Becoming the ears, eyes, voice and hands of someone else : : educating generalist interpreters in a three-year programme

The paper provides a brief introduction to various aspects of the educational model used in the interpreter education programme in Trondheim, Norway. The choice and development of the model is based on the need to integrate several different forms of communication used by three groups – deaf, deafened, and deafblind people – in a three-year bachelor programme. In answer to this challenge, the educational team chose to combine and further develop a socio-cultural model of language and communication with cognitive linguistic theories. The advantage of this model is that the basic understanding of communication and the analytic strategies used in the model are independent of the particular communication form and can thus be used as tools for the interpreter student’s training for all of the communication forms they need to acquire. Furthermore, the approach to each communication form needs to be consistent with the programme’s perspective on the interpreter’s role and function in the profession. Thus the programme has been designed as a holistic approach, where the various aspects of interpreting between different communication forms are understood through the same socio-cultural communication model. In this paper, the key concepts of this educational model will be presented and the advantages and challenges will be discussed.