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We report on a study evaluating the educational opportunities that highly multimodal and interactive Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) provide for collaborative learning in the context of interpr...

The point of departure of this paper is an immersive (avatar-based) 3D virtual environment which was developed in the European project IVY – Interpreting in Virtual Reality – to simulate interpreting practice. Whilst this environment is the first 3D environment dedicated to interpreter-mediated communication, research in other educational contexts suggests that such environments can foster learning (Kim, Lee and Thomas 2012). The IVY 3D environment offers a range of virtual ‘locations’ (e.g. business meeting room, tourist office, doctor’s surgery) which serve as backdrops for the practice of consecutive and dialogue interpreting in business and public service contexts. The locations are populated with relevant objects and with robot-avatars who act as speakers by presenting recorded monologues and bilingual dialogues. Students, represented by their own avatars, join them to practise interpreting. This paper focuses on the development of the bilingual dialogues, which are at the heart of many interpreter-mediated business and public service encounters but which are notoriously difficult to obtain for educational purposes. Given that interpreter training institutions usually need to offer bilingual resources of comparable difficulty levels in many language combinations, ad-hoc approaches to the creation of such materials are normally ruled out. The approach outlined here was therefore to start from available corpora of spoken language that were designed with pedagogical applications in mind (Braun 2005, Kohn 2012). The paper begins by explaining how the dialogues were created and then discusses the benefits and potential shortcomings of this approach in the context of interpreter education. The main points of discussion concern (1) the level of systematicity and authenticity that can be achieved with this corpus-based approach; (2) the potential of a 3D virtual environment to increase this sense of authenticity and thus to enable students to experience the essence of dialogue interpreting in a simulated environment.

As international businesses adopt social media and virtual worlds as mediums for conducting international business, so there is an increasing need for interpreters who can bridge the language barriers, and work within these new spheres. The recent rise in migration (within the EU) has also increased the need for professional interpreters in business, legal, medical and other settings. Project IVY attempts to provide bespoke 3D virtual environments that are tailor made to train interpreters to work in the new digital environments, responding to this increased demand. In this paper we present the design and development of the IVY Virtual Environment. We present past and current design strategies, our implementation progress and our future plans for further development. © 2012 IEEE.

Slater Catherine. Note critique sur l'origine de « defaitisme » et « defaitiste ». In: Mots, n°1, octobre 1980. Saussure, Zipf, Lagado, des methodes, des calculs, des doutes et le vocabulaire de quelques textes politiques. pp. 213-217.

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