Abstract:

This paper describes a game "Deaf Interpreter" titled after a well-known Russian children game “Deaf Phone”, when children stand in a chain way, the first in the chain makes a phrase and whispers it to the second person; the second person does the same, and it goes until the end of the chain. Repeating the phrase is prohibited. If someone cannot catch a word, the one should get if from the context or imagine what can replace the original word and transfer them to the next person. Usually, in the result, the final phrase looks very different and funny in comparison to the original one. I adapted this children game to teaching Russian-English consecutive interpretation, and this is to describe how "Deaf Interpreter" works in class.

The "Deaf Interpreter" includes two obligatory stages: preparatory and practical.

The preparatory stage includes lexis of a topic and translation\interpretation training. For my class, I chose the topic of medicine. What is different from “Deaf Phone”, in "Deaf Interpreter" students don’t make phrases themselves. The teacher should prepare the text in advance. I made the text in a form of dialogue because it is easier to divide it into phrases. The example of the dialogue is below. Actors are a mother of an ill son and a doctor.

Doctor: (1) Здравствуй. Ну что, давай тебя осмотрим. Присаживайся, открывай рот. - Hello. Well, let’s look at you. Take a seat, open your mouth.
(2) Ага, горло красное. О! Да у тебя жар. Лоб очень горячий. Мисс Смит, какая у него температура? - I see you have a red throat. Oh! You have a fever. The forehead is burning. Missis Smith, what is his temperature?
Mother:
(3) Я не знаю. Он отказывается мерить температуру и проверять пульс. - I don’t know. He refuses to take his temperature and pulse.
Doctor: (4) Так не пойдёт. Сейчас мы измерим тебе температуру. Это совсем не больно и очень быстро. - No, it won’t work. Now we will take your temperature. It’s quickly and won’t hurt.

The practical stage of the is as follows.
1. Students stay in a chain way and each gets a list with an empty table to be filled in.
2. The teacher whispers the first phrase in Russian to the first student in the chain. The student interprets the phrase into English, whispers the translation to the next student, and writes the Russian phrase in a his\her table.
3. The second student interprets the English phrase into Russian, whispers it to the next one and puts the heard variant into a his\her table.
4. Each next student receives a phrase in English or Russian, interprets it to the opposite language, and writes the heard phrase into the table.
5. In result, each student has the whole dialogue either in English or in Russian.

Thus, "Deaf Interpreter" can be adapted to any language pair, any topic and the level of students. The advantages of the game are the opportunity to train professional skills for interpreters:
- understanding by ear, quick memorization and understanding the key idea;
- transferring the received information in the language of translation adapting it to the level of the addressee;
- consecutive interpretation from\to the native language;
- style and grammar check in the translation in the table.

Unlike many other games, "Deaf Interpreter" involves all students in class in active participation and doesn’t require much preparation from the part of the teacher. After the game, everyone can analyze the results and the teacher has an opportunity to check each student’s work.

Keywords:

Teaching game, interpretation, Russian, English.