is a 30-month project funded through the European Commission Leonardo Da Vinci Lifelong Learning Programme, and the aim of the project is to promote access to justice for deaf sign language users, with a particular focus on police settings. Jemina Napier, Graham Turner and Robert Skinner from the Languages & Intercultural Studies department at Heriot-Watt University are conducting the project in collaboration with consortium partners: Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, University of Applied Sciences of Special Needs Education in Switzerland, KU Leuven in Belgium, efsli (European Forum of Sign Language Interpreters) and EULITA (European Legal Interpreters & Translators Association).

The project is scheduled to end in May 2016. The first phase of the project involved conducting a survey of the nature of legal interpreting provision for deaf people across Europe (Napier & Haug, in preparation). In sum, it was found that although there are some established provisions for legal sign language interpreting across Europe, it is inconsistent. Furthermore, there does not seem to be a uniform approach across Europe to the training/ certification of legal interpreters, and the (lack of) availability of interpreters for legal settings is a Europe-wide issue. It is, however, difficult to identify legal sign language interpreting needs when it is not possible to identify the number of deaf sign language users in the legal system

The consortium has decided to focus on deaf people’s access to interpreters in police interviews for the next stage of the project until May 2016, as this is an under researched area. The goal of the project is to collect data through focus groups and interviews with deaf people, interpreters and police officers about their experiences. The information we gather will then be used to develop training materials and to offer workshops/ courses to these key stakeholder groups. By applying research in this way we can ensure deaf people and interpreters influence how equal access to the legal system is established.

In the 1990s, a ground-breaking study ‘Equality before the Law’ from the Deaf Studies Research Unit at Durham University was published (Brennan & Brown, 1997). In this research a range of issues were identified such as:

Lack of understanding and appreciation from the legal profession around what it means to be deaf and be part of a linguistic/cultural minority group.
Negative attitudes towards interpreters.
The awareness and need to use a registered/qualified interpreter who has been trained to work in court/police settings. In many cases CSW or family/friends were used to act as interpreters.
Lack of training opportunities to prepare trained interpreters to effectively work in Court/Police settings.
Treatment of deaf people as mentally disabled or “dumb”.
Failure from legal professionals to make adjustments that enable the interpreter to do his/her job.
Failure from legal representatives to video tape interviews with deaf suspects/witness/victims.
The need to develop internal policies that promote the use of good practice, such as booking a qualified interpreter; filming an interview
Few deaf people understood their own legal rights.
Deaf people do not always understand the reasons for their convictions – thus questioning the outcome of their “rehabilitation”.
Challenges with providing a faithful and accurate interpretation between English into BSL and BSL into English

While this list represents a scary reality, where deaf people are at risk of being wrongly convicted, our preliminary research has found some level of progress in the UK over the last 18 years. For example:

There is legislation in place that insists on equality before the law.
It is recommended that only qualified interpreters are used in the legal system.
Some interpreters have received legal training.
Some police forces have in place policies to guide officers when it comes to interviewing deaf suspects/witnesses/victims.
A few police forces in the UK have begun to develop online videos, recognising the specific linguistic and cultural needs of the deaf community.
Deaf professionals are now working within the legal system.

What our research so far reveals is that some forms of good practice exists. Unfortunately, we are not seeing a consistent approach to ensuring that the rights of deaf people are protected. Often good practice is achieved because individuals recognise the linguistic and cultural differences of deaf people. This tell us that what is needed is quite basic, a shared recognition and appreciation that deaf people belong to a distinct linguistic and cultural community. Once this definition has accepted the values of the legal system can begin to meet the needs of this community. The linguistic challenges interpreters experience in legal settings still persist, many of these challenges appear because of how the language is used and the vocabulary differences between English and BSL.

The Justisigns work is not complete. We are still running further focus groups and interviews. To support our research we are looking for volunteers in Scotland and England to participate. If you would like to contact us about your experience please email r.skinner@hw.ac.uk.

The evidence we collect will be used to inform the development of training materials and recommended guidelines for police forces.

A research symposium will also be held as part of the project on Saturday 7^th November 2015, to discuss various methodological approaches to conducting interpreting research in legal settings. See http://ctiss.hw.ac.uk/seminars/justisigns.html or http://artisinitiative.org/events/artisheriot-watt2015/

More information about the project can be seen here: http://www.justisigns.com/JUSTISIGNS_Project/About.html with a version in BSL at http://www.justisigns.com/justisigns_sls/BSL.html

All information collected through the research will remain confidential. The project has received ethics approval from the Heriot-Watt University School of Management & Languages Ethics office.

The Language of Reason

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Katerina Strani

by Katerina Strani

A café. Once a dedicated space where people gathered to discuss culture and politics. A space of arguing, debating, learning. A space where public opinion was formed and authority was challenged, contested, or at least influenced. A public sphere: a communicative space where people gathered to talk about public matters – politics.
Their aim – to form public opinion and to influence government.

Today, public spheres have evolved into more complex, more sophisticated spaces but also equally more diffuse and more informal. Think of online platforms such as blogs, twitter, facebook. A public sphere does not have to be a physical space waiting to be used, as these online platforms have proved. Instead, public spheres are spaces of communication that emerge with communication and die out when communication stops, when there is nothing left to debate.

Also, nowadays people are constantly bombarded with information and opinions, they have become more knowledgeable, but also more passionate about certain economic and political issues. Political debates are not a privilege of the elite anymore. Again, think of online platforms such as blogs, twitter, facebook. Think of public squares such as Tahrir square during the Arab spring, Syntagma square during the Greek financial crisis, or Taksim square during the demonstrations in Turkey in 2013. Anyone can join the debate, anyone can make themselves heard, anyone can influence public opinion – right???

Well, not really.

In order to participate in online public spheres, for instance, you need to have access to a computer and an internet connection. With this prerequisite, we’ve already narrowed down participation by about half (and having access to technology doesn’t mean you can use it)… But that has always been the case. In ancient public spheres, for example, such as the Forum in Rome or the Agora in Athens, only a tiny proportion of citizens actually participated in the debate. Only free-born male landowners and citizens of Rome or Athens, so no women, no foreigners, no slaves. Fast-forward to the 18th – 19th centuries and the situation hasn’t really changed. An eminent German philosopher with the name Jürgen Habermas writes that the public spheres of that time, such as coffeehouses and salons were composed of male citizens who had property in their name. These people communicated – allegedly – through the public use of reason.

So there has always been some form of gatekeeping – be it gender, financial status, nationality. Today most of these barriers are not relevant anymore, but there is one that still persists : language. It’s funny, language, be it spoken or signed, is at the heart of communication and yet multilingualism seems to be largely ignored in communication studies. An increasingly globalised world means that public spheres are becoming more multilingual, more multicultural. It means that people can participate in public life by speaking a language different from their ‘native’ one, or if that’s not possible, use the medium of translation or interpreting. If you ask me, this has always been the case but it has been largely bracketed, to use Nancy Fraser‘s term.

So what do we see today? A rise in the use of “minority languages” in citizen debates, such as Polish, Urdu or BSL in Britain, for example. With the exception of BSL, these are sometimes called migrant languages, to distinguish them from so-called heritage languages that are also gaining popularity once again, such as Gaelic in Scotland, Breze in Brittany, Cornish in Cornwall etc. I use the terms minority, migrant and heritage languages with caution, as these eventually overlap and their definitions are a bit fuzzy. The point is, multilingualism in political debate is a hard fact and it is here to stay.

The practical issue here, of course, is that historically, common languages (linguae francae) were used for convenience, so there was always a dominant language used in everyday discussions and in national parliaments. But think of national parliaments in Switzerland, Belgium, Canada. In the EU Parliament, interpreters are used and any cases of miscommunication are similar to ones that occur in monolingual environments anyway.

A lingua franca is not always the most practical solution. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. Because if we think of the gatekeeping issue, if we impose a lingua franca we are immediately excluding those citizens and taxpayers who choose to speak their own migrant, minority or heritage language, whatever you want to call it. And there are enough exclusions already, don’t you think?

When we speak a different language, we essentially become different people. When we think in a different language, we think in a different way. Languages represent cultures, belief systems, lifeworlds. If we switch to a different language, we switch to a different worldview. Forcing people to speak the same language especially in political debate is to force them to think differently and to have different arguments. Some people consider it as a form of oppression.

Who is to say that English in Britain, French in France etc. is the only accepted language of critical-rational debate? It is arrogant to think that one dominant language is the language of reason and the sole purveyor of truth. This is why we need to embrace multilingualism, we need to foster and encourage it, especially in politics, where it is most vital. It encourages pluralism in thought and expression, which is at the heart of democracy.

Collaboration and innovation to explore sign language brokering experiences

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Jemina Napier

by Jemina Napier

Click here to see this post in British Sign Language

Previous blogs have reported how I am conducting research on experiences of language brokering in the Deaf community, which looks at the communication support that both deaf and hearing PDFs (People from Deaf Families) give to their deaf parents to communicate with hearing people.

This is an under-researched area, I think mostly because of the taboos associated with kids ‘interpreting’ for their parents. Previous research has typically focussed on the negative experiences of hearing PDFs, the ‘conflict’ that arises for kids in taking on a language brokering role, without giving consideration to the deaf parents’ perspective or considering that deaf children (and adults) also broker for their deaf parents. So it is important to explore the positive and negative experiences from the perspective of all the people involved.

So I am working in collaboration with two organisations: CODA UK & Ireland and Deaf Parenting UK, to jointly offer a workshop for children and their deaf parents as part of the project.

The workshop will take place at the Rycote Centre, Parker Street Derby DE1 3HF on SUNDAY 29th MARCH 2015 from 10am-4.15pm.

Using innovative arts-based research and visual research methodologies, encompassing drawing and photo-response (visual elicitation) tasks, as well as vignette methodology, the day will enable participants to explore their experiences of sign language brokering. These innovative methodologies have been previously used to explore child language brokering in schools in the UK and Italy with children from migrant families using various spoken languages.

The day will involve an art workshop for kids (facilitated by me) and a discussion group for deaf parents, facilitated by Nicole Campbell who is Project Coordinator at Deaf Parenting UK.

The workshop is *free*, and lunch will be provided. Families will be offered a £20 gift card to cover travel expenses, and there will be prizes for the kids.

To register for the workshop, email: MARIE@CODAUKIRELAND.CO.UK

Deaf parents with deaf or hearing children are welcome. Maximum 20 places in each workshop, so register soon!

Registration deadline: 15th March 2015

For more information about the workshop content, you can send me a personal message through Facebook or email me at j.napier@hw.ac.uk

How do you teach note-taking for consecutive interpreting?

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Katerina Strani

It’s one of those ‘how long is a piece of string’ questions. Consecutive interpreting involves listening to a speech delivered in one language in front of an international audience, taking notes and then giving the same speech in another language, making sure it is as close to the original as possible in terms of content, delivery and style. The activity is taught and practised through memory exercises, listening comprehension, summarising, abstracting and note-taking.

There is some very useful literature on note-taking for consecutive interpreting aimed both at trainee interpreters and at interpreter trainers. The most frequently cited works are Rozan, J.F. (1956) Note-taking in Consecutive Interpreting; Jones, R. (2002): Conference interpreting explained; Gillies, A. (2005): Note-taking for consecutive interpreting. A review of these key works by Michelle Hof can be found here.

Even though note-taking constitutes an integral part of the interpreting process, it may detract interpreters from active listening. This means that the note-taking task involves filtering and ruthless selection, as well as translation, so that the speech can be then delivered in another language. Because of the bilingual nature of the task, shorthand would not be effective in helping to reproduce the original speech verbatim and thus eschew the process of filtering, as shorthand is based on standardised symbols of sounds, not meaning (Valencia, 2013: 11-12).

More importantly, the role of interpreters’ notes should be to “relieve memory” (Jones, 2002: 42) and to outsource tasks that cannot be performed by memory alone. In other words, notes should be an aide-memoir, not a schematic representation of the entirety of the speech. Because of the mutual dependence of memory and notes and the highly contingent nature of memory, notes are highly personalised to the extent that “no two interpreters will ever produce an identical set of notes” (Gillies, 2005: 10) for the same speech. At the same time, the majority of speeches tend to be formulaic to the extent that they “present the interpreter with a limited range of the same problems, for which effective solutions have already been worked out and are applied by many, many interpreters” (ibid.). This means that despite the contingent and subjective nature of notes, there exist basic principles of note-taking in consecutive interpreting that can be taught (Valencia, 2013: 14).

Despite this, there is no one-size-fits-all note-taking system, which poses a particular challenge for learning and teaching. The basic principles mentioned abover are supposed to become “internalised” (Gillies, 2005: 10) and ultimately individualised to follow a personal style as well as the requirements of any given speech, speaker or setting. This is easier said than done.

The current learning experience involves teaching students some basic note-taking symbols and abbreviations of terms that occur in most speeches, as well as strategies in noting down numbers, links, tense and how to separate ideas. Learners practise interpreting speeches based on no notes, minimal notes, only symbols, only numbers etc. They are also encouraged to share their notes to see examples of different note-taking styles and even to try to reproduce the original speech based on other people’s notes. However, they do not get an insight into how different styles of notes are produced – how quickly the interpreter takes notes, how much of a time lag there is in producing these notes, how selection of information takes place, which language is chosen for note-taking etc. Class time is too limited for carrying out these activities and for helping learners develop the creativity required to assimilate the techniques taught and make them their own.

Maybe uploading pre-recorded videos of real-time note-taking on a virtual learning environment such as Blackboard would be useful for learner practice. The videos would not be prescriptive, but they are meant to trigger reflection and generate ideas. It would save class time and create the space necessary for students to be creative, experiment and develop a personal note-taking style. It would also offer an insight into the professional world by demonstrating different types of real-time note-taking. The opportunity for reflection is important, as students can go back and deconstruct the process while exploring and developing their own efficient system. In this way, they are encouraged to be “active makers and shapers of their own learning” (JISC, 2009: 51).

It takes months, even years of experience and practice for interpreters to develop their own efficient, tried and tested system of note-taking for consecutive interpreting. Pre-recorded note-taking videos may enhance the learning experience through experiential and authentic learning that helps to demonstrate how memory and note-taking work together in producing a semantically accurate and fluent speech in the target language. It would be useful as a follow-up for learners to upload videos of their own note-taking and share with their colleagues their own reflective process, justify their selection choices, symbols, techniques etc. A wiki for sharing ideas and practice material could then be developed. Class time and setting are simply too limited for such a task.

LifeinLINCS

Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies

Tag Archives: research

EU study on Public Service Translation in Cross-Border Healthcare is out!

Heritage research and practice

Signposting Professional Practice: Intercultural Communication and Interpretation

Aahh, the holidays… (?)

PhD COMPLETIONS

Dr Ashvin Devasundaram

Dr Pedro Castillo

Dr Robyn Dean

Dr Xiao Zhao

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!