TEACHING COMMUNITY INTERPRETING AT UNIVERSITY: A CHALLENGE OF THE MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY

The paper represents a detailed research into the issue of teaching community interpreting for BA and MA university students majoring in Linguistics.

As well as in other countries, this special type of oral translation appeared to be at high demand in Russia due to the internal migration policy of the country and a huge flow of foreign-based work force. This time community interpreting is featured as “a public service interpreting” in the UK or “cultural interpreting” in Canada, which serves as mediating activity between people of different nationalities, speaking different languages, and aiming at interpreting either at doctor’s or police station, social welfare or housing agencies. Different spheres of social life of a migrant worker require a professional community interpreter. Thus, the paper actualizes the necessity of community interpreting module implementation within the framework of the university educational linguistic curriculum.

In this paper the authors underline the importance of community interpreting module development at the Higher School of Foreign Languages and Translation Studies, Kazan Federal University, Russian Federation. The latter presents the high quality of the staff and the contents of a wide range of academic courses in the scope of community interpreting, such as: translation studies in the field of Sports and Tourism, Restaurant and Hotel Business, Culture and Art, Medicine, Law, cross-cultural communication, professional ethics, protocol, etc.

The research, educational and methodological potential of the School is fundamentally sustained and developed. A considerable number of academic courses have already been implemented into the university curriculum of BA and MA of Linguistics major. So the authors suggest that applied together with the new ones under consideration they are sure to constitute a well-targeted community interpreting module.

The paper also outlines the main aspects of community interpreter training. Educating a community interpreter should be directly focused on the development of particular professional skills emphasizing the importance of clear oral speech representation, practical appliance of professional glossaries, mastering and experiencing communicative techniques, reference to the interpreter’s code of conduct and ethical norms of communication, etc. For this purpose the authors determine the most successful approaches in teaching prospective community interpreters to master the required professional skills and reveal the possible educational technologies so that to enhance the general background knowledge of the students, enrich the oral speech of prospective linguists with specialized terminology, amplifying the active glossaries, and educate in term of cross-cultural notions as well.

The authors’ findings are supported unreservedly by the results of the tests and opinion survey of the BA and MA students of the High School to determine the level of students’ community interpreting knowledge, its practical usage and bring out the hurdles community interpreters face present day. The survey conducted has been aimed at observing the students’ adaptability to community interpreting, highlighting the issues to consider meeting the present day challenges of community interpreting education as referred to in the article.