Telephone Interpreting in the Public Services - Online

This course is for qualified interpreters who are already undertaking or would like to start telephone interpreting assignments. It is important that the students have successfully completed the Level 3 certificate in Community Interpreting and are knowledgeable about the UK Public Services and have extensive terminology awareness.
CPD: 12 points. Students will recieve a CPD certificate for 12 guided learning hours on completion of the course.

This course focuses on the dynamics and difficulties of telephone interpreting compared to face to face interpreting and offers opportunities to qualified interpreters to practice certain principles and techniques to overcome such difficulties.
Students will be able to manage and overcome challenging situations in a professional manner; using appropriate techniques and abiding by core principles that produce clear communication between all parties.
Advantages and disadvantages
- Dynamics and difficulties and how to overcome them
- Principles of confidentiality and impartiality in the context of Telephone Interpreting
- Most appropriate interpreting techniques
- Intervention skills and assertiveness
- Note taking and other skills to support accuracy
- Record keeping and dealing with complaints
- Role-plays

The course will be run online using Zoom for the live class sessions and either the Moodle page for the course or some other system for the distribution of the electronic resources for the session sitting alongside this. Although there will be some adjustments that need to be made for the online version of this course, we will aim to keep the experience as close as possible to that of a face to face course taught in the Centre.

The course is taught with case studies in groups, scripted role-plays with language partners and individual tasks with a self-assessment to complete at the end of each day. As per the student's discretion role-plays can be recorded and be available for the whole group.

The course will be run on Zoom, please make sure you have installed it in advance of your first class on your computer or mobile device. You can sign up for free here:

https://zoom.us/support/download

You will need a microphone (it's fine to use whatever is built into your device) and camera, so we can see you via video. You may also want to use headphones during the session.

You can participate in class sessions through the use of a computer, laptop, tablet or other similar internet enabled device. Please note that if you only have access to a smartphone, you will be able to attend the class sessions and participate in them but you will find it more difficult to benefit from the full range of materials and activities involved in the course if this is your only means of connection.

Make sure you have a small space to work in during the session and that as far as possible that you can keep this space quite and clear of interruption so that you can concentrate on what is happening in the class.

By signing up to the course you are consenting to being on camera. The content of the lesson may occasionally be recorded by the tutor for internal education and training purposes but any such recordings will not be made available to anyone outside of the Mary Ward Centre organisation without us asking you again for further permission to do so.


There will be handouts for scripted role-plays and case studies that will be provided but students can contribute by sending their questions beforehand so that tutor can incorporate these in the lesson plan as appropriate.
Students can use their smart phones during role-plays for conference calls and to record themselves. They can also use their laptops where necessary

This is a specific medium of interpreting and it would help build up confidence for those who have started and found it too challenging and for those who would like to be prepared to start telephone interpreting. Students can move on to Video Remote Interpreting after mastering Telephone Interpreting