EXERCISES FOR INTERPRETATION PRACTICE

1. Listen to a colleague make a simple narrative speech while counting backwards aloud.
Start counting from a different number for each speech i.e., 357, 173 etc. Afterwards
summarize to the others what you heard and remember from the original speech.
(Seleskovitch and Lederer 2002:170)
2. Read out a word in the source language. One person must give a target language version at
the same time as a second word is read out. The target language version of that is given as a
third word is read out, etc. To increase the level of difficulty use whole phrases rather than
single words. (Szabó 2003:76)
3. Read out simple mathematical tasks. Students must solve them and answer while listening
to the next task. This can be done monolingually or from a source language into a target
language. (Szabó 2003:76 and Kalina 1992:254)
4. A similar exercise is to ask a student a question. While they are answering the first question
a second is asked, to which the student will answer while a third is asked etc. Initially the
question and answer can be in the same language, later in different language.
5. A question is asked and students must answer "Yes" or "No" and repeat the question while
listening to the next question. For example.....
Ques: Is consecutive interpreting fun?
Answer: No consecutive interpreting is not fun.
This can be made more difficult by moving up from Yes/No questions to Why? questions
requiring a longer more considered response - this is most similar to real simultaneous
interpreting. (Kurz 1992:249 and Kalina 1992:254)
The exercises 3.1-3.5 above are arguably more useful than shadowing (see 3.11 below) as not
only do you have to speak and listen at the same time but also understand and think.This is
therefore more similar to the tasks we complete in the booth.
6.
a) Play a sentence from a tape, listen, stop the tape, think about how to interpret it, speak the
interpretation. Repeat. To increase the level of difficulty....
b) Listen to a sentence, stop the tape, think about how to interpret it, speak the interpretation
while listening to the next sentence, stop the tape, think about how to interpret it etc. Little by
little the thinking pause can be reduced. (also Van Dam 1989:170 and Nadstoga 1989:112)
At a very early stage these exercise are a good introduction to the art of listening and talking
at the same time.
7. Interpret a speech silently in your head. Then interpret the same speech aloud.
Speaking and listening at the same time is not easy. Neither is thinking and listening. This
exercise is an interim stage in the process.
8. Improvisation exercise. While in the booth, improvise a speech of 2 minutes on a subject
volunteered by a colleague.
This exercise trains the split attention of the interpreter since as you improvise you should be
thinking ahead to your next sentence/paragraph so that the speech remains fluent.
9. A more difficult (and often entertaining) variant of the previous exercise. Do the same as in
9 except students outside the booth show cards with keywords on them at short intervals. The
person speaking must incorporate the word/idea coherently into the improvised speech.
In addition to training split attention this activity accurately mirrors the lack of control we
have on content when in the booth, and trains you to think on your feet.
10. Shadow or paraphrase a speech (in the same language) while at the same time writing
something completely unrelated on a piece of paper. i.e. Numbers from 1-100 in reverse
order. (The Interpreter’s edge[2])
11. All sight translation is in effect a division of your attention as you read ahead in the text
while speaking. See also the exercises in Part VI 5 Anticipation.

Exercise 1
In the beginning, the students are given a text (250-300 words) in their native language and
are asked to read the whole text in 20-30 seconds. Then, they are asked general questions
about the subject of the text. In the second phase, they are asked more specific questions
(such as names, dates, places, etc.) before they are asked to read the text for the second time.
This time, they are given 10-15 seconds to find the specific information. Lastly, the students
are given enough time to read the text thoroughly. This time, they are asked comprehension
questions. The same exercise is repeated with the texts written in L2. The aim of this exercise
is to develop reading comprehension and fast reading skills.

Exercise 2
In the following weeks, the instructor chooses texts from various fields and gives only the
titles of the texts and asks students to use their passive knowledge on the subject. For
example, the instructor asks students what they expect from a text entitled "Painful
changeover to Euro". The students produce key words by brainstorming on the subject. In the
beginning they may wander from the subject and produce irrelevant keywords. However, as
they begin to use their passive knowledge and make logical connections they will come to the
point. Then, the instructor randomly chooses keywords from the text and asks students to
make logical connections between those keywords and form a bold outline of the text. The
aim of this exercise is to enable the students to use their passive knowledge and make logical
connections between the facts. Following this exercise, the students are handed out the
original text and are asked to check if their outline and assumptions are correct. Then they
read the text one more time by using fast reading techniques and mark the unknown words.
However, the instructor does not explain those unknown words at this stage.

Exercise 3
The same text used in the previous exercise will be used in this exercise. This time, the
students are asked to analyze the text in detail. What is the type of the text? Is it informative?
Is it vocative? How is the form of the text? Does it include titles, subtitles, articles, tables,
graphs, etc? What is the message of the text? Does the text include technical words, jargon,
abbreviations, etc? Are the sentences complex? Those questions will prepare the student for
the translation process. The following exercises will enable students to develop their own
strategies to deal with language-specific problems.

Exercise 4
One of the problems that perplex students is the presence of unknown words. This problem
also slows down the reading speed of students and disables them to deal with other problems
they face in sight translation. In fast reading process, when the student encounters an
unknown word, or a word that is difficult to pronounce, his/her reading speed will slow
down. However, in a slow and meaningful reading process, he/she either will be able to guess
the meaning of the unknown word by using contextual clues or will realize that the word is
not crucial for understanding the message of the whole text. In some cases, however, the
word may be directly related to the message and it may cause problems in translation if the
word is omitted or ignored. Bearing this in mind, the lecturer may choose texts that may help
students to deal with unknown words. The following strategies can be applied on the sample
texts:
a) To focus on the message of the sentence/paragraph rather than the meaning of the
word.
Sample text: If anyone is asked to rate a person, whom he knows sufficiently well, on a
number of personality variables, he will tend to be influenced by his general opinion of
 the person. If he has a high opinion of the person he will tend to rate him high on all
desirable qualities, and vice versa if he has a low opinion. (C.J. Adcock: Fundamentals of
Psychology)
b) To guess the meaning of the word by using contextual clues.
Sample text: If you were to place a human brain on a table in front of you, you would
notice that it is divided neatly into two halves vertically from front to back: these are the
right and left cerebral hemispheres. And each hemisphere is further divided into four so-
called lobes: the one at the front (the frontal lobe) is responsible for controlling movement
and for some aspects of emotions; the occipital lobe (at the back) deals with sight, the
lobe at the side (the temporal lobe) is an important memory store; and the parietal lobe (at
the top) has a vital role in comparing and integrating information that flows into the brain
through the sensory channels of vision, hearing, smell and touch. (Richard Leakey and
Robert Lewin: People of the Lake)

Exercise 5
Another language-specific problem that may cause problems in the process of sight
translation is complex sentence structures. Long, complex and compound sentence structures
generally slow down the reading speed and increase the risk of wrong interpretation. Using
"parsing" and "chunking" methods may eliminate this problem.
For this exercise, the students are handed out texts, which are written in complex sentence
structures. The students are asked to parse each sentence in order to work out to what
grammatical type each word and clause belong. Then, they are asked to determine the
smallest semantic units in each sentence. Depending on the sentence structure of the language
they are translating into, they restructure their sentences. However, it should be noted that the
aim of this exercise is to analyze the sentence structure and to re-formulate it in the target
language. The aim is not to use the same grammatical structure but to give the same message
in the target language.

Exercise 6
This exercise will help students to focus on the meaning rather than the structure and the
words of a given text. The students are given texts written in their native language and they
are asked to "paraphrase" each sentence. They are expected to use their own words to give the
same message. They try to re-express each sentence in 2-3 different ways without changing
the meaning. They are allowed to make additions and omissions, to break a long sentence into
smaller sentences, to combine short sentences and make a longer sentence and to change the
sentence structure (e.g. active sentences to passive, passive sentences to active sentences).
The only rule is not to change the meaning.
Suggestions
The above-mentioned exercises aim at enabling students to produce correct, coherent and
fluent translations. However, all those exercises are in-class activities. It is obvious that real-
life conditions will be different and sometimes more difficult. Therefore, the students should
be prepared to solve various problems before they work in real-world conditions.
For example:
The text to be sight translated may be handwritten. Hence, in order to familiarize the student
with various handwritings, in-class activities should include handwritten texts.
The text to be sight translated may involve ungrammatical sentence structures and poor
punctuation. Therefore, texts written by non-native-speakers who are unfamiliar with the
rules of grammar and punctuation should also be included in the exercises to make students
familiarize with that kind of texts.
The text to be sight translated may be incoherent, or poorly organized. In such a case, the
student should be able to detect shortcomings and correct them in the shortest time.
The text to be sight translated may involve graphs, tables, pictures or diagrams. The students
should be able to read and interpret those visual-aided texts.
In order to expose the students to different styles of writing and document structures, texts of
considerable difficulty and complexity should be chosen. Though text types and topics may
vary according to market demand, a sight translation course syllabus design should include
the following text types: Commercial and economic texts, e.g. real-world texts on current
world economic and financial issues, international trade and business, scientific and technical
texts, e.g. medicine, environment, computer science, journal articles, manuals, patents,
political and legal texts.
In conclusion, it should be noted that training time is the time to introduce students to the
real-life process of translation. They should be made aware of the fact that there are many
factors which may act as constraints on the process. Their role is to make certain decisions in
order to maneuver among those factors.