Language brokering experience among interpreting students: pedagogical implications for the development of interpreting competence

ABSTRACT

Young bilinguals in multilingual environments frequently act as language brokers for members of their families and communities. It is thus not surprising that growing numbers of young language brokers are drawn to formal translation/interpreting programs. Nevertheless, when they join, they often encounter pedagogies that tend to focus on elective sequential bilinguals (i.e. individuals who purposefully acquired their L2 after childhood) and that rarely acknowledge previous interpreting experiences. This study explores the specific needs of young language brokers as they become apparent in their accounts of previous interpreting experiences. For this purpose, it analyses the narratives of 67 self-identified current or former young language brokers who are pursuing formal interpreting education. It identifies their perceived strengths and weaknesses, features of successful interpreted events, and attitudes towards interpreting. By mapping these findings against the framework of Interpreting Competence (and its sub-competences), this study ultimately aims to inform the fine-tuning of pedagogical approaches and methods that capitalise on and are sensitive to the backgrounds of these students.

KEYWORDS:

• Language brokering
• interpreting competence
• curricular design
• needs analysis
• attitudes
• narratives

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Pöchhacker (2004, 72–4, 167–8) for detailed descriptions of the cognitive-processing paradigm and of the development of expertise studies in interpreting.

2. This model mainly uses PACTE’s terminology for consistency purposes throughout the article, with the understanding that other models have identified the same or similar sub-competences, but labelled them in slightly different ways.

3. Whereas the original PACTE model (PACTE Group 2017b, 36–8) considered this a sub-competence, their latest revision considers it ‘components’. This article maintains the notion of sub-competence, as also identified by Kelly (2005).

4. See, for instance, the visual representation of the PACTE model (PACTE Group 2017b, 41).

5. Cohort 1 (n = 19); Cohort 2 (n = 27); Cohort 3 (n = 21). This study was approved as described by CUNY's Human Research Protection Program (protocol number:  2015-0665).

6. Data collection took place in September 2015 (cohort 1), September 2016 (cohort 2), and September 2017 (cohort 3).

7. The questionnaire also included the Interpreter Interpersonal Role Inventory (Angelelli 2004), which compiled data for other parts of the study. For consistency purposes, this study used the original IPRI, and not its later adaptation for youngsters (IPRI Junior) (Angelelli 2017), which was published after this project had already started.

8. Maximum age values are outlier data points as four participants are over 30 years old.

9. As the body of literature on child language brokering grows, broad generalisations about brokers’ demographic profile and the onset of language brokering experiences (see Morales and Hanson 2005) become untenable and give way to a call for research-based explorations of this diversity.

10. Excerpts reproduce the original narratives (including errors). All names are pseudonyms.

11. However, parentification processes seem to be related to the overall quality of family relations (Weisskirch 2007) and do not necessarily occur in all cases of language brokering. Parents and children-interpreters often see themselves as a ‘performance team’, making decisions jointly while parents retain parental roles (Valdés 2003, 97–8).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute for Language Education in Transcultural Context (City University of New York) [2016 ILE Grant] and by the Professional Staff Congress and the City University of New York [PSC CUNY Award 60634-0048].