School of Languages and Cultures

Winter Research Program - 2019 Projects

Available Projects

How to apply

  1. Locating and analysing Aboriginal language data in UQ- and SLQ-held audio tapes.
  2. The investigation of teachers and university students’ perception of environmental discourse in China.
  3. Data analysis on EFL students’ motivation (quantitative and qualitative analysis)
  1. Gender, Humour and Ageing in Modern Japanese Culture
  2. Translating Maïa Alonso’s 2017 Novel, Le Rêve assassiné
  3. How to improve the quality of telephone interpreting services in Australia? Insights from interviews of Mandarin/English telephone interpreters, their authentic telephone interpretation data, and retrospective interviews

6. How to improve the quality of telephone interpreting services in Australia? Insights from interviews of Mandarin/English telephone interpreters, their authentic telephone interpretation data, and retrospective interviews

Project duration: 4 weeks (24 June - 19 July 2019) 36 hours per week

Description: 

1. to interview NAATI Certified Interpreters (Mandarin/English) about problems that they have encountered in providing telephone interpreting services to clients (e.g. an English-speaking doctor and a Mandarin-speaking patient in an interpreter-mediated medical appointment over the phone), and elicit these interpreters’ thoughts on how to solve the problems and how to improve the quality of telephone interpreting services in Australia,
2. to analyse the quality (specifically, the accuracy of information transfer between English and Mandarin) of these interpreters’ real-life telephone interpreting performance,
3. to explore how these interpreters manage the three-party interaction over the phone (i.e. without seeing each other, without being next to each other) in order to ensure effective and smooth communication among the three parties, and
4. (by asking the interpreters to comment on certain sections of the transcripts of their real-life telephone interpretations) to examine why the interpreters have used certain interpreting strategies, why they have made certain mistakes in their telephone interpretation, and why they have managed the three-party interaction over the phone in certain ways, so as to shed light on both their thought processes and decisions made during the real-life telephone interpreting.

Expected outcomes and deliverables:

1. Complete a short English questionnaire about their background information, such as when they obtained their NAATI credential(s). This takes about 10 minutes.
2. Participate in a 30-minute interview about their perceived problems in telephone interpreting work and their perceived solutions.
3. Voice-record 4 of their real-life telephone interpreting assignments with their clients’ oral consent. Each assignment has a unique topic and lasts for about 20 minutes.
4. After recording their telephone interpreting, participate in a 40-minute retrospective interview in which they will comment on certain parts of the transcripts of their real-life telephone interpretation.

Number of participants: 4

Further info: 

Contact Dr Lily Wang  j.wang7@uq.edu.au for more information.