Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Criminal background check required.

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

• Work as a member of an interpreting team in post-secondary and low-risk community settings.

• Effectively and accurately interpret a source message into the client’s preferred language.

• Make decisions by applying best practices, ethical principles, and decision-making models.

• Create invoices for interpreting assignments. 

This course will consist of the following activities:

• Weekly supervision sessions with instructor

• Interpreting for Deaf clients in real world settings

• Weekly meetings with a tutor to analyze their work

• Practice contacting speakers and preparing for assignments

• Practice working with teams and setting up the position of the interpreters appropriately for the setting

• Maintain a log of hours spent preparing for assignments, tutoring hours, observation hours, and interpreting hours. 

Students will be assessed on interpreting work, completion of community hours, reflections, professionalism, and demeanor. Students must complete 90 hours of class time, interpreting, assignments, tutoring, and community hours. 

Course content includes:

• Continued development of expressive and receptive simultaneous interpreting skills.

• Practice successful communication between the student interpreter and team, consumer, and presenter.

• Develop an understanding of the appropriate location of an interpreter in a given situation.

• Use of appropriate professional dress and demeanor, interpreting techniques, preparation, processing, clarification techniques, and production of an interpretation.

• Development of strategies to control performance anxiety and to become comfortable interpreting in front of an audience.

• Discussing and analyzing personal skill development 

• Accurate invoicing and record keeping of interpreting assignments