Parallel and divergent interpreting in an elementary school classroom.
The study examined the extent to which a highly qualified interpreter remained parallel with or diverged from the original classroom discourse in her interpreting for a 3rd-grade deaf student in science, social studies, and resource room. The interpreter's signed and verbalized expressions were compared to the class participants' expressions for meaning equivalence. Parallel interpreting, occurring 33.2% of the time, closely matched the content of the speaker's message. Divergent interpreting, whereby the interpreter added or dropped elements of meaning, occurred 66.8% of the time. Qualitative analyses of classroom footage as well as interviews with the interpreter and the teachers revealed how, when, and why the interpreter diverged from the message. While the interpreter often made intentional reductions and additions to the discourse to achieve greater student understanding of language and course content, there was little awareness of these changes among individualized educational program team members.
Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-3442, USA. kwolbers@utk.edu
Kimberly A
KA
Wolbers
Lisa M
LM
Dimling
Heather R
HR
Lawson
Debbie B
DB
Golos
D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D032882:Comprehension; D012048:Correction of Hearing Impairment / Q000193:education* / Q000523:psychology; D003638:Deafness / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D060345:Education of Persons with Hearing Disabilities / Q000379:methods*; D004777:Environment; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008282:Mainstreaming, Education; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities / Q000523:psychology; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012813:Sign Language; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014175:Translating; D014481:United States; D014741:Video Recording