Papers by Alexandra Rosiers
Since the early days of translation and interpreting studies, scholars have emphasized the value ... more Since the early days of translation and interpreting studies, scholars have emphasized the value of certain personality related traits for translation and interpreting performance. Especially in the conference interpreter world, preconceived opinions about the desired personality traits for conference interpreters seem to exist. However, there is little to no empirical evidence to either corroborate or refuse these ideas. In this paper we aim to explore a set of individual difference variables (IDs) – as these traits are called in the literature – to gain an insight into the profile of aspiring interpreters and to explore whether this profile differs from that of other advanced language experts. To this end, we have compared the IDs of three groups of advanced language learners who have received the same bachelor training but will branch off into three different master's programmes: interpreting, translation and multilingual communication. By means of self-report questionnaires we have gauged the language learners' willingness to communicate, cultural empathy, social initiative, flexibility, open-mindedness and emotional stability before they began their professional training. The data show that student interpreters score significantly higher than students of multilingual communication and student translators on the social initiative and emotional stability dimensions. These results seem to indicate that students aspiring to become interpreters can be distinguished from students aspiring to become translators or multilingual communicators on the basis of these personality traits. These differences are already in place before the students embark on their professional training in the master's programme.
Unlike in the early days of interpreter training, most student interpreters nowadays are still in... more Unlike in the early days of interpreter training, most student interpreters nowadays are still in the process of acquiring their target language(s), which raises questions as to which skills -linguistic as well as non-linguistic -may be required at the outset of interpreter training. This study focuses on individual difference variables and how these relate to interpreting students' performance. It aims to investigate the ways in which the profiles of translation and interpreting students differ by obtaining information regarding their self-perceived communication competence, self-perception of language skills, anxiety levels and integrative motivation. These profiles are then related to the students' sight translation performances, arguably a hybrid activity between translating and interpreting that is as cognitively demanding as simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. The students' performances were assessed by a 'blind judge' along two parameters: (1) overall interpreting performance and (2) fluency. The results suggest that the two groups indeed differ significantly with regard to some of the individual difference variables. However, no significant correlations between these variables and students' sight translation performance were found.
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Papers by Alexandra Rosiers