The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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FEATURES Books league tables,' she says. 'We almost need to re-brand the Welsh language and support people to love it and reclaim it as their own.' It's a similar story in Scotland. The overall number of Scottish Gaelic speakers is decreasing, thanks to an ageing population of native speakers. There are currently around 40,000 Gaelic-literate people living in Scotland, and a further 20,000 who speak it but can't read it. Despite this, Rosemary Ward, Director of the Gaelic Book Council, a body funded by Creative Scotland and Bòrd na Gàidhlig to develop the Gaelic publishing industry, feels there is a growing market for Gaelic learners. 'The National Plan for Gaelic aims to normalise Gaelic and make it more accessible.' In July, the Scottish Government announced that it was investing £2 million in a landmark Gaelic dictionary that will also be available online. The Faclair na Gaidhlig ('Gaelic Dictionary') project, which is documenting the language by tracing the history of every Gaelic word from its earliest written form, aims to raise the profile of the language around the world. 'We sell more than 35 percent of our total stock to the Gaelic international diaspora, so there is clearly an international market,' says Ward. The Gaelic Book Council's grant scheme is very successful and they now allocate more than half of their funding to support unpublished Gaelic authors. With just eight dedicated Gaelic publishers in existence, Ward sees their scheme as a lifeline for those authors. 'It's important to protect our language by being inclusive rather than insular,' she says. 'We also try to target the big international festivals, and make Gaelic poetry and music events open to all by funding interpreters as well as the authors or artists themselves. Many people are drawn to Gaelic for the sheer beauty of the sound of the language, and providing interpretation is so important to get it out to a wider audience.' The overwhelming consensus from all those working to protect, develop and publish in minority languages is that it is about promoting bilingualism, and that learning Welsh, Cornish, Manx, Gaelic and other languages native to the British Isles will extend people's horizons internationally and help them to learn other languages. Ward suggests that the way forward is for minority language development bodies to join forces. 'We need to work together as a collective of indigenous languages to campaign for Kindle to support our publications. There will be huge strength in us working together rather than in isolation.' © BARNACLE AND BIRD PHOTOGRAPHy, TRADITIONAL WAYS: May Day in Padstow 26 The Linguist OCTOBER/NOVEMBER Conference Interpreting: A student's practice book Andrew Gillies Routledge, 2013, ISBN 9780415532365, Paperback £28.99 Many interpreter practitioners and researchers have compared interpreter training to training in sports. If such training places incredible pressure on human physical ability, conference interpreting places incredible pressure on the human brain. Interpreting involves very complex mental processes and considerable mental effort. Every interpreter trainer knows that teaching others how to interpret is one of the most challenging tasks. Unlike an academic discipline, interpreting as an activity cannot be learnt by reading and revising text books on the subject. There are, of course, overarching pedagogical approaches in interpreting training, but the real challenge is how to instil the right performance techniques. In Conference Interpreting: A student's practice book, we have the ideal manual in how to develop interpreting techniques. It is intended for students of interpreting and their tutors, to complement classroom activities. The book is presented in four parts: Practice, Language, Consecutive Interpreting and Simultaneous Interpreting. It starts with basic advice on how to practise in the most effective way, in groups and to an audience, with the right practice material. It then moves on to the fundamentals of knowledge and language base, and finally to techniques in consecutive and simultaneous interpreting in the third and fourth parts. With considerable experience as a trainer, Andrew Gillies draws on research and pedagogy from the most authoritative sources in interpreting studies, whether in advising how to choose the most appropriate practice material or in guiding readers through active listening and analysis, memory and recall, note-taking, and anticipation and reformulation. The exercises are truly original, intellectually challenging and engaging, and some are simply fun. The author takes each individual interpreting technique in isolation, breaking it down into manageable segments, and showing how, through a set of skill-focused exercises, students can begin training in the most effective, efficient and no-nonsense way. The overarching goal for the learner is to develop as many linguistic reflexes as possible in order to free one's mental capacity to cope with dense speeches under the pressure of time and speed when in the booth. Andrew Gillies makes an original contribution to the current trends in interpreter training pedagogy. Conference Interpreting is a much-needed and well overdue volume, and will be much appreciated by the interpreter training community, students and tutors alike. Svetlana Carsten, University of Leeds www.iol.org.uk