Resumen de Some considerations on the testing of interpreting skills

Hanne Skaadeb, Cecilia Wadensjö

• The overall aim of the Qualitas Project is to achieve quality communication in legal systems that are in need of interpreter services. In addition to accommodating the relevant context for interpreting, this entails engaging interpreters with documented interpreting skills. The activity of interpreting rests on a multitude of sub-skills, each of which is quite complex. Accordingly, the testing of such skills may present the test administrators with reliability and validity issues. Are the tests equal to all candidates? Are they testing the skills they are supposed to test? The aim of this section is to draw attention to some general and specific challenges associated with the testing of interpreting skills, i.e. in short, the ability to coordinate and render in another language other persons’ talk (Wadensjö 1998).