Aptitude for Sign Language interpreting
What is it about?
This article looks at the cognitive and behavioral skills that predict individuals likely to succeed in a career in interpreting.
Why is it important?
Training in the interpreting field is a huge commitment that requires long term development of language proficiency and mastery of one of the most challenging cognitive skills known, negotiating understanding between two languages and two cultures. Many people fascinated with signed languages often pursue this career only to find that for a variety of reasons (social anxiety, aspects of cognitive processing, etc. it is an uphill struggle. While the decision to pursue or not to pursue should remain in the hands of the interpreters themselves and not be a filtering mechanism for acceptance into a training program, knowledge of ones aptitude for this particular set of tasks could allow an individual eager to work with signed language to consider other venues, ones with direct services as opposed to interpreting, that could be a better match.