The feasibility of simultaneous interpreting in university classrooms

Abstract

The article reports on a study of the feasibility of the simultaneous interpreting of lectures at the Potchefstroomse Universiteit vir Christelike Hoër Onderwys (now the Potchefstroom Campus of North-West University). An experiment was set up to determine if learners who are not fully proficient in Afrikaans, the medium of instruction, will benefit from simultaneous interpreting into English. The results indicate that there is no statistically significant difference between students who receive interpreting into English and tuition in English directly, while students who receive instruction in Afrikaans perform significantly more poorly than those in the English-medium lecture. A further finding of the experiment is that Afrikaans-speaking students perform significantly better when instructed in Afrikaans rather than in English. On the basis of the results, it is recommended that simultaneous interpreting be implemented as an alternative to a monolingual Afrikaans or English instructional policy or a parallel medium of instruction policy.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2005, 23(1): 81–90