I've finished my induction week and I thought some of you might be interested to know about the course. The university website is a bit sparse on information.

Interpreting - five classes per week that run throughout the year. There are three kinds of interpreting: consecutive, simultaneous and liason. There are two classes per type, E->J and J->E. Consecutive has two taught hours per week (each week alternates between E->J and J->E) and the other classes are an hour each. For each taught hour it is expected that you do around 2 hours prep work followed by 3-4 hours practice after the class.

It is expected that you practice in groups so that you can assess each other's performances and give constructive criticism. There are interpreting booths that you can book for practising. For liason interpreting (eg having to do J-E and E-J at the same time at a small meeting), there is also a small TV studio that is used in lessons so that you can record and assess each others' performances.

Translation - two classes per week for the first semester, one E-J and the other J-E. In the second semester they are optional. You're expected to read up on the topic before you come to class and you have about four days to turn each assignment in.

There are also unassessed lecture courses on economics, politics, law and the EU to help with background knowledge.

Altogether there are twenty-three people on the course, three from the UK, one from the USA and the others are from Japan. There's a complete mix of ages and backgrounds as well so there is a range in language ability as well. However the aim of the course is to improve technique rather than teaching Japanese so provided you do the preparation work for the classes that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

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All the interpreting courses are compulsory throughout the year so I'll being doing all three kinds! For my dissertation I'm planning on doing a translation so in the second semester I'll definitely continue with j-e trans and either e-j trans or translation tools and technology.

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wow... it sounds awesome!!! seems like a great course to have chosen, pretty intense and good equipment to help.

what do the different types of interpretation involve? Like, what actually are consecutive, simultaneous and liason?

Sounds interesting. Keep us updated.
There always seems to be a lot of debate among translators/interpreters about whether doing a course is useful or a waste of money, so it's good to hear for someone in a bit more detail about their course.

IceCream Wrote:what do the different types of interpretation involve? Like, what actually are consecutive, simultaneous and liason?

Consecutive is when you listen to some speech, maybe take some notes and interpret once the person has finished speaking.

Simultaneous is when you listen to a speech usually via headphones in a booth and interpret whilst listening. So the kind of thing you'd get at an international conference.

Liason is when you're in a small setting like a meeting and you're the only interpreter so you have to do J-E and E-J. We also have Public Service Interpreting as part of the same class which is essentially the same thing but interpreting in a police/medical/legal setting.

The course starts next Monday so I'll maybe write another update at the end of that week

Thanks for the write up. Once I'm finished university I'm looking into doing my masters in something similar, so this is really useful. Bath sounds awesome, hope you enjoy it.

I've just finished my first week of the course. I'll start with my main impressions, followed by details of what happened in each lesson. Please let me know if you have any questions or if you'd like me to keep writing about the course

Overall I feel that the course is catered more towards Japanese students. We have two teachers, a native English teacher who takes the Japanese->English classes and a native Japanese teacher who takes the English->Japanese classes. In the J->E classes we've done reading techniques to help with reading English passages for background knowledge. It's not really a problem though, it just means that the techniques I learn in J->E classes will probably be more useful in E->J classes and vice versa. The native English teacher also seems to speak in a slightly odd way but I can't tell if she's trying to make things easier for the Japanese students or if that's just her way for speaking.

I get a lot of Japanese speaking practice as I spend all my time with Japanese students. However my formal Japanese speaking skills are definitely lacking. In every interpreting class though our performances are recorded and then uploaded onto the uni server so everyone can listen to each other's recording. This means I'll have lots of examples of formal speech to listen to.

Interpreting: taught in small groups of 6-7
This week I had Liason Interpreting (LI), E->J Consecutive Interpreting (EJ CI), J->E Simultaneous Interpreting (JE SI) and English->Japanese Simultaneous Interpreting (EJ SI).
LI, every two weeks: We went over the importance of presentation skills and then moved onto the lesson structure. Before each lesson we will be given the outline of a roleplay, e.g. an interview for a magazine, so that we can do background reading and look up appropriate vocabulary. Then in the lesson the teacher and one student will act out the roleplay and the other students will take turns to interpret.

EJ CI, every two weeks: We each gave a small speech in English and another student would take notes and interpret the speech at the end. Then we analysed the performances and talked about what skills are required for consecutive interpreting.

JE SI, every week: We went over the basic methods of simultaneous interpreting, the importance of memory and concentration and then we practised shadowing a couple of Japanese speeches. After that we practised interpreting numbers, that is also our assignment this week.

Translating: Everyone is taught together
J->E: We introduced ourselves, tried some translation and then discussed the difficulties and what is required to be able to do a good translation e.g. knowledge of who you are writing for, knowledge about the background of what you are translating etc.

Background lectures: Everyone doing an Interpreting & Translating MA attends
We have three lectures per week: Elements of Law, the EU and Economics and Globalisation. The EU lectures are not really so relevant but I think the UN may also get covered in some lectures so that will be good.

Thanks for this, pudding bear. ;-) It's useful for some and interesting even for others. I hope you enjoy the program.

I was at something this week where the guys from Japan, Tibet, Taiwan and Philippines had their own interpreters. Interesting to see how much the style of interpreting varied. A few things I noticed:

Some spoke in the third person basically reporting what was said. Based on the difference in duration, I suspect some aggressive summarizing. Others would be "in character", using first person and replicating the intonation, emotion and gesture of the speaker. This turned out to be a bit comical in the case of a speaker who is rather slight with a very bubbly almost theatrical personality whose interpreter was a big, surly looking bloke with a deep voice. A few slightly awkward moments of unintentional humour. I wonder if the style gets discussed with the client in advance.

Some interpreters would tactfully interrupt a speaker who blabbed on for too long. Others apparently have huge memory capacity (the same ones ones who got "in character" and remembering all the nuances, surprisingly.)

The Japanese interpreter toned down the formality of the Japanese guy's speech. I'd say she matched the situation rather than his language. He might have come across inappropriately pretentious or stiff otherwise I suppose. (Can't comment on the other languages.)

One unfortunate thing: the speakers each had a mic and their interpreters had to lean over to it. So it was sometimes hard to hear the understandable language. I wonder if it's common for interpreters to inquire about the audio set up in advance?

I was reminded again that being bilingual doesn't mean one can interpret well. There's some combinations of innate skills and careful practice that make people really good. It's great you're offering a peak into what kind of training is offered.

@Thoora
That was interesting to hear about the different ways the interpreters worked. We've been told that you usually inquire/are told about the audio setup but you're normally stuck with whatever the employer wants so you just have to go with it.

We've had impressed upon us this week that interpreting is definitely a set of skills of which language ability is only one part. You need concentration, ability to be calm under pressure, good note-taking, research skills, good general knowledge... the list goes on.

Anyway this week we've had some note-taking lessons which were interesting. The idea is create a symbolic system as much as possible so that when you refer to your notes you don't need to be thinking in the language you're translating from.

When interpreting you also need to be aware that you're communicating the message of the person, so you need to trim down what they're saying because there's no time to interpret everything. For that reason we're currently practising paraphrasing, both writing and speech. Writing is good because it's slower and allows you to practise different ways of phrasing things which makes it easier when it comes to speech.

For people interested in interpreting or just people who like shadowing, you might like to try these techniques.

1) Shadow something but start 3-4 words behind, it should help improve your memory
2) Shadow something for 1-2 minutes and then write down what you can remember about the speech
3) Shadow something but try and paraphrase as you go along.

For the 3rd technique, we started with written text first as I wrote above. The majority of the class is Japanese so we did Japanese paraphrasing which obviously for me is more difficult but it's definitely beneficial for my language skills

pudding cat- if you have time it'd be interesting to get another update on your impressions of the course now that the first term is finished.

So the first semester is finished and I've finished the first semester exams as well. Hooray! I've just written down my thoughts on how things are going, if you have any specific questions let me know

Interpreting
It's challenging on a number of levels
1) Subject matter: if you already have background knowledge and interest in the subject chances are you'll already know/find it easy to research appropriate Japanese terms. If you don't know much about something, it's hard to know where to begin when researching the topic.

2) Japanese/English level: I struggle with more formal speeches as the vocabulary used is much higher-register than I'm used to. Today we did this speech as simultaneous interpreting. For the first couple of minutes I was alright but after that I just got lost and my interpreting was pretty poor. I had lots of half-finished sentences and I just had to make up what I thought was going on... One you get lost it's hard to find your way back.

3) Concentration: you need to be able to concentrate hard!

4) Note-taking: I try but I'm not good at it. Or maybe I should just practise more? Either way I don't like it...

Translating
We do different kinds of translation, I definitely prefer scientific/technical/medical compared to other kinds. We had to do a section from an annual report which was mostly self-promotion with the company saying stuff like "On a daily basis we touch hearts all over the world". It was really cheesy and I felt rather embarrassed at translating it... I definitely won't be going into marketing.

Conclusion
I think overall the course teaches about the interpreting, translating world and gives you a taster of it. There's only so much they can do as your own language ability and experience play a major part. Sometimes I feel like I might get more out of it if my Japanese was better but on the other hand this course isn't about making you into an interpreter or translator, it's about setting you on the path to becoming an interpreter/translator.

Next semester
We have 2 hour Conference classes twice a week so we get used what conference interpreting is like. I'm also dropping English->Japanese translation and doing Technology Tools in Translation instead.

I've done some simultaneous interpretation (French/English) in the last few months. The last time, I had to interpret, into my L2, a presentation on the development of the mining industry in Mongolia... something I'd never even heard of. Anything can happen, so you really need excellent language skills and general knowledge about the world. Your language skills should be at the level where you can manipulate the language at will without ever hesitating because there is simply no time for any of that.

pudding cat Wrote:2) Shadow something for 1-2 minutes and then write down what you can remember about the speech

I don't get the point of this exercise... Listening, processing, translating and speaking takes so much of your brain's processing power that you tend not to remember much about what you interpreted anyway, so it doesn't really matter...

I have a question though -- How do you deal with J to E lag? It's not much of an issue in French and English. From what I've read, when we deal with 2-3 seconds of lag, J-E would require 6+ seconds of lag...

AlexandreC Wrote:

pudding cat Wrote:2) Shadow something for 1-2 minutes and then write down what you can remember about the speech

I don't get the point of this exercise... Listening, processing, translating and speaking takes so much of your brain's processing power that you tend not to remember much about what you interpreted anyway, so it doesn't really matter...

It wasn't clear when I wrote that, but it's an exercise from a consecutive interpreting class to improve memory and concentration so as you said, it's not really applicable to simultaneous.

AlexandreC Wrote:I have a question though -- How do you deal with J to E lag? It's not much of an issue in French and English. From what I've read, when we deal with 2-3 seconds of lag, J-E would require 6+ seconds of lag...

I listened back to the recording of my intepreting today and my pauses are around 3-4 seconds. You have to speak in shorter sentences than normal or try and do a clause at a time. I think if you waited 6+ seconds you'd probably get too far behind.

Thanks for the update.
It seems like an interesting course. Sounds like they're not afraid to give you challenging tasks even if they know they'll probably be pretty difficult for some of the students at their current ability level.

I'm mostly interested in knowing how much the course helps you to improve you skills (as compared to studying by yourself or learning on the job) and also how it helps with job prospects once you are finished. I guess to a certain extent though these things might be hard to gauge until after you finish the course, or even later on.

What are the backgrounds of the other students like? I know you mentioned before about which countries they are from, but what sort of work and study backgrounds do they have? What sort of jobs are they aiming for when they finish (translating/interpreting/academic/anything will do)?

The benefit in general is that our teachers are also professional interpreters and translators so the teaching and feedback is all relevant and they can also answer questions about working professionally.

With translation I suppose going on a course is not so important unless you need to boost your CV.

For interpreting I think it's good because you get to try lots of different types and you can see which one suits you best. For simultaneous interpreting the main benefit is being able to use the interpreting lab. This semester we'll also be doing mini-conferences with the other languages. So we'll have people representing 4-5 countries and we work in teams of three to simultaneously interpret "Japan's" speech into English and then simultaneously interpret the interpreted English of other countries' speeches back into Japanese. That's definitely not something you can do through self-study.

There are 20 people on the course, 16 are Japanese, 3 are English and 1 is American. I think the average age is late 20s although one guy is 40. Of the Japanese people I think everyone did language at university or was using English in their work. Of the native English speakers, two did Japanese at university. One did English at university but then did a Japanese course before working in Japan for 3-4 years. I did Physics at uni, took a break in third year to do a Japanese language & cultural exchange, graduated in fourth your, did JET for one year, came back and studied Japanese for a year whilst applying for various Masters.

Most of the Japanese people want to work in the UK doing a job where they can use interpreting/translating skills but not necessarily as the main part of their work. With the changes to visas though it seems like that could be quite difficult. The English-speakers want to go the Japan to improve their Japanese more.

For job prospects, for me anyway I think it's good to have something more than just JLPT to prove my Japanese level. We also get other professionals coming in and giving us talks on how they got started and what their work is like. We've had a workshop on Medical Translation, a talk by JAC recruitment and the Institute of Interpreting and Translating. I think they'll give us more careers advice once semester 2 begins.

Does that cover everything?

Yeah, that's very helpful thanks.

For personal reasons I'd probably rather stay in Japan after finishing with JET and look for a job straight away. However, if it looks like a course is really going to help my prospects, and I fancy a year back in the U.K. at some point, then it could be a good option.
I can't really see myself becoming a full-time interpreter (as opposed to someone who just interprets sometimes as part of their job within a company), although I'm sure some interpreters start out thinking the same and just end up doing it because they find they have a talent for it and enjoy the challenge.

Just out of curiosity, do you find the course really intense in terms of the number of study hours you have to put in, or would it in theory be quite possible to work part-time while doing the course? I guess it probably depends a lot on the individual student's level and whether they need to do a lot of extra study in their own time. Thought I'd just try asking anyway though.

As a guide we're expected to do 2 hours of prep and 2 hours of follow-up work per taught hour. This semester I have 12 taught hours per week -> 48 hours of study so altogether 56 hours. Plus I need to start my dissertation this semester so I doubt I'll manage to do the expected amount of studying. My study time also depends on how interesting I find the speech topic.

To be honest I don't know that I could cope at the moment with being an interpreter. Whilst it's interesting and a cool skill, I'd much rather read about something than listen to someone talking about it so I think translating is more my thing. Having said that maybe by the end of the course I'll have changed my mind.

I don't know what your Japanese is like but obviously the better you are at both languages, and depending on your own knowledge of whatever the current topic is, the less demanding the work will be. Whether you have time for part-time work or not is really up to you I think.

Quote:We do a different kind of translation, I definitely prefer scientific/technical/medical compared to other kinds. We had to do a section from an annual report which was mostly self-promotion with the company saying stuff like "On a daily basis we touch hearts all over the world". It was really cheesy and I felt rather embarrassed at translating it... I definitely won't be going into marketing.

Welcome to my world
It depends on the client, but the best way to handle that is just to throw the source text in the trash and write new copy yourself.