Interpreting testing and assessment: A state-of-the-art review

Over the past decade, testing and assessing spoken-language interpreting has garnered an increasing amount of attention from stakeholders in interpreter education, professional certification, and interpreting research. This is because in these fields assessment results provide a critical evidential basis for high-stakes decisions, such as the selection of prospective students, the certification of interpreters, and the confirmation/refutation of research hypotheses. However, few reviews exist providing a comprehensive mapping of relevant practice and research. The present article therefore aims to offer a state-of-the-art review, summarizing the existing literature and discovering potential lacunae. In particular, the article first provides an overview of interpreting ability/competence and relevant research, followed by main testing and assessment practice (e.g., assessment tasks, assessment criteria, scoring methods, specificities of scoring operationalization), with a focus on operational diversity and psychometric properties. Second, the review describes a limited yet steadily growing body of empirical research that examines rater-mediated interpreting assessment, and casts light on automatic assessment as an emerging research topic. Third, the review discusses epistemological, psychometric, and practical challenges facing interpreting testers. Finally, it identifies future directions that could address the challenges arising from fast-changing pedagogical, educational, and professional landscapes.

Feelings about language brokering

Young language brokers have a complex emotional relationship with the translation and interpreting tasks that they engage in for their families and communities. Whereas they often report feeling happy, useful and proud of themselves for being able to contribute to their families’ well-being, they also struggle with frustration, pressure from their loved ones, and cognitive and emotional burdens. This study aims to map the evolution of feelings regarding language brokering among young adults and to reveal the effects that formal interpreting education might have in this process. For these purposes, it examines the narratives of 75 self-identified former and/or current language brokers who are registered in an undergraduate interpreting program in the United States. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of these narratives (collected at three different points during their course of study) indicate that the participants feel more positively than negatively about their brokering tasks and that positive emotions increase overall throughout their interpreter education (with a noticeable peak halfway through the program). These analyses also reveal how triggers for positive and negative emotion shift through time: whereas their enhanced skills contribute to positive feelings, poor working conditions and brokering settings beyond their immediate families become new stressors.

Exploring the potential for CAI implementation in interpreter training in Ukraine

The article purports to assess the potential of the current European training in computer-assisted interpreting and associated technological competence development for making the corresponding technological turn in Ukraine’s tertiary interpreter education based on a narrative review. Discussed are the issues of the technological turn in interpreting and its teaching, the corresponding awareness of educators and interpreters, the role of computer-assisted interpreting (CAI) tools in interpreting activities and training, the related challenges faced by interpreters and interpreters’ training, and how Ukraine compares in this with the developments in the EU. Some problems are dwelt upon of COVID-propelled interpreting digitalization. Conclusions imply that Ukraine must undertake quickly such a technological turn not to lag behind the ongoing process of changes in interpreting and interpreter training.