This presentation examines the issue of simultaneous interpreting and community interpreters in several ways. First, it will briefly present some of the established research on simultaneous interpretation, so that participants can better understand the processes involved in this complex cognitive task. Second, it will outline two of the principle approaches that guide the teaching of simultaneous interpreting to conference interpreters, in an attempt to identify any relevant "lessons" for community interpreting. Finally, it will attempt to bridge the current training gap by offering some basic exercises and techniques that working and student community interpreters can use to begin to develop their simultaneous skills.


Andrew Clifford, Chair, School of Translation, at York University, Toronto
Dr. Clifford’s first contact with the professional translation world came when he began working as a community interpreter in the early 1990s. He interpreted for the Government of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board, what was then the Ontario Worker’s Compensation Board, and a number of healthcare institutions. He later went on to work as a translator, a technical writer, and finally a conference interpreter. He holds an MA in conference interpretation, is an accredited conference interpreter with the Government of Canada, and is an Active Member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC). To pursue his research interests, Dr. Clifford completed a PhD in Translation Studies at the University of Ottawa in 2003. His dissertation was a psychometric analysis of interpreter certification exams. Since that time, he has gone on to publish a number of peer-reviewed articles using theoretical frameworks from evaluation and measurement, ethics, and pragmatics to examine conference interpreting, community interpreting, scientific translation, and other topics.