Lecture: 1 hour/week
Seminar: 2 hours/week
Field experience: 1 hour/week
- lecture/seminar
- small group work
- simulated interpretation practice
- interpretation practice in community
- course readings/videos
Spectrum of (ASL) language use in the Deaf, hard of hearing, Deafblind community:
- Varieties of English-influenced Contact Sign
- Close-up ASL and/or hand-over-hand tracking
- Tactile ASL
- Pro-tactile signals
- Hand-to-hand fingerspelling with adapted British manual alphabet
Power and responsibility in the roles of interpreter and intervenor:
- Duties of an intervenor compared to those of an interpreter
- Ethical challenges in maintaining appropriate boundaries
- Social variables that impact meaning-making
- Awareness of privilege, intersecting identities, allyship, one’s own positionality and bias
Ongoing skill enhancement for the steps and sub-processes in interpretation:
- Predicting what to expect from the discourse
- Concentrating and attending to source message
- Representing meaning, dropping source language form
- Planning to express meaning using target language form
- Producing a clear and cohesive target message
- Monitoring and critiquing one’s own process and results
- Strategies for managing the time constraints of simultaneous interpreting
- Strategies for using consecutive interpreting and interaction management
- Criteria for opting between simultaneous and consecutive mode
- Strategies for effective co-interpreting as a team
Analysis and assessment of interpretation:
- Features of a successful interpretation
- Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) as a learning tool
- Demand-Control framework as a learning tool
- Peer feedback and shared analysis
- Consumer feedback
- Self-reflection and identification of focus areas/goals for one’s own development
Professional demeanour and interaction, including:
- Clear, respectful, effective interpersonal communication
- Punctuality, effort, enthusiasm
- Patience with self, others, and circumstances
- Discretion, diplomacy, confidentiality
- Working collaboratively with peers, consumers, teachers, and others
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Use preparatory materials and schema of the local Deaf, hard of hearing, Deafblind community to predict and prepare for an interpretation task
- Engage with consumers to effectively determine appropriate target language variety
- Describe the differences between acting as an interpreter or as an intervenor
- Produce interpretations that meet the goals of the particular speakers/signers/settings
- Communicate in a variety of close-up and/or tactile ways with people who are Deafblind
- Critically evaluate the relative success/effectiveness of an interpretation
- Engage with consumers to seek and incorporate their feedback
- Participate in theoretical discussions and reflective seminars conducted in ASL
- Reflect on one’s own interpreting skills and identify focus areas for ongoing development
Assessment will be in accordance with the Douglas College Evaluation Policy. Evaluation will be based on a combination of individual and group work, and at the instructor’s discretion may include presentations, written assignments, papers, quizzes and/or exams.
A typical distribution of graded assignments follows:
- Interpreting Assignments: 30%
- Written Analyses: 15%
- Self-reflections and Goal-setting: 25%
- Quiz 20%
- Volunteer Interpreting Log: 10%
This is a letter graded course.
A list of required and optional textbooks and materials is provided for students at the beginning of each semester.