DPSI candidate recommendations Part 2

Practical advice

• Make sure you are familiar with the DPSI exam format (see the DPSI Qualification Specification) and what the exam entails.
• Remember you need to work on both the languages involved.
• Keep both your languages up to date by reading, writing and speaking.
• If you are preparing for the law pathway, improve your knowledge of legal terminology by attending a court hearing, where your language is used. This will give you a better idea of court procedure and how to use legal terminology.
• If your chosen pathway is health, visit local health centres, hospitals and read about the NHS and the corresponding services in the other language context.
• Pay careful attention to the specialist terminology relevant to your DPSI pathway and keep up to date with the specialist vocabulary in your chosen field.
• Build up a glossary of specialist terminology. Read original documents in your chosen pathway to research your glossary. Make sure you understand the specialist vocabulary in your chosen field and its specialist concepts and notions so well that should a specialist term not exist in one of your languages, you can paraphrase precisely. Work at mastering the vocabulary used in the area you plan to work in and keep it up-to-date.
• Dictionaries are useful, however, on their own they are not enough. Work towards use of language that is accurate but also sounds natural. Pro-actively seek exposure in a range of situations you are likely to come across as an interpreter as well as situations that improve general knowledge and understanding of the environment people live and work in.
• Listen to the radio (e.g. BBC Radio 4 and the World Service.). Remember an interpreter is a facilitator of communication between two people neither of whom has complete knowledge of the other person’s language. You have to be proficient in both languages to be able to do your job properly. Programmes recommended for law pathway candidates include BBC Radio 4 programmes such as Law in Action, File on 4, Today, World Tonight and PM; all these programmes are also available on the BBC iPlayer.
• Read newspapers (including online) as well as other publications and original documents relating to your chosen pathway regularly in both your languages. This will ensure that you keep up to date with current affairs in both cultures and with what is happening in your subject area.
• Use internet research as a tool to increase your knowledge of your speciality; it is advisable to concentrate on the government, official and university websites, as they are likely to be reliable.
• Watch relevant television programmes in both your languages. Radio and television programmes in most languages are available on the internet. This will help you keep up to date with terminology, and you can practise interpreting while you watch.
• Exams can be stressful, but so can court appearances and interpreting assignments. Control of the situation is therefore vital. Develop coping techniques that will help ensure good quality of work whatever the circumstances. This will make you a better professional. Enjoy interpreting. Only if you enjoy it, can you really be proficient. If you are struggling, practise more until you start enjoying it. Remember that to be a good interpreter you need to be competent in two languages, as you need to decode the source language and encode the target language. It is not enough to be a native speaker to get a DPSI qualification, you need to be able to act in your chosen specialist field with competence in English and the other language or language variant.
• Practise the tasks involved in the exam under timed exam conditions. This will help you with time management. Practice will help alleviate stress in the exam itself.

At the Exam:

Spoken Units:

• Aim for accuracy - your interpretation provides access to justice, appropriate treatment for a patient or correct advice in local government issues.
• Remember you can make notes during the consecutive part of the interpreting tasks.
• Pay attention to style (formal or informal).
• Pay special attention to the register of the language and make sure it is appropriate to the situation you are interpreting in or the text you are translating.
• Interpret everything. Don’t add or omit anything.
• Concentrate.
• Speak clearly and audibly.

Written Units:

• Make sure you understand the source text before starting to translate. Do not begin to translate a sentence or paragraph before reading all of it; otherwise you run the risk of following the source language word order or sentence structure too closely. Produce a coherent translation.
• Before you start translating a text, remember it has an author and a reader. Identify them first. Who wrote the text? Who will read it and why? Once you have translated the text, put yourself in the place of the reader and see if you can act on the basis of the text, and make sure that the text makes sense.
• Pay careful attention to detail, to the correct use of grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. Make sure that you know the grammar of English and your own/other chosen language. Refrain from using transliterated words where there is a good word in your own language.
• Be alert to the kinds of error that speakers of your particular language combination are prone to make when interpreting and translating between the languages. For example, if your language does not have grammatical categories such as articles and tenses, be sure to pay attention to them when interpreting and translating into English; if your language has very elaborate systems of address forms, remember that you may need to simplify considerably when translating and interpreting into English.
• Use the letter-writing conventions in English and in your own language.
• Pay attention to accuracy in choosing the right wording when translating idiomatic terms as they may not have clear-cut equivalents in the target language. It is better to describe/paraphrase the specialist terminology unknown in your language rather than trying to find a single word for it. Be alert to ‘false friends’.
• Do not offer alternative translations. This is not good professional practice and will be penalised. It is up to you, not the reader, to select the most appropriate term.
• Complete the task; serious omissions are penalised. 
• Do not add words to the translation, you may distort the original meaning or invalidate the text.
• Make sure you have access to dictionaries or glossaries for your chosen pathway. When consulting a dictionary where more than one term is given for a word, do not use the first term that meets your eye; make sure you select the best term for the context. Where a key vocabulary item is concerned,  it is essential to get it right to obtain a pass. Cross-reference if necessary.
• Leave time to read through your translation at the end of the exam so that you can check for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. When reading through the text make sure that the choice of the words in the target language is made according to the context of the text and avoid the use of English words when the word exists in your language.
• Make sure that the translated text is clear and reads fluently in your language. This means that a speaker of your language would not only understand the message but that the text conforms to the genre of the original text. Also, make sure that the translation is faithful to the original text.
• Bear in mind this Checklist:
  1. Read the Source Text through thoroughly.
  2. Make sure you understand completely what the original says.
  3. Note the terminology you do not know and use your dictionaries to clarify.
  4. Think how you would express the meaning of the Source Text phrase in your Target Language, think in terms of meaning, not words.
  5. When you have a first draft, check your translation against the Source Text: have you translated everything? Have you made any unnecessary additions?
  6. Read your translation without looking at the Source Text. Does it sound natural to you? Would you have written it like that if you did not have the English in front of you?
  7. Closely revise your text. Is it consistent? Have you missed any accents or commas?
  8. Any typos? Is the terminology consistent? Is the text clear and well-presented? etc.
  9. Do not forget to use your logic; if something does not make sense, check it. It is probably a mistake.
  10. Finally, read through the translation keeping in mind that the text has to make sense to the reader i.e. the speaker of the target language who does not have access to the source text.