Data Collection in Interpreter Education

A bit of background about our program's philosophy on "feedback." We believe strongly in data collection - collecting facts about the work samples presented and allowing the interpreter who did the work to analyze and make sense of the data for their own work. As an observer, I cannot know what is going on in the mind or process of the working interpreter, I can merely collect data on their behalf. They are an expert in their own work, even if they don't fully realize it yet. Once a work sample has been completed and data shared, we have a great discussion in which we practice articulating what occurred in the work - effective and less effective aspects - through this parsing out of aspects of the work, the interpreter and others who participated in the discussion all benefit from a deeper understanding of the complexities of interpreting work. 

A few weeks back, I was teaching a group of juniors in our program who are working on developing consecutive interpreting skills. I have a colleague who teaches another section of the same class. In preparing to teach we decided we wanted the students to work in front of the whole class, rather than in smaller teams subvocalizing (we have small sections, 11 and 12 students in each). This is designed to assist students in getting over the nerves that crop up when working 'on the spot.' It was also to develop a safe, supportive, and encouraging environment in which to learn, grow, and take risks. 

In my section, I divided the class in to 2 groups. Each group was assigned a text to work with (from ASL to English). The groups went through the typical preparation activities - brainstorming, meeting the speaker, predicting content, developing a context/audience profile, and discussing teaming needs with their team. These are not areas in which they have mastered the necessary skills but they are areas in which they have had significant practice and then continue improving through practical application.

As we started the activity, I had one group get into position to begin interpreting. The remainder of the group, I typically assign to be "colleagues and provide feedback." On this particular day, with this particular group, I felt like that was too generic an assignment. I feared they would become bored or feel uninvolved and perhaps bemoan the fact that they didn't get to "do" anything during class that day. So, I decided to assign them more specific "data collection" roles. Those roles included 1) timing and signaling, 2) source language - salient linguistic features, and 3) target language - salient linguistic features. 

• Timing & signaling was tasked with recording how long of a segment the interpreters worked with and what kind of signal they used to pause the source.
• Source language - salient linguistic features was tasked with analyzing the sources and noting aspects of the source that "stood out" to them. 
• Target language - salient linguistic features was tasked with noting aspects of the interpretation being rendered that "stood out" to them. 

Over the course of the activity that day, as a class, we refined and expanded our data collection to include - transitions noted in the source and target and time of the segment along with the length conferring time with the team. The students were excited about data collection and what they were finding. The interpreters, were excited about data being collected on their behalf (or seemed to be) and the discussions that ensued were lively and full of detail not merely including, "I felt good about my work," but a full discussion of the specific behind that "feeling." It was inspiring. I left that class on quite a teaching high. 

Upon conferring with my colleague teaching a different section of the same course, we refined our data collection strategies even further to include - how long the interpretations themselves lasted (this was an idea from a student who was interested in collecting that data), transitions, and asking the active interpreter what data they would like collected on their behalf.  

Returning to class the following day, I was excited to have more data collected. I had noted, however, that the students practicing consecutive interpreting would signal to pause the source at frequent intervals (20 secs or less - as noted by our data collector). I offered the option of having me segment the source for them. They opted for this as one less thing their brains had to keep track of. My ulterior motive was to give them experience in trusting their brains, process, and memory as well as their teams for longer bits of content. We still had data collectors keep track of the length of segments, along with conferring time, and length of interpretations rendered. These segments were between 45 secs and 1 min 45 secs. The students were gaining confidence in their abilities to make sense of longer segments of information. In our debriefing we discussed the reason for the different lengths of the segments, one of the main reasons for  a shorter segment would have been the denseness of material within that segment. For example, in one of the source texts there was discussion of a specific legal definition for jargon - this segment of the source was considerably shorter (45 secs) due to the abstract and legal nature of the content. Whereas, in one of the other source texts, that was much more narrative, in order to co-construct meaning with the source, we needed to be able to view the snippet of that story in its entirety, thus 1 min 45 secs. 

Throughout this process, I also did a sample interpretation of one of the texts and had the students collect data on my work. It provided for a meaty discussion on what was effective, how many fillers I used (only 6), and what my body language looked like if I was struggling to produce an interpretation (choose words) and understanding the next segment of the text simultaneously. 

Through the process of data collection, I have seen multiple times the excitement of collecting data and hearing data about one's work. There is a spirit of excited curiosity in the room, rather than of tense nerves fearing critique that is all too common in interpreter education classrooms. We are learning a lot about the work in general as well as individual's work specifically. Students, based on their reflections, are becoming curious about their work and others, comfortable working in front of their peers, and setting goals based on data collected on their work or others for future improvements. It is quite collaborative and, again, inspiring, to work in this fashion with this group of students.