INTERPRETING FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION WORKSHOP SERIES

Congratulations on successfully completing the Spring 2022 Interpreting for Special Education Workshop Series!

We want to help you remember the knowledge and skills you learned so that you can use and continue to develop them in your practice. To help with this, we summarized the content from the “Be Ready” and “Takeaways” documents you received throughout the workshop series.

Have this available where you work, refer to it often, and share it with your school community. Please keep in touch about your experiences and progress so that we can continue to learn from each other.

Working with and Supporting the Interpreter in Special Education Settings

This workshop sets the stage for the workshop series and invites additional members of your school community who work with interpreters to attend. We presented some key questions that school districts should regularly ask themselves:

• The provision of language services and special education services to families happens constantly within schools. Why is it important to understand both, language services and special education services, before offering them to families?

• How best can the provision of language services and special education services be better coordinated to further support families?

• What other legally required supports are needed during the mandated provision of special services?

Encourage your school community to remember:

• Special education calls for a greater degree of involvement and advocacy, while language access enables this to happen in an equitable fashion.

• The same way a bilingual special education professional may not have the skills to provide interpretation, an interpreter may not have the background or been trained to provide interpretation during a special education meeting.

• A special education meeting with an interpreter will run smoothly if all meeting participants recognize and value the role of the interpreter, and if the interpreter understands the special education process holistically.

• Interpreters need to prepare for meetings! Meeting organizers should let the interpreter know what type of special education meeting is happening and provide the interpreter with any existing relevant documentation.

Overview of Special Education

Things to Remember:

• IEPs are legal contracts between parents and schools. If the content of the meeting has gone beyond your training and knowledge, make your limitations clear by letting school officials know. It is up to them to decide whether to continue with the meeting.

• Making an audio recording of your individual, deliberate practice is a tool for self-monitoring and improvement.

Glossary Development for Special Education Terminology

Things to Remember:

• School interpreters need unrestricted internet access to research as they build their glossaries. However, not all answers are found on the internet.

• Developing strong research skills and methodologies help get desired results, save time, and build the foundation of glossary development.

• Understanding concepts and defining them are the first steps to researching terminology and subject matter. This research helps you create and expand glossaries.

• Glossaries can include words, phrases in context, definitions in both working languages, and all the information identified as a result of the research.

• Interpreters of languages of lesser diffusion have a scarcity of resources. Network with same-languages colleagues to create common glossaries and curated resources.

The Interpreter’s Role during Special Education Meetings

Things to Remember:

• The general public has little to no knowledge about what interpreters do and how they do it. Reminding meeting participants of your role as the interpreter in a pre-session is key to a successful meeting.

• Prepare concise and effective pre-session scripts in both your working languages and use them as an introduction to each of your meetings.

• Follow the protocols and standards of practice reviewed in this workshop to better define your role as the interpreter during meetings.

• Ask for clarifications or repetitions. It is part of the interpreter’s job to ensure accuracy.

• Navigate the continuum of interpreter roles from conduit to advocate in order to manage the flow of communication.

• In dialogue settings, interpret after one speaker is done talking. Never interpret for two speakers in a row because the person who needs the interpretation will not know who said what.

• Use verbal messages, gestures, or other body language prompts to signal to speakers to stop and let the interpreter interpret what has been said.

• When people in an interpreted encounter do not follow the rules stated by the interpreter in the pre-session, be assertive and remind them of the rules. Stress how everyone in the meeting benefits, not just the interpreter.

• Dual-role interpreters need to use specific strategies to avoid confusion about their roles in the school.

Notes

Sight Translation of Special Education Documents

Things to Remember:

• Not all documents are appropriate for sight translation. Instead, ask the requester to orally go over the document and offer to interpret their message instead.

• Remember the strategies presented in the workshop to say no to specific sight translation requests, especially those involving legal documents.

• There are risks involved with summarizing a document instead of sight translating it.

• Remember sight translation steps: start with silent reading, research a few terms if necessary, and go slowly, sentence by sentence.

• Sight translation requires using shorter sentences and simpler sentence structure.

• Extract key ideas by focusing on who, what, where, and when.

• To mimic the features of oral speech, use reformulation strategies including chunking, adding connectors between isolated elements on a form or table, and/ or repeating elements.

• Use specific connectors when sight translating a list of numbered items. Connectors provide natural pauses and speech patterns.

Notes

Note-Taking for Consecutive Interpreting

Things to Remember:

• Note-taking reduces the stress of remembering everything that was said orally.

• Note-taking is a skill that can be developed.

• Develop your own system of abbreviations and symbols. It will take time and deliberate practice.

• Do not abbreviate short/simple words.

• Removing vowels is a quick abbreviation tactic.

• Use key words and who, what, why, when, and where questions to identify main ideas.

• Notes are like crutches: They help organize your thoughts, but do not replace active listening.

Professional Ethics and Standards of Practice

Things to Remember:

• Always be confident of your role as the interpreter. You guide the meeting.

• Ethical dilemmas are not right vs. wrong situations or decisions, but imperfect vs. less imperfect solutions.

• Find strategies to work with speakers who are difficult to understand.

• Strong language, including swear words, needs to be interpreted as is, without being toned down.

• Occasionally, ethical principles might collide with one another.

• Ethical dilemmas can stem from competing roles for dual-role interpreters in schools including professional boundaries, impartiality, and confidentiality.

• Advocacy is linked to the notion of potential “harm” to the student.

• Advocacy entails notifying an appropriate supervisor or authority.

• Know your limits when receiving interpretation requests. Do not accept assignments beyond your skill level.

Notes

Best Practices for Remote Interpreting

Things to Remember:

• First ask: Should the meeting take place remotely? Some families do not have adequate equipment, a reliable internet connection, sufficient digital literacy, or the physical space to fully engage in a meeting held remotely.

• It is crucial to have a strong and reliable internet connection and the proper equipment.

• Have a technical briefing and test run of technology and equipment before the interpreted event, especially if using simultaneous interpreters.

• Give interpreters in video remote settings a list of all participants and their respective roles before the meeting.

• Have a backchannel to communicate with your interpreting partner for simultaneously interpreted events.

• Don’t forget to deliver your concise and effective pre-session script created during the workshop.

• Anticipate technical failures and make plans

B and C. Have a list of participants’ phone numbers and fully charged alternative devices such as tablets and cell phones. Preparation increases the likelihood of the success of the interpreted meeting and reduces interpreter stress.

• Have scripts for various online situations/ issues to solve them in a quick and professional manner.

Notes

Our services:

About Us

Since 1979, the Translation Center has been providing multilingual services from a research university setting connected to scholarship, professional organizations, and an international community. We work with translators, interpreters, and other language professionals at the University, in the region, and from all over the world to create solutions that serve the needs of our partners locally and beyond. Our experienced project managers oversee assignments and supervise university student assistants. Students also work with our leadership on special projects. At the Translation Center, students gain invaluable exposure to the fast-growing language services industry. Proceeds from our multilingual services support educational and outreach initiatives to bring awareness to issues of language related to inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.

• Document translation

• Transcription and multimedia localization

• Face-to-face and remote interpreting via phone and other remote video platforms

• Workshops and other educational and skill-building opportunities

• Language access consultation services