Pedagogical challenges in teaching simultaneous interpreting and consecutive interpreting with notes to LLD students in heterogenous groups

Abstract

To guarantee access to professional interpreting services in the public sector (PSI), institutions and authorities must work together to detect, train, test, and monitor interpreter activity (Giambruno 2014, 96). With the world’s first Interpreting Act (2021) and a relatively long PSI training and monitoring tradition, Norway is a pioneer in this field. This article explores how simultaneous and consecutive interpreting technique is taught at Oslo Metropolitan University. The authors draw on their own teaching experience, ongoing dialogue with colleagues, comments from students and language mentors, and the experiential-dialogic approach to interpreter training (Felberg and Skaaden, 2020) to analyze the challenges of (1) adapting the conference interpreting-centered training tradition to the needs of PSI; (2) dealing with heterogeneous student groups in terms of professional experience and previous qualifications; and (3) teaching heterogeneous language groups with a high presence of languages of lesser diffusion, where students also happen to be market competitors.