Feedback for interpreters
I’ve written a few posts now about practice for interpreters – how it’s not just like riding a bike, and summer practice sessions. A word I mentioned 6 times in those two posts was “feedback” so today I wanted to look at the notion of “feedback” for interpreters: how to get it, how to give it, and how to take it.
Feedback is when you receive comments on your performance, both positive and negative, that allow you to know where to improve in order to give a better quality interpretation next time. I’ll leave the “quality” debate to Lara so let’s begin with the first one of those three items I listed – how to get feedback.
If you studied for any form of degree in interpreting you would have regularly received feedback in order to progress and improve your skills, however once you’re out in the big scary world as a professional that constant feedback stops. One way to ensure you keep working on your skills is to get feedback through practising with other interpreters – you can give each other feedback, focus on specific skills and monitor your progress.
Another way to get feedback would be to take part in a project such as InterpretimeBank where you earn listening hours by giving feedback to others who will then do the same for you.
It’s all very well getting this feedback but it has to be given to you in the right way for it to be digestible and usable. Some key tips for feedback that I would suggest are the following:
Find out what the person you are giving feedback to is working on – is there a particular skill they are aiming to develop in this speech? Have they been trying to correct pronunciation for specific words? Make sure you are listening to what they are focusing on as well as giving general feedback
Give both positive and negative comments – for example “good use of tone for emphasis” and “you could work on restructuring sentences to sound more natural”
It should also be noted that “negative” comments can be more useful if conveyed as constructive criticism rather than negative comments per se
Don’t say everything – give the person a realistic amount of information that they can deal with, there’s no point overwhelming them with a list of every single mistake they made if these can be grouped into a few points that cover it all with some examples to explain this
A useful way to ensure your feedback is helpful for the other person can be to make a feedback grid such as we used in the Leeds EN IT practice week which broke down the feedback into the following sections:
Consecutive
Presentation
Content
Form
Simultaneous
Accuracy
Language
Presentation
You can of course add more sections by discussing what the person wants you to comment on or not.
One piece of advice that I got from documents sent to me to help prepare for WISE was to try and identify the symptom, cause and remedy for each piece of feedback that you are giving – it’s no good pointing out to someone that they have a major problem without also coming up with the reason for it and a solution. This can be a really good way to learn together and to also spot some of your own skills that you need to work on too.
Of course all of the above is all well and good in a practice environment but what about on the job? When you are working it can be difficult to get this level of detailed feedback – a client will rarely tell you that your décalage was slightly too close on that last presentation, or your booth partner may not want to discuss anything work related once the assignment is over. However, we should all be self-monitoring as we interpret and at the end of the assignment or during a lunchbreak if you have any time you can note down how you feel it is going, what elements you struggled with and what you feel you did well at. Most interpreters I know, myself included, can be very overly harsh with themselves so it’s important to write down that last part too – what you did well at – so that you can look back over your personal feedback and know what to work on but also feel pleased with yourself.
I strongly suggest keeping a feedback diary to see if a particular issue re-occurs and tick off skills that you to seem to have mastered in order to keep your progress steady.
Finally, knowing how to take feedback is also important, but you need to know what to do with it. First of all remember that it is not personal when you get constructive criticism, but look at this as an opportunity to problem solve and have something to work on – no-one is perfect and it’s only by being humble that you can make real lasting progress. We are all here to help each other and getting good feedback is an excellent way to ensure you continue working to become a great interpreter! #colleaguesnotcompetition
