Mária Bakti: The development of interpreting competence
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7 Methodology of the longitudinal investigation presented in this work
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7.1 Participants

7.1 Participants

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The longitudinal study reported here was carried out between 2016 and 2018, with the participation of four interpreter trainees (three females, one male), whose C language was English. The students started their interpreter and translator training Master’s program in the fall semester of 2016, and graduated in 2018. Recordings were made of their consecutive interpreting performance at the end of the second, third and fourth semester of their studies, in May 2017, January 2018, and May 2018 respectively.

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The students’ A language is Hungarian, B language is Spanish, and C language is English. The students chose the interpreting stream and agreed to participate in the longitudinal study voluntarily.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

There were only four students who volunteered to participate in this investigation from a total pool of about 50 students. One limiting factor was that the majority of students chose the translation stream of the MA program, and only about ten to twenty percent of the students opted for the interpreting stream. Out of these students, many decided not to participate in this longitudinal project. It is clear that this is a small sample for a longitudinal study, and that individual differences might mask general trends this investigation, aimed at mapping in relation to the development of interpreting competence. However, I think that this is a valuable starting point to further studies into the development of interpreting competence. In each chapter, in other words, in each investigation, both the trends and the individual development paths are discussed. In the closing chapter, the individual development path of each student is summarized.

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As a first step, the students filled in a questionnaire (See Appendix 3) about their background in languages and their interpreting experience. The students chose a pseudonym, which is used in presenting and analysing their target language texts, retrospective evaluative comments and evaluations from interpreter trainers and the target audience. Their average age was 23.25 when they started their participation in the longitudinal study. They had been learning their B language, Spanish for 9.5 years on average, and their C language, English for 16 years on average at the beginning of the longitudinal study. All of the students had visited a Spanish-speaking country and three out of the four students had visited an English-speaking country when the longitudinal study began at the end of the second semester of their studies. Most of them started learning Spanish after English, as their second foreign language, and had accomplished a BA in Spanish before starting their MA in translation and interpreting.

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Student Estrella spent between one to six months studying in a Spanish-speaking county, and between one week and one month studying in an English-speaking country. At the beginning of the longitudinal study she had already had interpreting experience from A to B, B to A, C to A and A to C. She had interpreted between 6 to 20 days in the A to B and B to A language pair, and between one to five days in the C to A, A to C language pair. Student Luna had interpreted more than twenty days in the A to B and B to A language combination before the start of the longitudinal study. Student Matador had interpreted between 6 to 20 days in the language combination A to B and B to A, and between six to twenty days in the language combination C to A before the longitudinal study started. Student Senorita had interpreted between six to twenty days in the language combination A to B and B to A, and between one to five days in the language direction C to A before the longitudinal study started (see Table 7.1).
 

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Table 7.1 Interpreting experience (in days) outside of interpreter training of the participants at the beginning of the longitudinal study
Student
B to A, A to B
C to A
Estrella
6–20
1–5
Luna
20+
0
Matador
6–20
6–20
Senorita
6–20
1–5
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

In summary, three out of the four interpreter trainees had some interpreting experience in the C to A language direction when starting their participation in the longitudinal study. Given their background, and based on Gile’s (1995) Gravitational Model, we can infer that their Spanish was more active than their English, as a result of more recent activation and the time they had spent in a Spanish-speaking country.
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