Abstract
Interpreters in public-sector services in Norway report that they sight translate almost every day; a mode of translation that requires well-developed reading skills. Nevertheless, in interpreter training programs and assessments, reading skills seem so far to have been taken for granted. In this article we discuss reading skills for sight translation and suggest a way of testing these skills. Furthermore, we argue that there is a need to rethink assessments and educational programmes based on an assumption of skills in reading. We base our arguments on a study of public-sector interpreters’ reading speeds in Norwegian. The results show that 70% of the interpreters tested did not have sufficient skills in one central component of reading, namely decoding; that there is vast variation in skills; and that decoding speed varies according to the interpreters’ linguistic backgrounds. Our results are a strong indication of a specific need for training in reading skills amongst many public-sector interpreters.
Highlights
Unqualified interpreters present a serious obstacle to communication in the public sector, a situation that is challenging for both the professionals and their clients alike
On the basis of the low number of unqualified interpreters used by the Directorate of Immigration, we ruled out the possibility that the slow ST was being caused by generally unqualified interpreters
The results reveal that stanine scores vary according to linguistic background and that participants whose first language is non-European have very low stanine scores
Summary
Unqualified interpreters present a serious obstacle to communication in the public sector, a situation that is challenging for both the professionals and their clients alike (see for example IMDI, 2007; Nilsen, 1995, 2001, 2005, 2011). The Directorate of Immigration has its own interpreting unit responsible for the quality assurance of interpretation (Utlendingsdirektoratets regelverk, 2011), and the interpreting unit contacted the Department for Interpreting Studies at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences for help and advice. Against this background we initiated a small research project to investigate the causes of the alleged slowness of some interpreters. A recent report (Linnestad & Buzungu, 2012) shows that the Directorate of Immigration uses the highest number of qualified interpreters of all public sector institutions in Norway. The answer seemed rather to lie in the specific nature of ST
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