Assessing Dialogue Interpreters' Interactional Competence:The Development And Validation Of A Rating Scale

Researches show that the interactional competence(IC)of dialogue interpreters plays a special role in co-construction of the meaning in communication,coordination of power relations and identity construction of dialogue participants.Currently,there is neither a clear definition of the IC applied by interpreters in DI,nor a targeted training and assessment system,which could not satisfy the needs of various types of interpreting training.Thus,this research aims to provide a clear definition of IC of dialogue interpreters and to develop an IC rating scale for classroom training and final examinations of dialogue interpreters.The research questions(RQ)are as follows:RQ1:What is the definition of IC of dialogue interpreters?What are the sub-components of this competence?RQ2:According to the definition,how to develop an IC rating scale appropriate for classroom training and final examinations?It consists of three sub-questions:1.Which categories should be included in the scale?How many rating levels should be included?3.What are the differences between interpreters with different levels of IC?RQ3:What is the validity of this rating scale?It includes two sub-questions:1.In the development stage,are there substantial evidences to show that the scale is of high validity?2.When apply the scale in actual testing tasks,are there substantial evidences to show that the scale is of high validity?With the guidance of the theoretical framework(interactionalist way of construct definition),various research methods such as systematic review and interpreting test experiment were applied to answer above RQs.The research findings are as follows:First,the IC of dialogue interpreters consists of turn-taking management,positioning and the identification and use of multimodal signals and the rating scale designed based on the definition of "'dialogue interpreters' IC" demonstrates high validity.Second,"interactionalist way of construct definition" provides a clear theoretical guidance for the development and validation of rating scale.Besides,"argument-based validation framework" proves to be an effective reference for the validation of the rating scale.Third,the data-driven method helps to improve the validity of the scale both during the development and validation stage.The research relies on substantial literature and validity evidence,fully demonstrating the integration of different disciplines and the application of various empirical methods.The research findings help the dialogue interpreting training to be more targeted and the form of DI final examination to be improved.Though the research still has some limitation in the size of corpus,the details concerning research designing,current research results are quite inspiring.In follow-up researches,the size of corpus shall be improved and the methods shall be refined.