Not Only English! Building the Foundation for Language-specific and Bilingual Interpreter Instruction

Interpreting possesses innate duality with the premise that the interpreter is truly bilingual and bicultural. The concept of the target language which helps training translators and conference interpreters does not quite fit healthcare interpreting since both languages are expected to be mastered at a native-speaker level. The majority of healthcare interpreter training opportunities available in the U.S. are conducted in English with limited or no instruction in other languages. This webinar will address the need to develop and offer more trainings in languages other than English and more bilingual skill-building trainings. Presenters will analyze what types of training should be preferably done in a bilingual mode and how to design such trainings to achieve an effective transfer of knowledge and improvement of students’ skills. Specifically, the following aspects of the bilingual and non-English instruction trainings will be highlighted:

• Reasons for language-specific instruction;
• Types of learning activities benefitting from language-specific instruction;
• Engagement of language-specific experts in preparing and delivering training;
• Adjusting teaching methods and materials for on-site and online delivery.

Learning Objectives:

1. Explain what learning objectives can be achieved with language-specific and bilingual instruction.
2. Identify which types of learning activities benefit from language-specific and bilingual instruction.
3. Present ways to adjust teaching methods for on-site or online delivery of language-specific and bilingual training.

About the presenters:

Natalya Mytareva, M.A., CoreCHI™, is Executive Director of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters (CCHI) and one of its founding Commissioners. In 2000-2013, Natalya was Communications Director at the International Institute of Akron, a non-profit refugee resettlement agency in Ohio. She developed and taught several courses for healthcare and court interpreters, with the focus on languages of lesser diffusion. Natalya is a Russian interpreter/translator and started her career as instructor of interpretation/translation courses at Volgograd State University (Russia) in 1991. She holds a combined BA/MA degree from VSU in Philology & Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Margarita Bekker, CoreCHI™, is Lead Russian Interpreter, Education and Training, at Stanford University Medical Center, and Chair of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters. Since 2012, she has been a curriculum developer and instructor of healthcare interpreting courses (Russian) for master-level distance learning program at Glendon School of Translation at York University, Toronto, Canada. Margarita is a certified Bridging the Gap trainer. She was a Russian Language Coach at the City College of San Francisco HCI program. Margarita is a former President of CHIA and received its Interpreter of the Year Award in 2016.