Claudia V. Angelelli

Assessing Medical Interpreters: The Language and Interpreting Testing Project

Abstract The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st witnessed important changes that have affected healthcare delivery to patients with limited proficiency in English in the United States, resulting in an increasing need for professional interpreters. This need cannot be met by the limited number of available professional medical interpreters, and bilingual individuals volunteering to help or receiving on-the-job training consequently have to be assessed on both language and interpreting abilities. This paper reports on the design of an instrument of assessment used to measure the skills of medical interpreters. Authentic medical exchanges with Spanish, Cantonese and Hmong-speaking patients were collected and analyzed to identify the basic linguistic and interpreting skills commonly used in interpreter-mediated encounters within healthcare settings. These communicative events were used as the basis for creating scripts that form the core of a set of tests for an interpreter training programme. In order to validate the scenarios and adaptations introduced by native informants participating in the study, the scripts were presented to focus groups formed by community members, interpreters and healthcare providers for each ethnic group. Each script was video recorded and field tested and is now piloted at five sites in California and ten other sites in the US. The article is relevant for interpreter educators, medical interpreters and hospital administrators interested in using tests to identify and develop special abilities of bilingual speakers in the medical setting.

Interpreters, Interpreting, and the Study of Bilingualism.

In this chapter we present a brief overview of the literature on interpreting focused specifically on issues and questions raised by this literature about the nature of bilingualism in general. It is our position that research carried out on interpreting—while primarily produced with a professional audience in mind and concerned with improving the practice of interpreting—provides valuable insights about complex aspects of language contact that have not been thoroughly addressed by the existing literature on bilingualism. Examination of the literature emphasizing a category of bilinguals, who have been referred to as “true” bilinguals (Thiery, 1978a, b), provides perspectives on both individual and societal bilingualism that can complement, and possibly refocus, some current views of the linguistic, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic characteristics of language contact. For applied linguists who study language minority populations around the world, the literature on interpreting suggests important new directions for research focusing on areas such as the process of high level development of two languages in diglossic contexts; the effects of instruction on the development of nonsocietal languages; the nature of language transfer; and the characteristics of communication between speakers of societal and nonsocietal languages.

Developing Professional-Level Language Proficiency: Bridging the gap between language for general purposes and language for work: an intensive Superior-level language/skill course for teachers, translators, and interpreters

A person decides to become a language learner for a variety of reasons: to be able to read the literature of a given language in its original form, to travel and discover other cultures, to obtain a better understanding of the world, to meet people and be able to understand them, to increase business opportunities, to exchange ideas with colleagues and friends, to communicate better across language barriers. For most people, the goal is to be able to communicate. Others put their language knowledge at the center of their profession and become language teachers, translators, interpreters, or members of the diplomatic corps of their country. The courses described here were developed by the authors and taught at the Monterey Institute of International Studies from 1994 through 2000, following a 1993 pilot course in French. Since even Superior-level language learners encounter difficulties in using their language in a professional environment, the Spanish and French Summer Intensive Bridge courses were conceived with the goal of developing the proficiency needed to work professionally in the fields of teaching, translation, and interpreting. This goal differentiates them from Advanced-level summer courses for language enhancement (e.g., summer courses in Spanish universities for English-speaking teachers of Spanish). The initial objectives were to bring students who had been accepted into the two-year Masters program to the proficiency level necessary to perform in the Translation and Interpreting (T&I) MA program and to offer professionals in the T&I fields the opportunity to enhance their foreign language abilities.

Looking back: A study of (ad-hoc) family interpreters

Abstract Child-brokering (MediAzioni 2010) lies on the continuum of ad-hoc translation/interpreting. Using various field-specific lenses, from educational linguistics, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, communication, and translation/interpreting studies, the case of bilingual youngsters and children who have interpreted for their families and immediate communities has been the focus of different studies (e.g. Bialystock & Hakuta 1999; Borrero 2006; Cline, Crafter and Prokopiou; Orellana 2003, Valdés, Chavez and Angelelli et al. 2000, Valdés, Chavez, Angelelli 2003) with different linguistic groups of various ages in different parts of the world. Focusing on Latinos who live on the US/Mexico border and using a mixed paradigm, in this study we analyze the ways in which Spanish/English bilinguals perceive, discuss and characterize their experiences as they continue to broker communication for their families and immediate communities. We focus on youngsters’ perceived agency and explanations of the relationship between child-language brokering and academic achievement. The findings reported here are part of a larger study that includes the adaptation of a valid and reliable instrument to measure bilingual youngsters’ perceptions about their role (Angelelli 2014 and 2015), its administration and results, and their recall during interviews. Since most/many of the public-service/community interpreters of today were interpreters in their late childhood and adolescence, understanding their life experiences and perceptions of their roles as family language brokers is important for interpreter educators (Angelelli 2010b). In addition, research on bilingual youngsters and children brokering communication for adults allows us to problematize the constructs of language access and language policies of the societies these bilinguals inhabit (Angelelli 2010a). The results have theoretical and practical implications for current conceptualizations of multilingual societies, border areas, community interpreting (interpreting in public services) and for teaching and testing of interpreters.