Aptitude for Interpreting - symposium

[Myriam Vermeerbergen]

CALL FOR PAPERS
LESSIUS UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
and
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA
in collaboration with CETRA
organise a symposium on

APTITUDE FOR INTERPRETING.

TOWARDS RELIABLE ADMISSION TESTING

Lessius University College, Antwerp, Belgium

28-29 May 2009

Each year, conference interpreting schools organise labour-intensive  
and time-consuming admission tests. In the end, they accept a few  
hundred applicants, and reject many hundreds more, some 75% of those  
that apply. Of these few hundred accepted students, just over one half  
makes it to successful graduation. And what about aptitude and  
selection for community interpreting and sign language interpreting  
programmes? It seems that admission tests into interpreting schools  
need more of our attention. Unlike any other kind of assessment in  
interpreter training and professional life, admission screening  
requirespredicting whether a candidate will be able to learn to  
interpret or not. This aspect places special demands on both admission  
testing and aptitude research, and the aim of this symposium is to  
explore them.

We invite research-based contributions on the following topics:

aptitude for all forms of spoken language and sign language interpreting

validity, reliability, administration and scoring of admission tests

predictors of the interpreting skill

commonalities and differences in aptitude for different interpreting  
modalities

methodological issues of research into aptitude for interpreting (N.B.  
a dedicated roundtable on this topic will take place on May 29)

Intending contributors should submit a 500-word abstract of their  
paper (30 min presentation + 10 min discussion). The language of the  
symposium is English. Abstracts should be sent to heidi.salaets at lessius.eu 
  or sarka.timarova at lessius.eu. The deadline for submission is  
December 31, 2008. Contributors will be notified of acceptance by  
January 31, 2009. Contributors selected for presentation will be  
invited to submit a draft paper based on their talk by April 30, 2009,  
and a final version by June 30, 2009 for publication in peer-reviewed  
proceedings.

www.lessius.eu/tt/nieuws/aptitude.aspx
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