How to teach sight interpreting applying a scenario-situation model

Abstract

The article deals with sight interpreting as a necessary stage of teaching the interpreter to work with a foreign delegation within a cultural programme. Proper cross-cultural communication requires skills and experience in working with the authentic Russian and foreign texts, parallel glossaries, in order to enrich the professional thesaurus, and train translation of cultural discourse texts. Training interpreting at the initial stage by modelling a communicative situation, standard for the interpreter’s professional practice, via integrated scenes, allows to adapt to the environment of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural interaction, forming and perfecting psychological and cognitive skills and knowledge of the interpreter’s professional competence. The authors propose tasks and exercises, developed on the textual material represented by leaflets of famous cultural and entertainment institutions: museums, art galleries, planetariums, theaters, zoos, concert and opera halls, etc. The tasks and exercises aim at mastering skills and knowledge necessary for the interpreter’s work in various settings of the Cultural Programme communicative situation: a city or a museum tour, an interview with artists, presentations of art and cultural objects, ceremonial opening of cultural institutions, art exhibitions. The authors believe that teaching sight interpreting by such tasks and exercises also promotes progressive training of such interpreting types as one-way liaison interpreting (the interpretation of a guide’s speech), two-way liaison interpreting (dialogue communication between members of a foreign delegation with cultural institutions’ representatives, representatives of art community), “simplified” consecutive interpretation (used in numerous scenarios of the communicative situation).