The Employment of Accents at the Training Interpreting Sessions: Perspectives of Iraqi Translation Students

Abstract

In the field of interpreting and teaching translation, learning British English or American English accents are essential issues for the students of translation. This study aims to highlight the perspectives of translation students at two Iraqi Universities (a state university: Mustansiriyah and a private one: Al-Ma'moon) towards the value of the British or American accents during leaning and translating processes. Therefore, 174 students who listened to the same texts in the two accents and from different topics such as tourism and hotel management, business management, agriculture and forest, etc… heard the auditable texts totally. They were asked to give their conceptions to 12 statements depending on the scale of Likert "Five-point" that aims to know their perspectives from the weakest (never or almost never) to the strongest (always or almost always). The results of the answers were described and analyzed according to the SPSS 16 program. The students' given answers to the questions in the questionnaire are intended to highlight their perspectives towards the role of the accent, which proves that accent has an essential role in translating into English, and it requires to be heavily focused by the translation trainers throughout the interpreting pedagogy.