Degrees of immersion

I found an overview presentation of what interpretation at large requires in terms of learning and dedication. I assume it is related with a Chinese interpreting curriculum delivered at Dokkyo University. The document is in Japanese and comes as a pdf document. Incidentally, it is not the first time that I feel like Japanese interpreters of Chinese seem to be more open and talk the trade online than other language pairs.

The document is well-rounded with an ultimate focus on simultaneous as usual, but it lists up the various self-training methods one can apply at home to progress. It doesn't take into account the Internet but this doesn't matter. It's mute on liaison interpreting because the subject doesn't exist for conference interpreters. I will try and shrink it down to what I consider more important for liaison interpreting and deliver the result to my new students starting next week.

It's not obsession, but as I wrote earlier, AJATT is important to me, although I by no means belong to the cultural artifacts that are highlighted in the "method", everything that spells Japanese pop-culture. It is the spirit I am sensible to, and definitely what is pointed out as far as the power of community encouragement can be. I mean, a community of self-learners. In the latest post, the author gives a brief glimpse at his massive strategy to massive immersion for Cantonese Chinese. I am quoting :

"I have Cantonese TV and movies playing close to 24/7 in my house, and put a laptop in the kitchen so I can watch things like The Simpsons Movie (that’s right, son, there’s a Canto dub…Marge, Lisa, Bart and Flanders’ voices are dead on; Homer’s is “re-interpreted” slightly, but I never liked his original voice anyway) while washing dishes, and I have Chinese comics in the restroom, and Chinese newspapers pasted all over my walls, and Chinese books permanently sitting in my manbag ready to go anywhere I do, and…yeah…and stuff. But once you get those things set up, it’s almost all just a matter of, how you say in the simple English…sitting back and watching. Once you do set up and maintain the right environment, all that’s left is to show up…to exist."

I am almost jealous I don't have the room to pin down the poster on the wall, and eat Chinese food, and yet another room turned Italian for the pasta version of immersion.

But the approach makes so much sense.

There are degrees of immersion and the Dokkyo presentation just hint at doing focused listening, or silent shadowing, that is, in the mind, when walking around in public. But it stops digging deeper.

I spent an hour at the Sanseido bookstore, flipping over the books. The very the standard few examples that advertise massive immersion to the target language although like other books, they are - for well know local marketing purposes - laden thick with Japanese. You never release the hand from the false comfort of having everything explained in Japanese, and everything translated in Japanese. A little independence of mind would make this 多聴多読 a flop elsewhere.

Anyway, I like the extreme degree of immersion trumped by AJATT. It leaves no room to procrastination. It also open up the possibilities that there are pattern of environmental immersion that does not related to language learning but to other subject as well. What would the detailed Italian or French room look like? But what about physics, math or photovoltaics?