1,721,351 research outputs found
Revisiting Aptitude Testing for Interpreting
No full textAptitude refers to “any characteristic of a person that forecasts his/her probability of success under a given treatment” (Cronbach and Snow 1977: 6). Aptitude for interpreting is defined as “an overall term encompassing abilities, skills and personal traits deemed necessary or reliable predictors of successful interpreter training (Russo 2011: 6).
The previous special issue on aptitude for interpreting, co-edited by Miriam Shlesinger and Franz Pöchhacker, was published in Interpreting in 2011, following the international symposium titled “Aptitude Testing for Interpreting: towards Reliable Admission Testing” held in Antwerp, Belgium in 2008. The seven papers collected in the issue by a group of leading researchers and educators specializing in aptitude testing for interpreter training explored the validity and reliability of a great variety of testing batteries using different research methodologies, calling attention to this highly critical, yet under-researched topic. Ten years on, we feel the urgent need to revisit this topic to further stimulate the scholars across the world based on the following considerations. First, while the number of interpreter training institutions is increasing exponentially across the world (with the number reaching 300 in China alone), the quality of their graduates remains far from meeting the needs of the market. Aptitude testing, which serves as the “gatekeeper” for screening prospective qualified candidates, is playing an ever more important role in interpreter training. It remains not only “a practical necessity” but also “an ethical one” (ibid 2011:6). Solid research on aptitude testing with reliable empirical results is much needed. Second, the research in the previous issue was largely conducted in the Western context where trainees were heterogeneous and language combinations were morpho-syntactically similar. A special issue incorporating works involving languages in the Eastern countries with homogeneous groups and morpho-syntactically different languages could offer new insights to the current literature through a different lens. Third, despite the advances in the neighboring disciplines such as language testing and educational measurement, there exists a disconnect between interpreting scholars and testing specialists (Sawyer 2004; Setton and Dawrant 2016). Research further drawing on the insights from these disciplines could put research on aptitude testing for interpreting on a more scientific footing. Fourth, despite interpreting researchers’ repeated calls for more valid and reliable aptitude testing, as echoed in the previous issue, little seems to have improved in both theory and practice. The paucity of empirical research with conclusive findings still remains and aptitude testing for interpreting continues to be characterized by “a lack of systematic methods and assessment” (Liu 2015: 20), which hinders “reproducible, defensible and accountable decisions” (Setton and Dawrant 2016: 374).
In this special issue we would like to once again bring to the fore the issues pertaining to aptitude testing for interpreting by bringing together interpreting researchers and educators around the world. We are particularly interested in research with empirical results that yields practical guidance for designing, administering and assessing aptitude testing for interpreting
Introduction to the special issue Revisiting aptitude testing for interpreting
Full text linkAptitude testing plays an important role in interpreter training as it helps to screen prospective trainee interpreters, ensuring the quality of training. However, there has been scant interest in this line of inquiry among interpreting scholars. This special issue focuses on the conceptualisation of aptitude and exploration of the predictive validity of aptitude testing batteries or components for interpreting performance from multiple theoretical perspectives using a wide array of methodologies. Firstly, Han's meta-analysis provides a comprehensive methodological overview of the current research on predictive validity of aptitude testing for interpreting. Next, Hlavac's survey-based study focuses on the conceptualisation of interpreting aptitude by incorporating multi-stakeholder views. The ensuing three empirical studies by Liu and Zhang, Shang and Xie and Lu and Liu have explored the predictive validity of the tests that were replicated, currently used and self-designed respectively. The last three studies, by Su, Xu, and Song and Li, adopt an aptitude-treatment paradigm to explore the different effects of aptitude components, such as learners' emotions and cognitive fluency, on interpreting performance under different treatment conditions. These eight articles are expected to stir the research community's interest in aptitude testing for interpreting, a highly relevant yet significantly under-examined area in interpreting studies
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Bayesian Radar Detection with Orthogonal Rejection
No full textThis letter focuses on the design of selective receivers for homogeneous scenarios where a very small number of secondary data are available. To this end, at the design stage it is assumed that the cell under test (CUT) contains a fictitious signal orthogonal to the nominal steering vector under the null hypothesis; the clutter covariance matrix is modeled as a random matrix with an inverse complex Wishart distribution. Under the above assumptions, we devise two Bayesian detectors based on the GLRT criterion, both one-step and two-step. It is shown that the proposed detectors have the same detection structure as their non-Bayesian counterparts, substituting the colored diagonal sample covariance matrix (SCM) for the classic one. Finally, a performance assessment, conducted by Monte Carlo simulations, has shown that our detectors ensure better rejection capabilities of mismatched signals than the existing Bayesian detectors, at the price of a certain loss in terms of detection of matched signals
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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