A Community of Practice for Interpreting: the missing link

This week, on the 11th and 12th September, I attended a very good interpreting conference in Newcastle University:   talking to the world . Two days of inspiring presentations and discussions, networking and socialising with interpreting on centre stage. I always feel it is a privilege to take part in such forums. One presentation in particular grabbed my attention; t he role of the educational interpreter: A dynamic model by  Herculene Kotzé,  North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa . Herculene explains how at a superficial level the role of the interpreter seems to be well defined in most codes of conduct, despite some controversies. In South Africa, there are 11 official languages . As such, universities face the true challenge to decide on their language strategy and choose official languages to use in the classroom and still remain inclusive. North West University, Potchefstroom decided to use English and Afrikaans. As such, educational interpreters ...

In my previous post, I presented the three essential ingredients for a Communities of Practice to exist,  as presented by Etienne Wenger . However, let's have a quick recap. Remember what they are?  - a Domain        - a Community   - a Practice Excellent, you remember them all. Let's now try and see if these ingredients work 'in real life'. Today, I would like to illustrate the 'theory' with a concrete example: the Public Service Interpreting and Translation Network Group  (PSITNG). A few words about the PSITNG; the group was launched in 2008. Founding members of the PSITNG are mostly representatives of the PSIT industry who were consulted during the curriculum design of the new Master's in Public Service Interpreting - MAPSI (Health and Legal ) at London Metropolitan University. As course leader of Master programmes in interpreting, I invested quite a lot of time and energy making sure the MAPSI was meeting t...