英文摘要 |
In the past decade, Taiwan and other countries have seen a growth in thenumber of interpreter training programs and, as a result, an increasing numberof new interpreters have entered the job market. As the market becomes morecompetitive, one has to wonder how these aspiring interpreters are judged bytheir respective training programs at their exit exams as being ready to work asinterpreters. This study aims to answer this question by comparing exit exampractices of Taiwanese, Chinese, British and American programs that trainEnglish-Chinese interpreters. Eleven such programs were chosen, includingseven programs in Taiwan, one in China, two in Britain, and one in the USA.Our data were collected through interviews, questionnaires, correspondence, andanalysis of relevant documents. All data were analyzed, coded and categorizedinto three categories: exam policies, test-writing and evaluation practices. Ouranalysis showed that interpreter programs generally did not use specific criteriato judge or control the difficulty level of tests. The difficulty of a test wasoften used as part of the evaluation criteria. Also, interpreting experts' holisticjudgment was heavily relied upon in evaluation. All interpreting programs haddeveloped evaluation criteria for their exit exams. However, these criteria wereoften not thoroughly followed in the actual exam evaluation. |