16th CTS Professionalisation Talk: Interpreting as Communicating

In the 16th Leeds CTS Professionalisation Talk of this academic year, former UN interpreter Hong Jiang spoke about interpreting as a communicative activity and offered advice on career development.

On 02 May we were happy to have Hong Jiang, former UN interpreter and senior lecturer of interpreting at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as the speaker of CTS Professionalisation Talk.

Hong Jiang spoke about various aspects of the challenges of interpreting as a communicative activity. In her engaging talk, she analysed the process of interpreting from a communication’s point of view, examining its role, how it functions, and the interplay between components in the interpreter-mediated communication process. Examples of staff interpreter and freelance interpreter scenarios were given to demonstrate how interpreting is affected by this interplay of changing components. The talk also covered how interpreters can be trained to meet challenges as facilitators of multilingual communication.

Drawn from her professional experience for more than two decades and working in the capacity of a freelancer and staff interpreter of the United Nations for many conferences worldwide as well as her expertise in interpreter training, she also offered in the Q&A session practical advice to our trainee interpreters on career development as well as tips on how to prepare for the UN Competitive Language Examinations.