Based on a review of some of the most promising approaches to aptitude testing in the literature this paper proposes a novel task piloted at the Center for Translation Studies of the University of Vienna. The SynCloze test combines an auditory cloze exercise with a task requiring high expressional fluency, that is, rapidly finding contextually appropriate synonymic sentence completions. The rationale and design of the SynCloze test as well as the scoring method, which takes into account both the degree of accuracy and the speed of response, are described. The results of four rounds of testing involving some 120 students in the final stage of their undergraduate studies show that the test effectively discriminates between undergraduate novices and a control group of interpreting students, and students for whom the test language (German) is the A vs. the B language. Most significantly, the test scores correlate, albeit moderately, with students’ performance on an intralingual consecutive interpreting exam at the end of the course.
2023. Interrogating the predictive validity of aptitude testing for interpreting: a systematic methodological review. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 17:1 ► pp. 7 ff.
Hyeyeon Chung
2017. Syntagma in professional interpreters' mental lexicon. The Journal of Translation Studies 18:1 ► pp. 147 ff.
Korpal, Paweł
2016. Interpreting as a stressful activity: physiological measures of stress in simultaneous interpreting. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 52:2
2023. Discourse-based recall, language anxiety and achievement motive: revisiting interpreting aptitude testing in the Chinese context. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 17:1 ► pp. 54 ff.
Lu, Xinchao & Xiuling Xu
2023. Testing aptitude for simultaneous interpreting: the predictive validity of recall and lexical-syntactic flexibility test. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 17:1 ► pp. 97 ff.
Russo, Mariachiara
2014. Testing aptitude for interpreting. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 16:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Shang, Xiaoqi & Guixia Xie
2020. Aptitude for interpreting revisited: predictive validity of recall across languages. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 14:3 ► pp. 344 ff.
Shang, Xiaoqi & Guixia Xie
2023. Investigating sight translation as a predictor of interpreting performance. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 17:1 ► pp. 73 ff.
Song, Shuxian & Dechao Li
2023. Aptitude for interpreting: the predictive value of cognitive fluency. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 17:1 ► pp. 155 ff.
Xu, Yi
2023. Exploring individual differences in the prediction of awareness and improvement in trainee interpreters: an aptitude-treatment interaction approach. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 17:1 ► pp. 133 ff.
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