The course introduces students to consecutive interpreting from Greek into French, with distinct listening and delivery phases. It familiarizes them with the main types of interpreting, as well as with the principles and techniques of consecutive interpreting. It combines analysis of spoken Greek, retention of meaning, and selective note-taking with building reliable active production in French: complete sentences, active collocations, grammatical accuracy, and appropriate register. It focuses on European and international institutional communication and includes introductory applications of two-way interpreting in public service settings. Training aims at the acquisition of core skills through guided exercises and simulations of professional conditions.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• Distinguish the main types of interpreting and understand their specific requirements.
• Analyze spoken discourse in Greek, identifying the communicative situation, the communicative intent, the structure, the arguments, negations and affirmations, reservations, and the speaker’s stance, and plan the French rendition with complete sentences, clear subjects, and appropriate logical connectors.
• Retain and render into French, without notes, simple structured speech of about ninety (90) seconds, preserving the main ideas and the relationships among them.
• Apply selective note-taking techniques to render segments of up to five (5) minutes on a prepared institutional topic, recording the structure, figures, proper names, and critical nuances of meaning.
• Convey the message accurately and clearly in French, with intelligible prosody and appropriate register and pace, checking tenses, pronoun references, agreement, modality, and negation, without unjustified additions or omissions, and without turning the rendition into a summary.
• Activate documented French vocabulary and collocations for the topics covered and use accurate paraphrases when a term cannot be recalled.
• Preserve the information, reservations, and stance of the Greek-speaking speaker and briefly correct an essential error without unsupported additions.
• Speak coherently and fluently in French before an audience.
• Organize their preparation for an interpreting assignment in an institutional setting by conducting thematic and terminological research.
• Compile documented Greek–French glossaries, verifying terms, equivalents, French collocations, proper names, and numerical data against official sources.
• Interpret two-way dialogues in public service settings, rendering Greek-language interventions fully into French, requesting clarification transparently, and respecting the boundaries of their role, confidentiality, and turn-taking.
• Identify difficulties in comprehension, memory, note-taking, and active French production, and document their progress through reflection, a plan for language and interpreting improvement, and the application of feedback to new passages.
• Make critical use of the approved digital environments for preparation and practice, checking the reliability of outputs and complying with the course policy on the use of artificial intelligence.

Course Content (Syllabus)

Week 1 – Introduction to interpreting: public communication and local life

Skills: Familiarization with the main types of interpreting and with the distinct phases of listening, retention, and delivery. Separating comprehension of the Greek message from its formulation in French and activating opening and closing expressions for welcoming visitors. Exercises in rephrasing Greek greetings and short introductions in short, complete French sentences, using 30–45-second segments without notes. Diagnostic recording of active French production.

Week 2 – Education, youth, and mobility

Skills: Development of memory and of the ability to reconstruct spoken discourse, with an emphasis on the sequence of ideas and the logical relationships among them (cause and effect, conditions, chronological sequence). Organizing French explanations in short sentences with clear logical connectors and activating verbs and collocations related to studies and mobility. Exercises with 45–60-second segments without notes, without turning the rendition into a summary. Introduction to preparation techniques for a given topic and to the search for reliable sources.

Week 3 – Culture, tourism, and sports

Skills: Developing French expressions for welcoming and presenting, and accurate paraphrases for Greek cultural concepts, avoiding opaque loan translations from Greek. Preparing the pronunciation of proper names and cultural designations. Introduction to note-taking technique, with minimal recording of names and dates once the message has been analyzed. Consecutive interpreting of 60–90-second segments with minimal supporting notes.

Week 4 – European institutions and democratic governance

Skills: Searching for and verifying institutional terminology and compiling a Greek–French glossary, with correct use of articles and prepositions in French institutional names. Making explicit in French the subjects that Greek omits and breaking long Greek sentences into short French units. Developing a personal note layout that captures ideas and relationships and serves as a plan for French production. Consecutive interpreting exercises with segments from 90 seconds to 2 minutes with structured notes.

Week 5 – Economy, labor, and social protection

Skills: Automatizing French expressions for figures, percentages, economic change, and comparisons, with attention to agreement and prepositions of quantity. Recording figures in notes together with concept, unit, and period, without losing the argument. Thematic and terminological preparation and consecutive interpreting exercises with 2–3-minute segments with note-taking.

Week 6 – Environment, energy, and agri-food

Skills: Activating French expressions of causality, hypothesis, and caveats, and safe syntactic solutions for conditional relationships. Choosing an accurate paraphrase when a French technical term cannot be recalled. Use of reliable sources to prepare for specialized texts. Consecutive interpreting exercises with 3-minute segments with note-taking, with an emphasis on preserving causal relationships, negations, and scientific caveats as duration increases.

Week 7 – Public health, science, and innovation

Skills: Complete yet linguistically economical French rendition of explanatory Greek discourse, using terminologically safe sentences without excessive syntactic complexity. Brief correction when an essential piece of information changes, and diagnosis of the source of each error (comprehension, memory, notes, or production). Midterm test with renditions of 90-second speeches without notes and 2-minute speeches with notes. Feedback and setting of individual priorities for active French production.

Week 8 – Diplomacy and international cooperation

Skills: Developing a reliable French institutional register and conveying the strength of Greek commitments without linguistic overstatement. Activating expressions of reservation, intention, and commitment (modality), diplomatic collocations, and courteous forms of address, while attributing each position to the right speaker. Consecutive interpreting of 3–4-minute segments with note-taking and handling of a short question.

Week 9 – Migration, asylum, and social services

Skills: Managing triadic dialogues in public services (reception, housing, social protection, international protection), switching between both directions. Rendering the service user’s Greek interventions into French in the first person, without improving or embellishing them, and preserving tenses, negations, and stated uncertainty. Formulating clear requests for repetition or clarification in French, maintaining confidentiality, and respecting the boundaries of the interpreter’s role. Simulations with interventions of 15–45 seconds per turn.

Week 10 – Health, care, and communication with patients

Skills: Accurate rendering into French of Greek descriptions of experiences and symptoms, preserving the patient’s voice, chronology, negations, quantities, and uncertainty. Avoiding the replacement of the user’s description with an unstated diagnosis and refraining from personal advice. Preparation of a relevant glossary. Two-way simulations with interventions of 15–60 seconds per turn.

Week 11 – Justice and administrative procedures

Skills: Rendering Greek testimony and administrative or legal wording into French without smoothing over contradictions, uncertainty, or degree of certainty. Preserving question form, claims, hypotheses, and hesitation, and checking tenses, references, and reported speech. Expressing in French the need for clarification or the limits of the interpreter’s remit. Graded two-way simulation with interventions of 20–60 seconds per turn.

Week 12 – Press conferences and public communication in digital environments

Skills: Consecutive interpreting into French of an institutional statement lasting 4–5 minutes, with note-taking, and of short questions lasting 20–60 seconds. Using short French sentence endings and clear structural signposts, preserving tone, attribution of positions, and question form without excessive self-correction. Adapting to multiple speakers, remote briefings, and technical interruptions, with a clear request for repetition in French.

Week 13 – Regional cooperation and institutional visits: simulated institutional visit

Skills: Comprehensive preparation for and participation in a simulated joint institutional visit, with welcome addresses, a working meeting, and a press briefing. Transferring the available French repertoire to a new institutional context, with complete and economical French in an appropriate register. Consecutive interpreting of a 5-minute main segment and of short questions. Self-assessment, peer assessment, documentation of progress, and a plan for improving active French.

Recommended Reading

In Greek

Ιωαννίδης, Α. [Ioannidis, A.] (2022). Θεωρία και πράξη της διερμηνείας [Theory and practice of interpreting]. Κάλλιπος, Ανοικτές Ακαδημαϊκές Εκδόσεις [Kallipos, Open Academic Editions]. https://doi.org/10.57713/kallipos-93

In Other Languages

Albl-Mikasa, M. (2008). (Non-)Sense in note-taking for consecutive interpreting. Interpreting, 10(2), 197–231. https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.10.2.03alb

Dam, H. V. (2004). Interpreters’ notes: On the choice of language. Interpreting, 6(1), 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.6.1.03dam

Gile, D. (2009). Basic concepts and models for interpreter and translator training (Rev. ed.). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.8

Gillies, A. (2005). Note-taking for consecutive interpreting: A short course. St. Jerome Publishing.

Gillies, A. (2017). Note-taking for consecutive interpreting: A short course (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315648996

Gillies, A. (2019). Consecutive interpreting: A short course. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315648972

Ilg, G., & Lambert, S. (1996). Teaching consecutive interpreting. Interpreting, 1(1), 69–99. https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.1.1.05ilg

International Organization for Standardization. (2019). Interpreting services — Legal interpreting — Requirements (ISO Standard No. 20228:2019). https://www.iso.org/standard/67327.html

International Organization for Standardization. (2020). Interpreting services — Healthcare interpreting — Requirements and recommendations (ISO Standard No. 21998:2020). https://www.iso.org/standard/72344.html

International Organization for Standardization. (2022). Interpreting services — Conference interpreting — Requirements and recommendations (ISO Standard No. 23155:2022). https://www.iso.org/standard/74749.html

International Organization for Standardization. (2024). Interpreting services — Community interpreting — Requirements and recommendations (ISO Standard No. 13611:2024). https://www.iso.org/standard/82387.html

Jones, R. (2002). Conference interpreting explained (2nd ed.). St. Jerome Publishing.

Pöchhacker, F. (2022). Introducing interpreting studies (3rd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003186472

Rozan, J.-F. (1984). La prise de notes en interprétation consécutive. Librairie de l’Université.

Setton, R., & Dawrant, A. (2016a). Conference interpreting: A complete course. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.120

Setton, R., & Dawrant, A. (2016b). Conference interpreting: A trainer’s guide. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.121

Souza, I. E. T. de V., & Fragkou, E. (Eds.). (2020). Handbook of research on medical interpreting. IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-9308-9

Wadensjö, C. (1998). Interpreting as interaction. Longman.

Woo, K. (2025). Analysis of student interpreters’ self-assessment from the perspective of self-regulated learning. FORUM, 23(1), 85–106. https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.24006.woo

Related Academic Journals

• FORUM
• The Interpreter and Translator Trainer
• Interpreting
• Translation & Interpreting

The initial article “The” is disregarded in the alphabetical ordering of titles.

Sources for Teaching Materials and Terminology Documentation

• Assemblée nationale: https://videos.assemblee-nationale.fr/
• Council of the European Union Video: https://video.consilium.europa.eu/
• Élysée (Présidence de la République française): https://www.elysee.fr/
• EUR-Lex: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/
• European Commission Audiovisual Service: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/
• European Parliament Multimedia Centre: https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/
• Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs: https://www.mfa.gr/
• Hellenic Parliament Television (Vouli Tileorasi): https://www.hellenicparliament.gr/Enimerosi/Vouli-Tileorasi/
• IATE: https://iate.europa.eu/
• Speech Repository: https://speech-repository.webcloud.ec.europa.eu/
• UN Web TV: https://webtv.un.org/
• UNESCO: https://www.unesco.org/fr
• World Health Organization Newsroom:https://www.who.int/news-room/

Teaching Methods

In-person, face-to-face instruction in the university classroom, with short theoretical presentations, demonstration of the process by the instructor, individual practice, and work in groups of three.

The roles of speaker, interpreter, and listener rotate. Each cycle includes a first rendition, self-assessment, feedback, targeted repetition, and application to a new passage.

Interpreting practice is combined with targeted language enhancement in active French (collocations, grammatical accuracy, prosody). The two-way simulations of Weeks 9–11 are coordinated with the course Consecutive Interpreting French–Greek I, with a shared thematic calendar and separate assessment for each course.

Use of Information and Communication Technologies

Use of digital teaching materials and speech repositories for interpreting practice.

Use of the course’s eClass page for materials, instructions, deadlines, submissions, recordings, and feedback. Audiovisual sources, a projector, listening and recording equipment, official terminology databases, and parallel institutional texts are used.

Dedicated Workbenches and H5P-compatible tools are integrated for interactive, multimodal practice under the strict supervision and guidance of the instructor.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is used as described below:

• Scope of use. AI use is permitted exclusively for the following educational purposes and under the strictest supervision of the instructor.
• Preparation and teaching. The instructor uses AI to prepare and adapt materials that develop advanced skills, namely: multimodal exercises of different types, memory exercises, auditory and visual stimuli presented sequentially or simultaneously, activities of graded difficulty, and multiple-choice questions. The instructor reviews all materials before they are used in class with a projector and the other audiovisual equipment described above.
• Workbenches and H5P. AI supports the smooth integration of dedicated Workbenches from AI platforms into eClass and the embedding of H5P-compatible tools. These environments increase interactivity and create specific conditions for interpreting practice, such as combined processing of stimuli, speaker turns, and controlled increases in difficulty (speed, turn-taking, etc.).
• Performance assessment. AI is not used to assess student performance, except in cases where the parameters and criteria have been strictly defined by the instructor. Any such use remains under the instructor’s control, and the final evaluative judgment and grading rest solely with the instructor.
• Assignments and research preparation. AI use is not permitted in student assignments or in reflective activities. For research and preparatory investigation, AI use is recommended only when it is part of exercises carried out in the dedicated Workbenches and/or accompanied by cross-checking of information and sources. This limited use does not lift the prohibition on producing deliverables with AI.
• Specialized glossaries. AI may assist in identifying candidate terms and exploring specialized glossaries. Every term and every target-language equivalent must be confirmed in official terminology databases and institutional sources of the relevant subject field and specialization, such as IATE, and in official parallel texts. AI suggestions do not constitute documentation and do not replace students’ own research and drafting of the deliverable.
• Critical and responsible use. The course tests the capabilities and limitations of different tools. It examines the accuracy, omissions, distortions, and biases of outputs and their suitability for interpreting. It fosters evidence-based tool selection, protection of confidential material, and responsible use.

Assessment

In Week 1, a diagnostic assessment takes place: an ungraded rendition of an unseen passage and a diagnostic self-assessment note setting two personal goals, one meaning-related priority, and one language priority.

This is followed by formative/continuous assessment. Weekly exercises are submitted within 48 hours and carry no grade weight. They are accompanied by descriptive feedback for each criterion, self-assessment, and peer assessment in groups of three (speaker, interpreter, observer) and/or with the whole class.

Students complete two assignment-preparation projects, submitted 24 hours before Weeks 6 and 12. Each includes 20 documented bilingual entries with source, context, and French collocation; a one-page assignment brief; and a short original speech in Greek for in-class practice.

The criteria are as follows:

• documentation 40%,
• functionality 40%,
• currency and clarity 20%.

The portfolio forms part of the overall assessment. Portfolio A includes samples from Weeks 3 and 5, with a 200-word analysis per sample, and is submitted within 48 hours after Week 5. Portfolio B includes samples from Weeks 8, 10, and 12, with a 400-word reflection, and is submitted within 48 hours after Week 13. For each sample, students submit the initial rendition, a corrected attempt, a new sample, and their notes. The portfolio criteria are as follows:

• evidence-based diagnosis 40%,
• application of corrections 40%,
• progress plan 20%.

The final/summative assessment has three components.

• The midterm test (Week 7) includes two equally weighted unseen passages on a prepared topic: 90 seconds without notes and 2 minutes with notes.
• The authentic two-way simulation (Week 11) lasts 8–12 minutes, with short turns in both languages.

Seventy percent of its grade covers renditions from Greek into French, and 30% covers interaction management and ethics, namely role and confidentiality, turn-taking and first-person delivery, and transparent clarification and correction, at 10% each.

The final exam is held in person, with two equally weighted source speeches of 3 and 5 minutes in a European or international institutional setting (one explanatory speech and one argumentative or diplomatic statement), with notes. Topics are announced 48 hours in advance, without the texts, and 10 minutes of preparation time are given. A personal verified glossary and notes are permitted; ready-made translations, live transcription, and automatic generation of renditions are not. Oral renditions are graded on a common five-criterion scale:

• fidelity to content and speaker’s stance 45,
• French vocabulary, syntax, and grammar 25,
• structure, memory, and use of notes 15,
• prosody and oral delivery 5,
• terminology, names, and figures 10.

Each criterion is scored from 0 to 4, with points = weight × level / 4, and the same error is not penalized twice. An intelligible non-native accent is not penalized. The criteria and schedule are posted on eClass before graded work begins.