UpDate - Vol. 14, No. 11, Page 5
November 10, 1994
Translation-interpretation is faculty member's focus

     Nancy Schweda Nicholson, linguistics, has been selected for the
only Fulbright Scholar Award in Translation and Interpretation awarded
this year, and she will spend next semester at the Aarhus School of
Business in Denmark.
     At Aarhus, Nicholson will teach a master class for interpretation
instructors and will work with faculty to develop new training
techniques and curriculum. She also has been asked to give guest
lectures on the American judicial system and the role of interpreters
in federal and state courtrooms.
     Nicholson said she has always had an interest in
interpretation-the verbal conversion of a message from one language to
another. She majored in French and Spanish at the University of
Colorado and received her master's degree and doctorate in French and
linguistics from Georgetown University, but it was not until she came
to Delaware in 1979 that she had an opportunity to become involved in
interpretation.
     At that time, interpretation courses taught by a former State
Department interpreter were offered by the University. Although she
was teaching French full time, Nicholson signed on as a student and
later became the director of the Conference Interpretation Program.
     Nicholson was appointed to the Federal Court Interpreters
Advisory Board in 1986 by William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court. She also has served as a consultant to numerous
organizations, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the
Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Federal Judicial Center,
the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the Foreign Service
Institute.
     She has published extensively in her field, serves on the board
of editors of the Journal of Interpretation and has made presentations
at conferences worldwide from Vienna to Beijing.
     During a leave of absence from Delaware from 1987-89, Nicholson
also served as the founding director of the Center for Interpretation
and Translation at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she
established a program training interpreters and translators in
Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Spanish, all in combination with
English.
     Interpreters play important roles in the judicial system, in the
immigration system, in hospitals, in education, in business and in
society in general, Nicholson said.
     While there are simultaneous interpreters for such organizations
as the United Nations, consecutive interpretation (in which
interpreters take notes and convey the message in the target language
after the speaker finishes, so as not to interrupt continuity) is
widely used for witness testimony in all types of legal and
immigration hearings, as well as in doctor-patient interviews.
Interpretation is not an easy task, Nicholson said, as there are
structural and semantic differences between languages. Because the
concepts of one culture may not be a part of other cultures, it
sometimes is difficult to convey meanings.
     On campus, Nicholson offers intensive summer seminars on
interpreting for Delaware students and those in the community who are
involved in hospitals, the courts and social service agencies.
Participants must demonstrate a thorough, working knowledge of both
English and at least one additional language.
     During the course, students are videotaped and critiqued, as an
important part of the program is improving communication and public
speaking skills, Nicholson said.
     The demand for interpreters, especially those with a knowledge of
Asian languages or Arabic, has increased, and there are many
opportunities in the field, Nicholson said.
                                                   -Sue Swyers Moncure