Abstract:

Nowadays highly qualified interpreters play a crucial role in different spheres of global activities: global business, global science, global sport etc. Level of competencies, both personal (stress-resistance, memory, reaction etc.) and professional (communicative and interpreting skills) define excellence or level of professional qualification of an interpreter. Communicative skills of a qualified interpreter should include prosodic competency among the others. It assumes not just knowledge of and ability to reproduce phonemes and allophones, to define intonation, pauses, and speech tempo of a speaker, but also ability to interpret and render subtle nuances of a meaning with the help of proper intonation, speech tempo, pauses and logical stress while interpreting to a target language. The article explores the role of prosodic elements such as melodicism, tempo, rhythm, stress, pausation and speech color. The importance of those elements for an interpreting activity is determined by the fact, that the transfer of information is only 15% down to verbal elements (words), though it is 38% down to prosodic elements and 55% down to non-verbal means of communication. Therefore, we considered only reasonable to pay greater attention to development of prosodic competency in classes on interpreting practice. We assumed that it could be achieved through: a) special exercises that allow learning and practicing different phonetic styles both in native and foreign languages (watching authentic videos and their analysis in terms of prosodic elements etc.); b) providing knowledge of prosodic characteristics of emotions followed by practicing to distinguish them in the original speech and finding similarities in the target language for proper interpretation (preliminary studies of relevant sources followed by exercises on matching and group discussion etc.). Thus, we developed a set of special exercises and reading material to supplement interpreting practice classes at RUDN University with students doing Master course on “Foreign language for professional purposes and specialized translation”. The article provides examples of those exercises and methodology of their application in classes. In conclusion, we would like to note that the end of semester results showed higher level of overall interpreting skills among students after applying exercises aimed at prosodic competency development. Moreover, a survey among students demonstrated that those exercises increased their interest to interpreting practice classes and proved to be rather helpful. It inspired us to proceed with our work on such type of exercises and research more material on prosodic characteristics of emotions in different cultures.

Keywords:

Prosodic competency, prosodic skills, interpreting practice, interpreting skills, phonetic style, prosodic characteristics of emotion, special exercises.