The Call for Papers is now closed.

LESSIUS UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

AND

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA

in collaboration with CETRA

organise a symposium on

APTITUDE FOR INTERPRETING.

TOWARDS RELIABLE ADMISSION TESTING

Lessius University College, Antwerp, Belgium

May 28-29, 2009

Each year, conference interpreting schools organise labour-intensive and time-consuming admission tests. In the end, they accept a few hundred applicants, and reject approximately 75% of those that apply. Of these few hundred accepted students, just over one half of them makes it to successful graduation. And what about aptitude and selection for community interpreting and sign language interpreting programmes? It seems that admission tests into interpreting schools need more of our attention. Unlike any other kind of assessment in interpreter training and professional life, admission screening requires predicting whether a candidate will be able to learn to interpret or not. This aspect places special demands on both admission testing and aptitude research, and the aim of this symposium is to explore them.

We invite research-based contributions on the following topics:

• aptitude for all forms of spoken language and sign language interpreting
• validity, reliability, administration and scoring of admission tests
• predictors of the interpreting skill
• commonalities and differences in aptitude for different interpreting modalities
• methodological issues of research into aptitude for interpreting (N.B. a dedicated roundtable on this topic will take place on May 29)

Contributors will be notified of acceptance by January 31, 2009.

Contributors selected for presentation will be invited to submit a draft paper based on their presentation by April 30, 2009 -  and a final version by June 30, 2009 for publication in a peer-reviewed proceedings.

Scientific Committee

• Mariachiara Russo (University of Bologna, Italy)
• Debra Russel (University of Alberta, Canada)
• Helle Vrøning Dam (Arhus University, Denmark)