A Survey Report On Interpreting Trainers'

In previous studies on interpreting quality assessment,researchers often focused on two major actors,namely,professional interpreters and users of interpreting service.However,rarely has any research been conducted from the perspective of interpreting trainers.Since China launched the MTI(Master of Translation and Interpretation)program in 2008,interpreting trainers have played an important role in cultivating future interpreters.To understand their expectations of good interpretation is therefore of vital importance to the interpreting profession.This study surveyed 94 interpreting trainers from 18 provinces and regions in China to understand their expectations of good interpretation and compared the result with that of professional interpreters(Bühler 1986)and users of interpreting service(Kurz 1993).It was found that the trainers have generally ranked the content-related criteria higher than the form-related criteria,which is consistent with the views of professional interpreters and users of interpreting service.However,in terms of specific quality criteria,the expectations of interpreting trainers are different from those of professional interpreters and users of interpreting service.In addition,the study also discovered that some background variables of the trainers(i.e.work locations,age,working languages and years of interpreting practice)have an impact on their expectations of the quality criteria.This study offered a new perspective in interpreting quality assessment and figured out that there are differences between interpreting training and interpreting practice.This is of great significance to the interpreting training.