Self-assessment Of Students Of Simultaneous Interpreting-Using The Dynamic Quality Assessment Model

Over the past decades significant developments have taken place in the field of interpreting: interpreting has been recognized as an academic discipline and a profession; interpreters now enjoy memberships in professional associations; and members of the profession abide by codes of ethics and standards of practice.With the thriving of interpretation as a service product, quality assessment of interpretation has become one of the most influential research directions in the conference interpreting research (CIR) community. The public poses higher and higher demand for interpreting, but there has never been a universally recognized adequate and effective assessment model that can properly respond. The simultaneous interpreting community is also trying to find out what it is that makes for excellence in the profession. For example, in a paper published in the AIIC bulletin after the International Conference on Interpretation in Turku, Mackintosh (1995) sees quality as one of the basic themes which "constitute the backbone of the Association's current activities and which will be taken into account in any possible restructuring". As the AIIC report (submitted to the Council by a member from the Asian-Pacific region) indicates, while the organization prides itself on excellence and while its Basic Texts "have inherent in them the concept of quality", AIIC is still groping both to define it and especially devise ways of maintaining it.Quality assessment of interpreting is vital to the growth of the interpreter and the development of interpreting as a subject or as a profession. The professionalized interpreting activities definitely have their corresponding norms and regulations or demands and standards for the interpreters, so the training programs have to establish a set of systematic and effective assessment methods so as to help the trainees (students) to achieve gradual and steady improvements.After each training lesson, the students would all probably prefer to be told that they are wonderful and need no improvement, but they can benefit more from honest, constructive criticism. Self criticism or assessment is equally important and may double the positive effects, for the students have experienced the whole interpreting process themselves.Based on the theoretical framework of cognitive psychology and simultaneous interpreting, this paper intends to test the effectiveness of the dynamic quality assessment model proposed by Hugo Marquant to see whether or not it is applicable to the self assessment in the growth of the simultaneous interpreting students. Through carrying out empirical research and by adopting the qualitative research interview methodology, this paper explores the adequacy and reliability of the parameters set by Hugo Marquant in his model. Finally, an improved version of self assessment model of interpreting is put forward based on the experiment which covers all the necessary parameters of the dynamic quality assessment model.