Keyword: «professional translator training»

The relevance of the study is driven by increasing demands for the quality of translator training amid the widespread use of spontaneous speech in professional communication. An analysis of current practice reveals that the teaching of spontaneous speech translation at the initial stage is often neglected, which leads to the development of unstable translation skills. This stage requires a specific methodological approach, as it is at this stage that the foundational skills of understanding and translating spontaneous speech–characterized by unpreparedness, situational nature, and unpredictability–are developed. The aim of the article is to develop and scientifically justify a step-by-step methodology for the formation of spontaneous speech translation skills in undergraduate linguistics majors at the initial stage of training, with experimental validation of its effectiveness. Theoretical and methodological foundations include the competence-based, activity-based, and cognitive-discursive approaches, which ensure the integrative development of linguistic, translation, communicative, and cognitive competences through students’ active involvement in practice-oriented learning that accounts for the mechanisms of perception, processing, and reproduction of spontaneous speech. The article presents a three-stage methodology: the first stage focuses on the perception of spontaneous speech (development of receptive skills, identification of keywords and communicative intent, content prediction); the second stage emphasizes linguistic and semantic interpretation (rapid information processing and transformation, summarizing, paraphrasing, logical structuring); the third stage addresses translation production (development of productive skills in consecutive interpreting, speech improvisation, and work under conditions of high uncertainty). The theoretical significance lies in the substantiation of a step-by-step approach to teaching spontaneous speech translation at the initial stage of professional training, expansion of scholarly understanding of the development of translation skills in working with spontaneous discourse, and the integration of multiple methodological approaches into a unified system opening up new prospects for further research in the field of professional training of translators. The practical significance consists in the applicability of the developed methodology in higher linguistic education, its adaptability to different language pairs and specializations, and its potential to inform the revision of existing translator training programs with greater emphasis on spontaneous speech from the early stages of instruction.