The coming academic year will see the launching of a new
type of course, designed to train bilingual students to
serve as community interpreters; i.e. to assist
non-Hebrew-speakers in their contacts with various services
and institutions.
The course was made possible thanks to a special grant
awarded by the Council for Higher Education as part of a
program titled Academy-Community Partnership for Social
Change, under the auspices of the Faculty of Law at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although the course is
administered by the Department of Translation and
Interpreting Studies, it is open to any student at Bar Ilan,
from whatever department, as long as s/he is proficient in a
"minority language" (primarily Arabic, Russian and Amharic,
but also such languages as Spanish, Italian, Yiddish, German
and French).
The syllabus will include topics related to language and
culture, translation theory, interpreting skills, legal and
ethical considerations aspects of community interpreting
etc.
Each student will also be
required to devote 4 hours a week to community service as an
interpreter in his/her language combination. A student who
knows German will be interpreting at a nursing home with
many German-speaking residents, an Amharic speaker will be
assisting at a neighborhood clinic with a large number of
immigrants from Ethiopia, and so on. The two lecturers –
Prof. Miriam Shlesinger and Ms Michal Schuster – have
written to about twenty national or local institutions to
inquire about their interest in taking advantage of this
unusual service.
