Reconsidering Interpreter Training Models in Light of Divergent Contexts: When Europe Meets China

Abstract

For the past 60 years, the AIIC/ESIT model for the training of interpreters has been highly influential in the Western World. It is without doubt that the ESIT/AIIC approach has been truly influential in interpreter training. Yet within the past 20 to 30 years, the world has seen many economic changes – the economic centre of gravity has begun to shift from the ‘old’ developed Northern America and Western Europe to new centres in South America, the Middle East, and East Asia. With that in mind, few studies have considered whether the ESIT/AIIC model of interpreting training is the optimum choice for environments with large numbers of ‘developing economies’ such as Brazil, India, or China with very different kinds of demand produced by their involvement in emerging international markets. Rather than assuming the validity of a one-size-fits-all framework, it may be that interpreting models influenced by the likes of the Paris School require a reconsideration on more nuanced reappraisal of context. This reappraisal is performed by honing in on contextual conditions in modern-day China—one of the biggest developing economies in the world. More specifically, the rigid pedagogical rules of the Paris School and their elitist approach to interpreter training have made conference interpreting a rather exclusive profession with extremely high entry thresholds. Yet China’s demand for ‘middle-layer’ interpreters has thrown up new problems for the old established interpreting training doctrines. The major argument put forward in this paper is that good interpreter training practices are shaped by both demand for skills (in turn informed by the organisation of the economy and the opportunities it provides) and the supply of skills available at the local level. Interpreter training models should not be shaped by universal laws, but actually should be more receptive to context-specific conditions, thus retaining an element of flexibility.