Tag Archives for PhD studies

Happy New Year!

FIRE WORKS in curacao

(Photo credit: Jessica Bee)

We were out walking today and talked about what was the best thing about 2013. For my part it was easy to answer – finishing and defending my PhD! Yes on November 26 I finally defended my PhD, proof here. But 2013 has been a particular eventful year for me. Most of which I have touched upon in my previous post so I won’t dwell anymore on that, suffice to say that I really wish I had had some more time for blogging (no new posts and 500+ unread posts in my feedly…) and twittering these past months. When I met with Michelle (@InterpDiaries), in April I think it was, we both agreed that it isn’t ideas that lack when it comes to blogging, if only there were some more hours in a day.

During autumn I’ve been busy teaching two introductory courses on interpreting, one in Bergen (TOLKHF) and one in Stockholm (ToÖ I). At TÖI (the Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies), I’ve also been busy launching our Facebook page and our Twitter account (@TOI_SU). On the course developing side I’ve been busy revamping the course Interpreting II, and I’m very excited to see how it turns out as it will start on January 20th. Traditionally we have always given Interpreting II only with Swedish and one other language. This time it will be Swedish and four other languages which means a completely new approach to both teaching and learning interpreting. I have integrated Lionel’s (@Lioneltokyo) approach to start teaching consecutive, when you have students interpret from notes before they actually start to learn note taking. Next term for Interpreting III we will also take on simultaneous interpreting for public service interpreters. I’m still thinking about this since the techniques in public service settings are not the same as in conference settings. There is also very little course literature on simultaneous interpreting for PSI so we’ll see where that takes me. If you have any suggestions, please comment!

As my PhD project drew to an end this year I have also thought about what to do next of course and I have one or two threads I would like to pursue. My most recent research interest has been young children and interpreting or child language brokering as it has been coined (professor Harris writes a lot about it on his blog). I applied for money for a series of workshops on children and interpreting in the Nordic Countries, we did not get it this time but I will apply again, and hope to be successful eventually. I will also try to get project money for a project on just mapping the practice and the ethics around it in the Nordic Countries.  I would, of course, also like to continue to follow and interview my fellow interpreters. I hope they will let me continue to record them and investigate them. I have such a wonderful material that I would like to build on. And finally, I hope to start up a project with my friend Emilia Iglesias Fernández of Granada. We have been in touch again and I hope it will lead to something. All of this will of course not come to an end (or maybe not even to a start) during next year, but I’m positive some things will.

This autumn I have also been the extremely proud guest blogger at Rainy London’s blog. I get tired just reading about my own week, but that was a very fun culmination of an extremely busy spring. An I was very flattered to be mentioned by Jonathan Downie (@jonathandownie) in Ligua Grecas blog.

When I write this I sit in front of my bedroom window at our house in the country side, it is pitch black outside and in the distance I can see the lights from our neighbours’. My projects now are like the lights out there gleaming in the distance. I hope I will find my way there and catch up with them. Any new years resolutions? No, not really, they only give me bad conscience as I’m really not good at following them, but if any – being better to stay in touch.

I wish you all the best for the New Year and I hope that you have plenty of projects that you will be able to carry through too. Thank you all my friends, (both in and outside Internet) for staying in touch and being so supportive this year. I hope we will continue our discussions in 2014.

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Slightly off topic: What was my life and interpreting jobs like five years ago?

Yesterday the patent translator published a post based on a letter his son sent him five years ago, but that was planned not to reach him until yesterday. The letter inspired him to look back five years. His post inspired me to do the same.

Five years ago we lived in Paris, and I was seriously starting to consider doing a PhD in interpreting. Interpreting jobs had picked up after the blow in 2004 when the Swedish conference interpreting market went absolutely dead. In 2004, The Swedish government decided they should spearhead their English only plan for the European Union. They only used the absolute minimum requirements for interpretation and as a result the market collapsed. Many of my colleagues decided to change careers. In 2007, the marked had picked up, and the fact that I lived in Paris also improved one of my unique selling points (proximity) as they liked to call it.

I did not have any teenagers at home, my oldest was 10! We still had an au pair girl living with us, which sometimes is challenging, but mostly really nice both for children, parents and career. I had the great benefit to ride once a week in central Paris, sometimes very tough (old French pedagogy) and sometimes mesmerizing. Other than taking interpreting jobs I also taught French (yes! me! a foreigner! in France!, but I have an FLE teacher degree mind you) and had I blogged in Swedish about Paris and bilingualism mainly. This blog started a little over a year later.

I thoroughly liked Paris and could have stayed for much longer, but we were homeward bound in the summer and I had to decide whether I should apply for a PhD or not. I knew that a PhD would require a lot of work and not necessarily give any more job afterwards. But I also freshly remembered those years after 2004 when I was happy if I got two days interpreting jobs per month. For me – 10 days is a good average – 10 days of assignment means another 10 days of preparation, and considering you also usually travel to and from your assignment and need a few days for admin and stuff, it means that you will fill up you month both financially and work-wise. Two days, however, all but bankruptcy, and the few days I would get in court or for other assignments (I wrote earlier about the depressing situation forinterpreting jobs in Sweden. Thanks to the best husband in the world and also thanks to the wonderful parental benefits in Sweden (I had days saved up in my benefit scheme), I could stay in business.

I celebrated my birthday that year (an even one) on the night train towards the Pyrenees on our first skiing holiday in France (and a few months later with a grand party at the Swedish club). And in the autumn I enrolled in a PhD program on bilingualism with a focus on simultaneous interprting. When I look back 2007 was a good year, but what can a year in Paris be other than… perfect.

A few things that should be compulsory in PhD training in Translation and Interpreting Studies

Through my PhD studies (four years done, 18 months to go) I have been blessed with very good supervisors, solid training, interesting conferences and great networking opportunities. But I have not followed a PhD training in Translation Studies and many of the great things I’ve been able to do has been thanks to particular people and to my supervisors’ great flexibility. And therefore I would like to list a few things that I think should be compulsory in PhD training in Interpreting (and Translation) Studies.

– Supervisors. At least two who are not competitors. I have three, and I consider myself very lucky. They are not competing for funding or project plans so they are all very positive and supporting to my project. I have one extremely devoted main supervisor, the other two act as supporters to her. They cover different fields and can give feedback from different angles. At least one of your supervisors must be working in the same field as your PhD project

– Summer school. Possibility to participate in at least one longer summer school in your field. It gives great opportunities to meet peers in your field and hopefully also to meet good and inspiring professors in your own or neighbouring fields.

– Methodological training. Whichever field you are in or whatever methodologies you use you need to get hands on training in different theories and methodologies. How are you otherwise supposed to know which approach, analysis or methods you are going to use with your material. The risk if you do not get this training is that you end up either blindly following your supervisor or making it up as you go along and thereby risking a new invention of the wheel or something similar. The program I follow has a great training unit, unfortunately it’s in bilingual studies and not in translation studies.

– A conference a year. At least! Start going to conferences as early as possible. Again, great networking. You also get to test your material and your results on a bigger audience than your supervisor, and most researchers in Translation Studies are both kind, interested and curious of what other people are doing.

– Publish. If you would like to continue as a researcher, you have everything to gain from publishing early. Make sure you pick good publishing channels though, with good I mean serious. They don’t have to be THE journal in your field, but having published in peer-reviewed, scientific publications usually weighs more heavily in your CV than your local news letter.

– Organize a conference. Not the whole conference of course, but being part of an orginizing committee for a bigger conference or workshop or seminar is also extremely good for learning how these things work, how you apply for money, how administration works at your university and so forth. And lastly, again, great networking opportunity.

– Edit a book. Provided you get help, e.g. being one of two or several editors, this is probably one of the greatest learning processes there is in academia. You get to read draft papers from other scholars, you get to see feed back from their peers, you have ample possibility to discuss the contributions with your co-editors. You get an understanding of the whole editing process. You work with publishers and proof readers. Takes alot of time of course, but well worth it for your future academic career.

– Make a study and write an article with your supervisor. Really work together with your supervisor, not just him or her co-signing something you did. A very good learning process and a hands on exercise in how your supervisor works and thinks. Will most likely develop your own research skills alot.

Teach. The best way to really learn your topic is to teach it. So if you can get teaching hours that are in Translation Studies and not in English linguistics. Take them!

Now you probably understand why my PhD studies take a little longer than usual. The other reason for this is that I started without funding and worked parallell to my PhD project. Finally, two things that I have not been able to do, but that I also find important.

Get pedagogical training for teaching at University. Different from teaching at secondary school. Good for future job seeking, and also makes you see your own learning process from a different perspective.

Learn how to apply for funding. Yep, that’s the sad current state of at least humanities today. You have to be very good at looking for funding, and make your projects look sexy for funders…

Read the posts tagged “Sorcerer’s apprentice” at the Cogtrans blog for more tips on PhD in Translation Studies.

Thanks to Maria Cristina de la Vega’s good comment I have to add one more thing:

Teaching interpreting workshops in conjunction with local language/interpreting associations. They are likely to be more accessible and probably thrilled to have you. That could also serve as a training ground for the conferences you might submit your papers to, and help you to refine your focus.

As you can se it’s a verbatim of her comment I can only agree. It is a very good experience, more easily accessible and usually a very positive audience, but with tricky and intelligent questions.