Hi everybody,
Ironlady’s posts about Furen having the best interpreting course are about 6 years old now.
I’m wondering what the word out there is about NTNU and Furen’s now? I’m going to do one of them in a couple of years, and want to choose the best one - mainly for use in Taiwan or Australia. I’d like to know about which one has the best teaching, and most internationally-recognized degree. Also, out of interest, I know they have MTI in China - does anybody know anything about how that compares to Furen and NTNU?
Thanks,
Brett
Those I am in contact with in the interpreting game in Taiwan still uphold pretty much the same analysis.
Fujen may not be perfect, but at least you get the same imperfections as Shita (more or less) in smaller groups. So you get more individualized time with the instructors and you get far more time on the microphone, which is important. Shita has to accept a certain number of students; Fujen accepts as many as it likes. Consecutive interpreting is taught in classes with each student taking a turn; it’s difficult to get through more than 5 students in a 2-hour session if you’re really going to give real feedback to each one. With a class of 10, it’s really rushed. Same thing for simultaneous – even with 4 (the class size when I was at Fujen) nobody’s entire interpretation was listened to during class. With 10, it would be a few words here and there as the instructor switched channels (assuming the equipment was adequate to record 10 people, and assuming there were 10 booths – where there are not in either school.) So because of the lack of booths, at Shita with 10 students, you’ll be sitting out half the time. Now, you can listen and learn, of course, but – well, been there done that. Human nature is frail sometimes, especially in the afternoon. 
That being said, GITIS has been dismantled and is now under some other department, so things may have changed on the numbers front.
If convenience is an issue, Shita wins hands down. It was a royal pain in the arse to slog out to Hsinchuang every day (I am a Taipei girl, sorry!) and until the MRT goes out there, it will continue to get worse and worse. After the MRT reaches the university, I think you will see a change for the better both in convenience (obviously) and in the caliber of instructor they can attract and retain – although for the most part the instructor pool in Taiwan is spread pretty evenly between the two and there’s not much difference IMHO.
Interpreting mostly depends on how much you practice and with whom. Practice with a qualified interpreter listening is very useful (that would be a teacher) so Fujen wins there. However, it will probably be easier to set up practices at Shita with more people. As a native English speaker, you have value in the Taiwan interpreting world, and in a sensible world (which I am not claiming this is, of course) both unis would be recruiting you just to have you around as a sparring partner for their students.
It used to be that you could re-take specific portions of the professional exam at Shita but not at Fujen…check this out. It’s far, far easier to pass (eventually) this way. There are ten sections to the professional exam (sight EC, sight CE, consec CE, consec EC, simul general CE, simul general EC, simul tech CE and simul tech EC) and Fujen has never let you whittle away at them one by one over years, as Shita has. (Of course, if you’re going to be working outside of Taiwan screw the professional exam – no one cares about it. The MA is what’s important.)
As usual, consider very carefully how good your Chinese is going in. You will get far, far less out of the course if you are struggling with Chinese at the same time.
Thank you so much ironlady!
I can’t believe how generous (timewise) you are with everybody on this forum.
I probably have no problems on the Chinese front - it’s probably up to scratch.
Actually, I live in Puxin - so could drive to Furen, or take the train and MRT to NTNU.
I may even be able to get a scholarship, if I’m lucky.
Actually, I have pretty bad RSI - do you think that someone with RSI could realistically do the course? They probably don’t make allowances for things like this. Or, I might not be able to cope with the frantic note-taking required for consecutive interpreting. But, darn it, I feel like I’m born to do something like this, and don’t want to let a little thing like RSI stop me! Seriously, do you do much work where you don’t take notes? Also, if I don’t take notes, will I need a superhuman memory to pull it off? I know that some people make careers out of sentence-at-a-time interpreting.
Brett
In consec, Fujen will require up to 7 minutes in theory – usually 5 or less per segment. There’s no way you would be able to do that without taking notes unless you’re a very, um, unique person (there probably is someone who can, but it ain’t me or anyone else I know.) I think the professional exam was in the neighborhood of 3-4 minute segments; could have been 5, but I don’t think it was longer.
You could probably develop a combination of a very sparse notetaking style plus heavy work on memory. At a minimum, you would need to take down numbers, names and dates, and then add enough logical structure to make it make sense for delivery. It might even be a benefit to you, helping to motivate you to develop your memory and logical skills rather than yielding to the temptation to write as much as possible as quickly as possible.
They won’t make allowances for your RSI, I don’t think (the concept of that kind of thing hasn’t really reached Taiwan yet anyway…!) but I would simply not mention it until you’re admitted. Then it’s up to you to find a way to make it work (and up to them to help you do it – just keep leaning on them and politely asking for guidance and help with making it work for you). After all, if you’re going to do consec on the market you will need to be able to take notes – although most commercial consec isn’t anything near 5 minute segments because the audience gets so bored if it runs that long before interpretation.
Thanks ironlady. That’s great advice.
How so? I would’ve thought most of the work here would be English to Chinese and therefore being a native Chinese speaker would be the best. I might not be understanding something, hence the question… 
Apologies in advance…
I said “in the interpreting world”, not as an interpreter in Taiwan…a native English speaker with a credential as an interpreter can get a job teaching interpreting very easily. Before getting the credential, that person SHOULD logically be very valuable to a training program as it provides a practice partner for all the Chinese-native students, with a model of correct English. It’s not 100% certain the program will weigh that very heavily (and naturally if the candidate is not up to par in his Chinese, he shouldn’t be admitted simply to be a sparring partner) but IMHO if I were doing admissions, I would want to have at least one native English speaking student in every class. It would definitely raise the quality of my students’ educational experience.
As a native English speaking (white) interpreter in Taiwan, you get a lot of strange looks. But that’s true elsewhere, too, because it’s just not the norm for non-ethnically-Chinese people to do that work. This is particularly true when you’re going into Chinese in SI…people tend to turn, point and stare a lot. (And that’s before you’ve had a chance to screw up, too!) 
Thanks Ironlady. Sorry I misread (misinterpreted?) your post. 
Do you think it would be possible to get into an interpreting MA in Taiwan as a naturalized citizen, yet still, obviously, being a native English speaker with decent Chinese? Or do you think the fact that such a person would then be a card carrying citizen would count against you in such a case?
I don’t think it should, provided you can get through any initial screening test.
But it is possible that interpreting schools would have the latitude (they certainly should have it) to look at people based on their native or strongest language rather than on their passport nationality in selecting students for a program where the slots are so limited and there is a specific reason for accepting a student who scored much lower in Mandarin but much higher in English, for example (I mean compared to the “other” ROC students).
I would contact the schools directly to talk to them. I wouldn’t mention RSI but I would talk to them about your nationality vs. your native language and ask them how you should apply to their program to get fair consideration based on your A and B languages. It wouldn’t hurt to slip in there how you’re just dying to help your fellow students who are English-Bs, of course…
[quote=“ironlady”]I don’t think it should, provided you can get through any initial screening test.
But it is possible that interpreting schools would have the latitude (they certainly should have it) to look at people based on their native or strongest language rather than on their passport nationality in selecting students for a program where the slots are so limited and there is a specific reason for accepting a student who scored much lower in Mandarin but much higher in English, for example (I mean compared to the “other” ROC students).
I would contact the schools directly to talk to them. I wouldn’t mention RSI but I would talk to them about your nationality vs. your native language and ask them how you should apply to their program to get fair consideration based on your A and B languages. It wouldn’t hurt to slip in there how you’re just dying to help your fellow students who are English-Bs, of course… [/quote]
Thanks, Ironlady. Sounds reasonable. I reckon I still have a year or two to seriously hit the books and practice before I’d be ready, though.
At the risk of sounding stupid, what is RSI? :s
[quote=“bismarck”]
Thanks, Ironlady. Sounds reasonable. I reckon I still have a year or two to seriously hit the books and practice before I’d be ready, though.
At the risk of sounding stupid, what is RSI? :s[/quote]
A simple Google lookup reveals RSI = Repetitive Strain Injury
Er, what the newcomer “Yidali Ren” meant to say was, “It means ‘Repetitive Stress Injury’.”
I’m certain s/he didn’t mean to antagonize anyone as a newcomer to our boards. :no-no:
[quote=“ironlady”]Er, what the newcomer “Yidali Ren” meant to say was, “It means ‘Repetitive Stress Injury’.”
I’m certain s/he didn’t mean to antagonize anyone as a newcomer to our boards. :no-no:[/quote]
No worries, I usually ignore the lurkers.
Thanks again, Ironlady.
It’s short for Repetitive Strain Injury. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is one kind of RSI, as is tennis elbow, “mouse hand”, etc.
Ya, know…in Taiwan, if you mention any uni that isn’t NTU, NTNU, NCKU etc, you get pitiful looks that seem to suggest, “Shame…the poor fool was actually considering ABC uni…” 
Weeell…I’m probably that “poor fool”. For me to even think about attending Fu Jen or Shi-Da would mean a move to Taipei, hauling all my worldly possessions and family with me. And then I’d have to leave Tainan, which I really don’t want to do. So I’ve been searching all over for an alternative. NCKU doesn’t have a TI degree, only a MA in linguistics or English Lit. And I’ve only been able to find one uni down here that does have an MA in translation and Interpretation. Chang Jung Christian University. Not a National school, but a private (Christian) one like Fu Jen, they claim in their info on their DTIS program:
Not sure how true that is.
In any event, of all the locals I’ve asked about CJCU you get the above-mentioned look. All except one, who studied nursing at a top National uni, is the Head ICU Nurse at the best hospital in Kaohsiung and who completed her MA in Nursing at CJCU two years ago. She also happens to be the only one who had any actual experience with CJCU, and she speaks very highly of them.
So, I’m very unsure whether I should go that way if I were accepted into their MA program (one drawback is that being private, they’re more expensive - and I would need to pay as by then I’d be a Taiwanese National and no longer eligible for the foreigner “free ride” scheme…).
Apart from their claims and my friend’s good experience with them they also seem rather flexible as they have four programs available:
- Four year undergraduate
- Two year night time undergraduate for people working in the field but not qualified as translators.
- A day time MA.
- A night time MA.
At present, they don’t have a doctoral program but it is in the works.
Obviously, they would be a natural choice for me as they are a short commute from the city (in Guei Ren, Tainan county near the HSR station), but who wants to waste two years and approximately 200k (about 47k/semester) on an MA that would be less than useless?
However, I keep having this thought that translation and interpretation work would also depend greatly on your ability to actually do the work. Doesn’t help if you went to a stellar uni but pretty much suck ass, right?
Any thoughts, anyone?
As a foreigner, who knows how to market himself, you don’t have to go to ANY uni if you can actually do the work. But it’s quite helpful to develop the guanxi that comes with having done a degree – both faculty and classmates.
The problem with all the new wannabe departments offering interpreting courses or degrees is that there just are not enough people in Taiwan who have the level of English to make it as an interpreter. (The fact that there’s precious little interpreting work available is another issue entirely – most of it is locked up by the first and second generations of trainees, many of whom had fathers who were conveniently high up in diplomatic circles or other government posts, which is why they grew up bilingual in the first place.)
Interpreting school is supposed to be about learning to interpret, not about perfecting your languages (although that’s not really true in most real-life situations these days; people just aren’t growing up bilingual and going into interpretation the way it was after WWII when the simultaneous profession got started).
It’s great to teach interpreting – it can be a very good motivator for an advanced student of a language, to give them something more real-world to practice with. But most undergraduates are not ready to do conference interpreting because they lack the background knowledge and language skills to do it professionally. Most of the new departments fall into this category – and then there’s the faculty question, and the question of whether the faculty at any of the institutes are really trained or reflective teachers of interpreting, as opposed to just being people who happen to be able to interpret themselves.
It wouldn’t be a waste of time, if you need to develop your language and/or your guanxi, but don’t expect the same quality of program you would get by going to one of the major schools (and being a pain-in-the-ass constant educational advocate for yourself while you’re there). Whether it’s worth the time and money is something you would have to think about.
[quote=“bismarck”]Apart from their claims and my friend’s good experience with them they also seem rather flexible as they have four programs available:
- Four year undergraduate
- Two year night time undergraduate for people working in the field but not qualified as translators.
- A day time MA.
- A night time MA.[/quote]
I’m going to stick my neck out again here – many times (hedging furiously) a night program is not the same as the daytime program, no matter what the school wants to believe or put forth. The quality of students in the program is not the same. They are generally cash cows, and T&I is especially prone to this since there isn’t any work anyway and the market is so subjective, and no one can come back and sue the school because after doing this expensive program, they can’t get work.
And where do they think they are going to get people who have these credentials in T&I, or even a closely related field? People with a Ph.D who are also qualified interpreters in Taiwan – I know of one, and I was one when I was there. That made two. One of my former teachers is doing (or has finished, by now?) a Ph.D, so that would make three. I doubt he would go to southern Taiwan as one of a handful who have the credential.
[quote]Obviously, they would be a natural choice for me as they are a short commute from the city (in Guei Ren, Tainan county near the HSR station), but who wants to waste two years and approximately 200k (about 47k/semester) on an MA that would be less than useless?
However, I keep having this thought that translation and interpretation work would also depend greatly on your ability to actually do the work. Doesn’t help if you went to a stellar uni but pretty much suck ass, right?
[/quote]
The uni “quality” is only important in Taiwan. In the West, as long as you ahve an MA in T&I, they are not going to ask where it’s from. In fact, it’s up to you to emphasize that you did the degree in a Chinese-speaking country, and was one of only a handful of non-native-Chinese speakers to do so. Instantly, the degree is worth more! 
NT$200K is cheap for an MA by US standards. Plus you could keep working while in school (but do NOT tell the school this before or during!!). If you ever plan to go back home, or want to get a job teaching in the same sort of program – because an MA is considered a terminal degree in T&I in Taiwan – it might be an interesting thing to do. If you don’t run screaming from the building and end up hating T&I altogether, as was the case with an astonishing number of my classmates.
[quote=“ironlady”][quote=“bismarck”]
Obviously, they would be a natural choice for me as they are a short commute from the city (in Guei Ren, Tainan county near the HSR station), but who wants to waste two years and approximately 200k (about 47k/semester) on an MA that would be less than useless?
However, I keep having this thought that translation and interpretation work would also depend greatly on your ability to actually do the work. Doesn’t help if you went to a stellar uni but pretty much suck ass, right?
[/quote]
The uni “quality” is only important in Taiwan. In the West, as long as you ahve an MA in T&I, they are not going to ask where it’s from. In fact, it’s up to you to emphasize that you did the degree in a Chinese-speaking country, and was one of only a handful of non-native-Chinese speakers to do so. Instantly, the degree is worth more!
[/quote]
I’ve done alright with the MA (Applied Linguistics and Teaching Methodology) I earned in Taiwan. I stressed something similar in the interview, and have been teaching 300 level Business courses (I do have a BBA too) regularly at my alma mater in Canada, as well as at another local college. If you do an outstanding job in your studies (win gold/silver medals), it can benefit you even more.
Is there any chance at scholarships whatsoever? I realize that our situations are different, but my degree was free (in the monetary sense).
Thanks for the answers and the awesome feedback, Ironlady. Stellar, as always. 
And where do they think they are going to get people who have these credentials in T&I, or even a closely related field? People with a Ph.D who are also qualified interpreters in Taiwan – I know of one, and I was one when I was there. That made two. One of my former teachers is doing (or has finished, by now?) a Ph.D, so that would make three. I doubt he would go to southern Taiwan as one of a handful who have the credential.[/quote]
This may suit me even more then. My major reason for MA, and later PhD, studies is that I want to teach and research at uni level. However, as has always been my case, my area of interest is too wide. Thinking about it, I realised that regardless of what I study in most cases I’ll still probably only be an ESL instructor in an English or Foreign Language department somewhere. Not really keen on that. I’d much rather work in a T&I department, and even if there is some ESL involved, at least it would be directed to something more meaningful than, “I’m here because I have to be to get my degree, but I don’t want to be…”
Also, I love languages, I’ve always been good at them and I’m completely in love with Chinese in all it’s forms. So, for me, I’d prefer to work in an environment where Chinese is still a part of the job, even a requirement.
What you’ve said so far has helped me a great deal and I think it would be a very good idea for me, personally, to go to CJCU (provided I can get in, of course). My Chinese level is at about mid-intermediate level and I’m currently on the fourth Shi-Da PAVC book (the old 2下) although, conversationally I seem to perform better (especially listening comprehension and writing) than the level of that book suggests. I reckon I want to go back to the CLI at NCKU for another two years and really push it in class and outside with family and friends to raise my level to a more acceptable one before I apply.
With an MA in T&I in Taiwan I shouldn’t have too much of a problem getting into a good program in South Africa at either the University of the Free State (PhD is in the form of a Thesis) or the University of the Witwatersrand. I’d prefer to go to Wits as that’s closer to my family in SA and any possible part time work would be much more abundant there than anywhere else. Seems, from your info on the scarcity of PhDs qualified as interpreters in Taiwan, this might not be a half bad plan.
At the very least, it’s something I’m interested in and enjoy, and a PhD from SA surely can’t hurt any.
[quote=“xtrain”][quote=“ironlady”][quote=“bismarck”]Obviously, they would be a natural choice for me as they are a short commute from the city (in Guei Ren, Tainan county near the HSR station), but who wants to waste two years and approximately 200k (about 47k/semester) on an MA that would be less than useless?
However, I keep having this thought that translation and interpretation work would also depend greatly on your ability to actually do the work. Doesn’t help if you went to a stellar uni but pretty much suck ass, right?[/quote]
The uni “quality” is only important in Taiwan. In the West, as long as you ahve an MA in T&I, they are not going to ask where it’s from. In fact, it’s up to you to emphasize that you did the degree in a Chinese-speaking country, and was one of only a handful of non-native-Chinese speakers to do so. Instantly, the degree is worth more! [/quote]
I’ve done alright with the MA (Applied Linguistics and Teaching Methodology) I earned in Taiwan. I stressed something similar in the interview, and have been teaching 300 level Business courses (I do have a BBA too) regularly at my alma mater in Canada, as well as at another local college. If you do an outstanding job in your studies (win gold/silver medals), it can benefit you even more. [/quote]
Good to hear that worked out well for you! :bravo:
Acts as added motivation for me.
Well, not sure about that. By the time I apply I’ll be a Taiwanese citizen, so I’ll no longer be able to get the “foreign subsidy/waiver of class fees”. There may be something available, especially if I can complete the first semester or year with good grades. 
I don’t want to bank on it though, so I’ll plan for the worst and save up enough for class fees for the duration of the course at least.
Thanks for your input, also.