Course Description

Designed for eighth-semester students, this course builds on Simultaneous Interpreting French into Greek I. It develops advanced comprehension of spoken French and accurate, coherent, natural delivery in Greek. Practice covers longer speeches, dense argumentation, varied Francophone accents, specialized terminology, and presentations combining speech with visual information. Students become more independent in assignment preparation, attention management, and booth teamwork. Across thirteen thematic units, targeted feedback and conference simulations help students refine their performance, explain their decisions, and recognize the professional and ethical limits of simultaneous interpreting. Reflective practice supports the application of established skills to unfamiliar material and increasingly demanding assignments.

Learning Outcomes

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

• Build on the skills acquired in Course I to interpret more demanding French speeches into Greek, selecting strategies appropriate to the communicative purpose, audience, and working conditions.
• Identify the structure, argumentation, implicit references, and stance of French-speaking presenters and convey them without unsupported interpretations or additions.
• Simultaneously interpret French speeches lasting eight to ten minutes into Greek on topics they have prepared, preserving essential content and coherence as delivery speed or information density increases.
• Understand different French accents and varieties and handle spontaneous speech, digressions, and speaker changes without relying exclusively on memorized formulations.
• Adjust their lag behind the speaker, restructure sentences, and condense wording without losing essential information, while preserving negation, modality, temporal relationships, and the attribution of statements.
• Produce natural, accurate, accessible spoken Greek, with appropriate register, smooth delivery, and intonation that conveys the structure and stance of the original, avoiding mechanical transfers of French syntax.
• Accurately convey numbers, proper names, specialized terms, qualifications, and commitments; briefly correct consequential errors; and explain when working conditions require intervention or a different interpreting mode.
• Prepare independently for interpreting assignments, compile documented French–Greek glossaries, and combine listening with selective use of slides, documents, and other available information.
• Work effectively with booth partners by providing timely support, coordinating microphone handovers, and following equipment checks and procedures for reporting technical problems in in-person and hybrid meetings.
• Evaluate their performance using specific examples from recordings, distinguish the causes of difficulties, and develop a practice plan whose effectiveness they assess using unfamiliar material.
• Critically use approved digital preparation and practice tools, verify their outputs, protect confidential material, and follow the course policy on artificial intelligence.

Course content (Syllabus)

Week 1 – Multilingual democracy and public consultation

Skills: Review of the skills acquired in Course I through interpretation of a four- to five-minute French contribution and a brief oral reconstruction of its argument in Greek. Separate checks of comprehension, Greek expression, and equipment use. Identification of difficulties in managing attention and lag behind the speaker, followed by the selection of two individual learning goals.

Week 2 – European institutions and policy negotiation

Skills: Identification of institutional roles, procedural stages, and the positions expressed. Restructuring complex French sentences into natural Greek with clear references and logical connections. Interpretation of successive French contributions containing abbreviated references to earlier interventions, with accurate rendering of agreement, reservations, and disagreement.

Week 3 – Cultural heritage and cultural diplomacy

Skills: Rendering cultural references, metaphors, allusions, and evaluative language in concise, accurate Greek. Distinguishing necessary clarification from unwarranted explanation. Practice with speakers from different Francophone backgrounds and submission of the first portfolio sample, including a check of the same skill using an unfamiliar passage.

Week 4 – Education, research, and international academic cooperation

Skills: Following extended arguments, distinguishing claims, evidence, and counterarguments, and conveying the limitations of research findings. Combining listening with selective reading of slides while prioritizing the spoken message. Interpretation of a French presentation and spontaneous answers, preserving qualifications and coherence.

Week 5 – Economic policy, employment, and social inequalities

Skills: Accurately conveying dense numerical information, trends, and comparisons, including the distinction between percentages and percentage points. Combining spoken commentary with charts without confusing indicators, reporting periods, or comparison baselines. Coordination of booth partner support and review of the first two portfolio samples.

Week 6 – Climate adaptation and food security

Skills: Managing terminology and information density in scientific and policy contributions. Accurately conveying scenarios, probabilities, and cause-and-effect relationships. Condensing repetition without losing essential content. Submission of the first assignment preparation project and use of the glossary to interpret an unfamiliar French speech.

Week 7 – Energy transition and infrastructure resilience

Skills: Integrating technical information, economic data, and policy arguments into continuous Greek delivery. Midterm assessment using two previously unheard five-minute French speeches on a prepared topic. Targeted workshop on managing excessive lag, completing sentences, and correcting consequential errors.

Week 8 – Migration, asylum, and humanitarian coordination

Skills: Accurately conveying individuals’ status, attributed statements, and expressions of uncertainty without stigmatizing language or changes to the speaker’s stance. Handling shifts between institutional discourse and personal testimony in a public discussion. Examination of the suitability of simultaneous interpreting for group briefings and its limitations in individual interviews.

Week 9 – Public health and risk communication

Skills: Conveying specialized information in accessible Greek appropriate to the audience, without changing the degree of certainty or the content of recommendations. Simulated press conference featuring French-speaking experts, numerical information, and spontaneous questions. Checking negation, temporal references, and quantities, and discussing the limits of simultaneous interpreting in individual clinical encounters.

Week 10 – Justice, equality, and fundamental rights

Skills: Distinguishing legal concepts and avoiding misleading equivalences between legal systems. Accurately conveying obligations, permissions, exceptions, and procedural safeguards in a thematic conference. Preserving rhetorical intensity without amplification or softening. Explaining professional decisions when uncertain terminology or listening conditions threaten the reliability of the interpretation.

Week 11 – Digital government and artificial intelligence

Skills: Interpretation of a French presentation using slides, including departures from the available text. Controlled comparison of performance with and without automatic transcription, examining errors, latency, and distraction. Machine translation is not used as a script to read aloud. Submission of the second assignment preparation project and explanation of decisions to use or reject digital aids.

Week 12 – Diplomacy, the United Nations, and international security

Skills: Conveying diplomatic reservations, indirect criticism, commitments, and strategic ambiguity without unwarranted clarification. Simulated hybrid meeting with changes of French-speaking presenters, coordinated microphone handovers, and booth partner support. Application of procedures for reporting and addressing audio problems and completion of the fifth portfolio sample.

Week 13 – Mediterranean cooperation and maritime governance: conference simulation

Skills: Independent preparation and integrated application of the semester’s skills to unfamiliar material. At the bilingual conference, individual interpretation of an eight- to ten-minute French speech and a brief question-and-answer exchange, alongside support for a booth partner while off microphone. Individual assessment, peer feedback, and a final review identifying specific priorities for further practice.

Bibliography

Recommended reading

Greek-language publications

Ιωαννίδης, Α. (2022). Θεωρία και πράξη της διερμηνείας. Κάλλιπος, Ανοικτές Ακαδημαϊκές Εκδόσεις. https://doi.org/10.57713/kallipos-93

Publications in other languages

Bartłomiejczyk, M. (2006). Strategies of simultaneous interpreting and directionality. Interpreting, 8(2), 149–174. https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.8.2.03bar

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. (2013). Conference interpreting: A student’s practice book. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Conference-Interpreting-A-Students-Practice-Book/Gillies/p/book/9780415532365

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.

Li, T., & Chmiel, A. (2024). Automatic subtitles increase accuracy and decrease cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting. Interpreting, 26(2), 253–281. https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.00111.li

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

Seeber, K. G. (2011). Cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting: Existing theories — new models. Interpreting, 13(2), 176–204. https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.13.2.02see

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.

Relevant academic journals

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

Sources for teaching materials and terminology research

• Assemblée nationale: https://videos.assemblee-nationale.fr/
• Council of the European Union Video: https://video.consilium.europa.eu/
• 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/
• gov.gr (Greek public sector portal): https://www.gov.gr/
• 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/

Teaching Methods

The course is taught in person in the interpreting laboratory, using booths or appropriately configured workstations with separate source and target channels. It assumes the skills developed in Course I. Teaching combines brief theoretical input, instructor demonstrations and discussion of strategies, individual practice, and work in groups of three.

Students rotate through the roles of interpreter, booth partner, and listener. Each practice cycle includes an initial rendition, self-assessment with timestamped references to the recording, feedback, targeted repetition, and application to unfamiliar material. Speech length increases from four to five minutes to eight to ten minutes. Speed, density, accent, and the combination of audio and visual information are varied in a controlled way so that the source of each difficulty can be identified.

Teaching focuses on listening to and analyzing spoken French and producing natural Greek through reformulation, syntactic restructuring, condensation, and oral presentation exercises. Materials include different Francophone accents, prepared speeches, and spontaneous contributions. Regular independent preparation and practice are expected between classes. The course is thematically coordinated with Simultaneous Interpreting Greek into French II, including a shared final simulation and separate assessment for each direction.

Use of Information and Communication Technologies

Digital speech collections and authentic French-language audiovisual materials are selected to match the learning objectives and the gradual increase in task demands.

The course eClass site is used for learning materials, instructions, deadlines, submissions, and feedback. Practice is supported by listening and recording equipment, a projector, official terminology databases, and parallel institutional texts. Recordings are used in accordance with course instructions on access and personal data protection.

Dedicated preparation and practice environments (Workbenches) and H5P-compatible activities are used under the instructor’s guidance to combine auditory and visual information and develop specific skills.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is used under the following conditions:

• Scope of use. AI is permitted only for the educational purposes described below and under the instructor’s supervision. It does not replace students’ own preparation, interpreting performance, or explanation of their decisions.
• Preparation and teaching. The instructor may use AI to create and adapt exercises in attention, memory, comprehension, and multimodal processing, along with activities of increasing difficulty. The instructor checks all materials for accuracy, suitability, and language quality before classroom use.
• Workbenches and H5P. AI tools may support activity design in dedicated environments and the integration of H5P-compatible materials into eClass. Activities simulate speaker changes, the combination of speech and visual information, and controlled changes in speed or density.
• Performance assessment. Any use of AI to support feedback follows predetermined criteria, and the instructor checks each output. There is no autonomous automated assessment. Final judgments and grading remain the instructor’s sole responsibility.
• Assignments and preparatory research. AI-generated assignments, reflective writing, and other submissions are not permitted. For preliminary research, AI use is limited to activities approved by the instructor, requires verification against primary sources, and must be disclosed, identifying the tool and its use. Final selection and writing remain the student’s own work.
• Specialized glossaries. AI may suggest terms for investigation, but its suggestions do not constitute evidence. Each French term and Greek equivalent is verified in authoritative terminology databases, such as IATE, and official texts in the relevant field. Sources and any restrictions on the use of an equivalent are recorded.
• Critical and responsible use. Activities examine accuracy, omissions, bias, latency, and the effects of tools on the interpreter’s attention. Automatic transcripts are used only in approved comparative exercises. Confidential material or material containing personal data is not entered into unapproved services, and machine translation does not substitute for the student’s spoken rendition.

An ungraded diagnostic assessment takes place in Week 1. It includes simultaneous interpretation of a four- to five-minute French speech, a brief oral reconstruction of its argument in Greek, and a separate check of equipment use. Each student sets two individual learning goals based on specific examples from their performance.

Formative assessment continues throughout the semester, with descriptive feedback on comprehension, Greek expression, and interpreting strategies. It includes self-assessment, peer assessment in groups of three, and whole-class discussion. Weekly practice exercises receive no separate grade; only the assignments and assessments specified below contribute to the course grade.

Two assignment preparation projects are submitted in Weeks 6 and 11. Each includes a one-page brief on the setting, audience, speakers, and issues to be discussed, together with a 30-entry French–Greek glossary. Each entry includes the source term, target equivalent, brief definition, usage example or collocation, source with access date, and an indication of verification status.

The two projects are equally weighted. Each is assessed using the following criteria:

• conceptual accuracy and verifiable documentation 50%,
• usefulness of the materials during interpreting 30%,
• justification of terminology choices 20%.

The portfolio contains five samples from Weeks 3, 5, 8, 10, and 12. Each sample includes an initial rendition, targeted repetition, interpretation of an unfamiliar passage, and a 250-word analysis in Greek with timestamped references to the recordings. The first two samples are assessed after Week 5; the remaining samples are assessed in Week 13, together with a 500-word final reflection. The two stages account for 40% and 60% of the portfolio grade, respectively. The criteria are:

• evidence-based identification and analysis of difficulties 35%,
• use of feedback 30%,
• application of skills to unfamiliar material and progress 25%,
• organization and clear documentation of the learning process 10%.

Summative assessment includes a midterm, a conference simulation, and a final examination. The overall course grade is calculated as follows: preparation projects 10%, portfolio 15%, midterm 15%, conference simulation 20%, and final examination 40%.

• The midterm in Week 7 comprises two equally weighted, previously unheard five-minute French speeches on a prepared topic. Students receive an assignment brief without the speech texts. Individual written feedback is provided before Week 9.
• The conference simulation in Week 13 is assessed individually. Each student interprets an eight- to ten-minute French speech and a brief question-and-answer exchange and also supports a booth partner while off microphone.

Interpreting performance accounts for 60% of the simulation grade, using the common course rubric. The remaining 40% assesses observable professional skills: usable preparation 15%, booth partner support and coordinated microphone handovers 15%, and technical procedures and justified professional decisions 10%. Other team members’ performance does not affect the individual student’s grade.

The final examination takes place in person and comprises two equally weighted, previously unheard French speeches on topics covered during the course: an eight-minute structured presentation and a six-minute argumentative contribution. The indicative delivery rate is 115–135 words per minute, with controlled information density and features of spoken French that students have practiced. The audience and topics are announced 48 hours in advance, without the speech texts, and students receive 15 minutes of immediate preparation time. A personal verified glossary and assignment brief are permitted; live machine translation, automatic transcription, and external assistance are not. Renditions in the midterm, simulation, and final examination are assessed using five common criteria:

• fidelity and completeness of the message 40,
• accuracy, naturalness, and appropriateness of spoken Greek 30,
• clarity and prosody 10,
• terminology, proper names, and numerical information 10,
• continuity of delivery and management of difficulties 10.

Each criterion is rated from 0 to 4, and its points are calculated as weight × rating / 4. Justified half-point ratings are permitted. The same error is not penalized twice. Accurate paraphrase is accepted when it preserves meaning and register. Speed and density are considered together rather than treated as the sole indicators of difficulty. Performance level descriptors, criteria, and the schedule are posted on eClass before each graded activity.