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Abstract The museum is a public cultural service institution that integrates the functions of collection, research, exhibit and education. With the development of society and the increasing demand for spiritual civilization of people, a variety of museums spring up. The current quality of museum interpreters in China and their professional skills is uneven. Therefore, it is particularly urgent and important to improve scientific communication capability of museum interpreters.
Keywords museums, interpreters, scientific communication
1 Current status of museum interpreters in China
At present, lack of professionalism and weak research capabilities of museum interpreters in our country has caused problems such as rigid content, poor targeting and so on. The main reason for this resides in the fact that the common understanding of the basic quality requirements of an interpreter is biased. The stereotyped image of an interpreter is a career of youth. There were so many times, some external aspects of an interpreter such as his own age, appearance conditions, language ability and body language have become indicators for determining his excellence. In fact, these factors are none of the judgment standards of the interpreters in foreign museums. On the contrary, the body type or appearance of many museum interpreters is not commonly believed young or pretty. Affected by this, most of museum interpreters are transferred to another post when they get old. As a result, their career development would be blocked or they were in a perplexed dilemma, which destroys museum interpreters in both physical and mental aspects. Museums in some cities in China even employ social workers to be occupied in interpretation and to take care of daily interpretation and reception services, forming an operation mode similar to assembly line work. This practice is extremely detrimental to the professional development of museum interpreters, because the uneven educational level and the high mobility of social workers lead to relative salary packages, which go against their long-term planning of a career and the improvement of their scientific communication capability.
In addition, career development of museum interpreters often depends on the awareness and emphasis of the administrator of the museum. For the moment, affected by the administrators’ limitations on the understanding of the role of museum interpreters in the work of science education, the opportunity for museum interpreters to learn about professional knowledge and skill training is much less than that of other education positions in museums. Although there have been competitions or training events for museum interpreters in many cities in recent years, in most cases they focus on the aspects of mandarin level, linguistic ability, posture, gesture and etiquette. It was quite difficult to form a scientific and impeccable theoretical method which facilitates the development of museum interpreters. The starting point of a high-quality explanation should meet the demands of visitors, with the ultimate goal to attract visitors’ persistent attention and draw their interest to this visits, so that visitors would have a deeper understanding and reflection on the spiritual essence of culture, history, humanities, and science content revealed and transmitted within the exhibition. A museum interpreter, as a carrier of educational dissemination, exactly need achieve the latter aim. In a sense, an interpreter is an educator in a special classroom. Individualized teaching is the highest state college teachers they chase for. As today’s requirements for the capacity for scientific research is also necessary. Teachers should inspire students’ interest and active learning awareness during teaching, and use appropriate language and expression methods to communicate and interact with students to achieve the teaching aims. At the same time, they may continue to explore and study in their own professional fields to form academic achievements. The profound foundation of professional fields can give endless stream of "nutrition" to teach. In order to explain the story behind the exhibits in a simple and easy-going way, answer all the doubts of visitors, and capture the changes in the mind of visitors, it can be realized only by museum interpreters with a high level of academic research.
2 How to improve scientific communication capability of museum interpreters
In order to improve scientific communication capability of museum interpreters, this not only requires museum management’s attention to interpretation work, but also requires the continuous efforts of each individual interpreter. People believe that the most important consideration of an excellent museum interpreter should be a bundle of qualifications. But in fact, museums are nothing like universities. Museum interpreters should have a good relationship with visitors and help them overcome learning disabilities. They are able to observe the situation and find out the visitors’ difficulty in understanding the exhibits, and know how to help them.
2.1 Effective long-term training for museum interpreters
Science popularization is a bridge between museums and the public. As a deficiency-excess mixing work, it needs appropriate carriers and forms to express it. Given the speed of change nowadays, scientific popularization should be promoted in innovation, and be perfected by practice. So it is necessary to establish an effective long-term training mechanism for main practitioners of science popularization. However, we often see unsatisfactory situations in real life. The loss rate of interpreters always stays at a high level. Due to the diversification of values, diversified sources of information, and complicated social environment, the new generation of museum interpreters lack the sense of respect for science popularization work with weak professional ethics. Moreover, the wide disparity in the treatment of museum interpreters on and out the establishment makes a high loss rate of museum interpreters which cannot be carried out normally in normalizing systematic training of interpreting skills. Highly-skilled, knowledgeable, and professional-style interpreters lack the ground for growth. Over time, it will seriously affect the healthy development of museums. Therefore, by establishing institutionalized interpreters training, the system guarantees the systematicness and long-term nature of training. Corresponding systems have been formulated for the training work in organizations, teachers, teaching materials, funds, assessments, appointments, and other aspects. The implementation and the evaluation shall be supervised as the other works of museums. Special emphasis is placed on training objectives, training plans and training results. Only the interpreter fully feels the sense of identity and belonging from the museum, his interpretation will be developed.
2.2 To improve the people-oriented service awareness of museum interpreters
Museum interpreters, as a group of people that is most easily accessible to the visitors during the visit to the museum, play an important role in the education function of the museum. Nowadays, in some museums, the standardized interpretation team is like a string of smart notes, playing a wonderful movement in this artistic palace.
From a philosophical point of view, exertion of subjective initiative depends on the formation of ideology. Establishing a people-oriented service awareness is a precondition for the service of the public. Only by starting from the demands of the visitors can the interpretation become "active water, tree with its own roots". More and more people would like to walk into museums with the implementation of the free opening policy. Museum interpreters should serve the visitors in terms of attitude, language, and emotion. Only a sincere attitude can inspire a lively language, revealing real emotions, and ultimately impress the visitors and infect them. First of all, the correct attitude comes from the correct positioning. As a cultural institution, the museum is duty-bound to shoulder the propaganda culture and edify the public. An interpreter won’t be motivated to work or inspire the enthusiasm to serve the public, unless he has a noble sense of mission and responsibility. Secondly, visitors walk into a museum to delight themselves while experiencing the charm of science and culture. Blindly instructive interpretation not only fail to attract the visitors, but also reject them. Therefore, museum interpreters should be good at observing and interpreting the visitors’ psychology and explain creatively. After the interpretation, they should summarize and analyze the points of interest of the visitors so as to be entertained, to attract the visitors’ attention and make the museum become a spiritual and cultural paradise which is welcomed by the visitors. In today’s museums, interpretation is not only for the visitors to tell knowledge, answer doubts, but also an emotional exchange and spiritual dialogue. This requires museum interpreters to break the inherent introductory ideas, explore new explaining methods and skills, use artistic language to explain and recreate content, so that the interpretation is not only something they have memorized, but a creative content. The visitors would receive a spiritual enjoyment and satisfaction in the end.
2.3 Experiment of various kinds of scientific communication methods
If you were a visitor, what kind of interpretation would you like when you walk into a museum? Loquacious recitation with a lot of unintelligible terminology, or read the above content in the graphic? I don’t think that’s what you want. So what kind of the scientific communication method is acceptable to the visitors? In most cases, museum interpreters usually use declarative interpretation,as the theme, the source and the feature of a certain exhibit and so on, using a narrative method to complete the presentation. This method is often boring, especially when introducing ancient artifacts, people often do not understand the historical background or culture at that time, and such explaining method will certainly turn off the interests of visitors.
In addition to the declarative interpretation, we will also hear some different methods of interpreting. The first is heuristic or guiding interpretation. This basic interpreting method is based on the interpretation of words plus a few questions, so that the visitors has a process of thinking. Take the same example as above: this is a certain exhibit, can you speculate on what time it came from? Is there any evidence to prove? The visitors can be motivated to think with the two simple questions, so that the visitors’ interest is mobilized. The second is exploratory type. This interpreting method, based on heuristic interpretation, tries to lead the visitors to explore the exhibits, so that the visitors is allowed to actively discover the links between the exhibitions and their interests and reflections on the exhibitions can be further enhanced. Take the same example again, museum interpreters can pose questions while introducing exhibits, such as: did you find that some part of this exhibition was very similar to the one that I have just introduced, and what they have in common is? This not only gives the visitors thought, but also enables the visitors to better observe the exhibit and allow them to integrate their own behavior and thinking into the interpretation. The third is interactive type. This may be the visitors’ favorite. Based on the first two interpreting methods, museum interpreters can interact with the visitors. Of course, there are many ways to interact, such as making a game, drawing a painting, and touching it with your own hands. The forms of interaction can be varied, and the ultimate goal is to enable the visitors to be interested in the exhibit and to make science popularization more effective. 3 Professional development of museum interpreters
Interpreting, as an important form of museum education, plays an irreplaceable role in guiding and interpreting exhibits. An interpreter is not only a simple carrier for the transmission of information between the exhibition and the visitors, but also has the ability and function of recreating. They should pay more attention to the promotion of professional literacy and accumulation of knowledge in career planning, and develop themselves to professional narrators. It is suggested that efforts can be made in the following areas:
The improvement of self-image and expression skills. Professional interpreters grow up from normal ones, but with higher level of knowledge. Good image, suitable makeup, friendly gestures, standard mandarin, good language organization and presentation skills are the basic qualities of an interpreter. Therefore, that is demanded for average interpreters, the professional interpreters should also be able to do it and do it better. This is the premise of the professional development of museum interpreters.
The mastering of nature, history, cultural relics, and scientific knowledge. It is necessary for museum interpreters to have a relevant understanding of the entire history of human history, related important events and scientific principles, and then to have an in-depth understanding and mastery of the range of knowledge that he has to explain. The latter step is also the most important and difficult part. It requires the interpreters to continue to work hard day after day to build up. This is the basis of the professional interpreters.
Understanding of the visitors’ psychological needs. It is necessary to have a full understanding of the popular psychology of modern cities. This can be achieved through knowledge learning in psychology. The exact understanding of the psychological needs of specific visitors can be obtained by communicating with the visitors. Only in this way can we overcome the simple practice of rote memorization and scripting, thus changing the stereotypes of people. It is possible to record the questions of the visitors in the lectures, supplement them afterwards, and summarize and analyze them in order to make the interpretation more professional. This is actually an important guarantee for the professional interpreters.
Ability of summing up and transforming it into his own knowledge reserve. Pay attention to every learning opportunity. How do you apply your knowledge after study? The answer is generalization and summarization. Memorize useful knowledge points in a way that suits you, then classify, learn, absorb, and integrate them. In the process of interpreting, when related issues are involved, relevant content can be accurately retrieved and presented to the visitors in a concise language. Observe during work and learn modestly from others. Each interpreter is an independent individual. Education background, character traits and other aspects determine the uniqueness of every interpreter. In order to improve their level of presentation, we need to avoid weaknesses and discover and learn from other good aspects. Mutual learning among museum interpreters is facilitated through a variety of ways, such as observing studies, participating in competitions, quarterly assessments, to find out their own gaps and deficiencies, to a greater degree to improve their level of explanation, to win the visitors’ recognition.
4 Conclusions
Nowadays, interpretation has become more and more familiar in museums, as an important manifestation of the function of museum education and a common means of popular science dissemination. The team of museum interpreters is also constantly growing and developing. Hoped that some reflections and discussions in this paper would let the interpreters get rid of the innate thinking of people and interpretation become a skilled work, and facilitate the improvement of their scientific communication capability. Science popularization work starts with me, let’s disseminate more knowledge among people.
References
[1]YU Liyuan. Several methods of improving the quality of interpreters in natural museums[J]. Chinese Museum, 2003(2): 82-84.
[2]QIU Chengli, LIU Wenchuan. An exploration study of the improvement in patterns and means of explaining capability in science and technology popularization[J]. Studies on Science Popularization, 2015(5): 83-91.
[3]WAN Hong, XU Yan, ZHENG Wei, et al. Theories and practices of popular science interpretation in natural science museums: N-skills of science interpreters[M]. Beijing: China Science and Technology Press, 2017.
Keywords museums, interpreters, scientific communication
1 Current status of museum interpreters in China
At present, lack of professionalism and weak research capabilities of museum interpreters in our country has caused problems such as rigid content, poor targeting and so on. The main reason for this resides in the fact that the common understanding of the basic quality requirements of an interpreter is biased. The stereotyped image of an interpreter is a career of youth. There were so many times, some external aspects of an interpreter such as his own age, appearance conditions, language ability and body language have become indicators for determining his excellence. In fact, these factors are none of the judgment standards of the interpreters in foreign museums. On the contrary, the body type or appearance of many museum interpreters is not commonly believed young or pretty. Affected by this, most of museum interpreters are transferred to another post when they get old. As a result, their career development would be blocked or they were in a perplexed dilemma, which destroys museum interpreters in both physical and mental aspects. Museums in some cities in China even employ social workers to be occupied in interpretation and to take care of daily interpretation and reception services, forming an operation mode similar to assembly line work. This practice is extremely detrimental to the professional development of museum interpreters, because the uneven educational level and the high mobility of social workers lead to relative salary packages, which go against their long-term planning of a career and the improvement of their scientific communication capability.
In addition, career development of museum interpreters often depends on the awareness and emphasis of the administrator of the museum. For the moment, affected by the administrators’ limitations on the understanding of the role of museum interpreters in the work of science education, the opportunity for museum interpreters to learn about professional knowledge and skill training is much less than that of other education positions in museums. Although there have been competitions or training events for museum interpreters in many cities in recent years, in most cases they focus on the aspects of mandarin level, linguistic ability, posture, gesture and etiquette. It was quite difficult to form a scientific and impeccable theoretical method which facilitates the development of museum interpreters. The starting point of a high-quality explanation should meet the demands of visitors, with the ultimate goal to attract visitors’ persistent attention and draw their interest to this visits, so that visitors would have a deeper understanding and reflection on the spiritual essence of culture, history, humanities, and science content revealed and transmitted within the exhibition. A museum interpreter, as a carrier of educational dissemination, exactly need achieve the latter aim. In a sense, an interpreter is an educator in a special classroom. Individualized teaching is the highest state college teachers they chase for. As today’s requirements for the capacity for scientific research is also necessary. Teachers should inspire students’ interest and active learning awareness during teaching, and use appropriate language and expression methods to communicate and interact with students to achieve the teaching aims. At the same time, they may continue to explore and study in their own professional fields to form academic achievements. The profound foundation of professional fields can give endless stream of "nutrition" to teach. In order to explain the story behind the exhibits in a simple and easy-going way, answer all the doubts of visitors, and capture the changes in the mind of visitors, it can be realized only by museum interpreters with a high level of academic research.
2 How to improve scientific communication capability of museum interpreters
In order to improve scientific communication capability of museum interpreters, this not only requires museum management’s attention to interpretation work, but also requires the continuous efforts of each individual interpreter. People believe that the most important consideration of an excellent museum interpreter should be a bundle of qualifications. But in fact, museums are nothing like universities. Museum interpreters should have a good relationship with visitors and help them overcome learning disabilities. They are able to observe the situation and find out the visitors’ difficulty in understanding the exhibits, and know how to help them.
2.1 Effective long-term training for museum interpreters
Science popularization is a bridge between museums and the public. As a deficiency-excess mixing work, it needs appropriate carriers and forms to express it. Given the speed of change nowadays, scientific popularization should be promoted in innovation, and be perfected by practice. So it is necessary to establish an effective long-term training mechanism for main practitioners of science popularization. However, we often see unsatisfactory situations in real life. The loss rate of interpreters always stays at a high level. Due to the diversification of values, diversified sources of information, and complicated social environment, the new generation of museum interpreters lack the sense of respect for science popularization work with weak professional ethics. Moreover, the wide disparity in the treatment of museum interpreters on and out the establishment makes a high loss rate of museum interpreters which cannot be carried out normally in normalizing systematic training of interpreting skills. Highly-skilled, knowledgeable, and professional-style interpreters lack the ground for growth. Over time, it will seriously affect the healthy development of museums. Therefore, by establishing institutionalized interpreters training, the system guarantees the systematicness and long-term nature of training. Corresponding systems have been formulated for the training work in organizations, teachers, teaching materials, funds, assessments, appointments, and other aspects. The implementation and the evaluation shall be supervised as the other works of museums. Special emphasis is placed on training objectives, training plans and training results. Only the interpreter fully feels the sense of identity and belonging from the museum, his interpretation will be developed.
2.2 To improve the people-oriented service awareness of museum interpreters
Museum interpreters, as a group of people that is most easily accessible to the visitors during the visit to the museum, play an important role in the education function of the museum. Nowadays, in some museums, the standardized interpretation team is like a string of smart notes, playing a wonderful movement in this artistic palace.
From a philosophical point of view, exertion of subjective initiative depends on the formation of ideology. Establishing a people-oriented service awareness is a precondition for the service of the public. Only by starting from the demands of the visitors can the interpretation become "active water, tree with its own roots". More and more people would like to walk into museums with the implementation of the free opening policy. Museum interpreters should serve the visitors in terms of attitude, language, and emotion. Only a sincere attitude can inspire a lively language, revealing real emotions, and ultimately impress the visitors and infect them. First of all, the correct attitude comes from the correct positioning. As a cultural institution, the museum is duty-bound to shoulder the propaganda culture and edify the public. An interpreter won’t be motivated to work or inspire the enthusiasm to serve the public, unless he has a noble sense of mission and responsibility. Secondly, visitors walk into a museum to delight themselves while experiencing the charm of science and culture. Blindly instructive interpretation not only fail to attract the visitors, but also reject them. Therefore, museum interpreters should be good at observing and interpreting the visitors’ psychology and explain creatively. After the interpretation, they should summarize and analyze the points of interest of the visitors so as to be entertained, to attract the visitors’ attention and make the museum become a spiritual and cultural paradise which is welcomed by the visitors. In today’s museums, interpretation is not only for the visitors to tell knowledge, answer doubts, but also an emotional exchange and spiritual dialogue. This requires museum interpreters to break the inherent introductory ideas, explore new explaining methods and skills, use artistic language to explain and recreate content, so that the interpretation is not only something they have memorized, but a creative content. The visitors would receive a spiritual enjoyment and satisfaction in the end.
2.3 Experiment of various kinds of scientific communication methods
If you were a visitor, what kind of interpretation would you like when you walk into a museum? Loquacious recitation with a lot of unintelligible terminology, or read the above content in the graphic? I don’t think that’s what you want. So what kind of the scientific communication method is acceptable to the visitors? In most cases, museum interpreters usually use declarative interpretation,as the theme, the source and the feature of a certain exhibit and so on, using a narrative method to complete the presentation. This method is often boring, especially when introducing ancient artifacts, people often do not understand the historical background or culture at that time, and such explaining method will certainly turn off the interests of visitors.
In addition to the declarative interpretation, we will also hear some different methods of interpreting. The first is heuristic or guiding interpretation. This basic interpreting method is based on the interpretation of words plus a few questions, so that the visitors has a process of thinking. Take the same example as above: this is a certain exhibit, can you speculate on what time it came from? Is there any evidence to prove? The visitors can be motivated to think with the two simple questions, so that the visitors’ interest is mobilized. The second is exploratory type. This interpreting method, based on heuristic interpretation, tries to lead the visitors to explore the exhibits, so that the visitors is allowed to actively discover the links between the exhibitions and their interests and reflections on the exhibitions can be further enhanced. Take the same example again, museum interpreters can pose questions while introducing exhibits, such as: did you find that some part of this exhibition was very similar to the one that I have just introduced, and what they have in common is? This not only gives the visitors thought, but also enables the visitors to better observe the exhibit and allow them to integrate their own behavior and thinking into the interpretation. The third is interactive type. This may be the visitors’ favorite. Based on the first two interpreting methods, museum interpreters can interact with the visitors. Of course, there are many ways to interact, such as making a game, drawing a painting, and touching it with your own hands. The forms of interaction can be varied, and the ultimate goal is to enable the visitors to be interested in the exhibit and to make science popularization more effective. 3 Professional development of museum interpreters
Interpreting, as an important form of museum education, plays an irreplaceable role in guiding and interpreting exhibits. An interpreter is not only a simple carrier for the transmission of information between the exhibition and the visitors, but also has the ability and function of recreating. They should pay more attention to the promotion of professional literacy and accumulation of knowledge in career planning, and develop themselves to professional narrators. It is suggested that efforts can be made in the following areas:
The improvement of self-image and expression skills. Professional interpreters grow up from normal ones, but with higher level of knowledge. Good image, suitable makeup, friendly gestures, standard mandarin, good language organization and presentation skills are the basic qualities of an interpreter. Therefore, that is demanded for average interpreters, the professional interpreters should also be able to do it and do it better. This is the premise of the professional development of museum interpreters.
The mastering of nature, history, cultural relics, and scientific knowledge. It is necessary for museum interpreters to have a relevant understanding of the entire history of human history, related important events and scientific principles, and then to have an in-depth understanding and mastery of the range of knowledge that he has to explain. The latter step is also the most important and difficult part. It requires the interpreters to continue to work hard day after day to build up. This is the basis of the professional interpreters.
Understanding of the visitors’ psychological needs. It is necessary to have a full understanding of the popular psychology of modern cities. This can be achieved through knowledge learning in psychology. The exact understanding of the psychological needs of specific visitors can be obtained by communicating with the visitors. Only in this way can we overcome the simple practice of rote memorization and scripting, thus changing the stereotypes of people. It is possible to record the questions of the visitors in the lectures, supplement them afterwards, and summarize and analyze them in order to make the interpretation more professional. This is actually an important guarantee for the professional interpreters.
Ability of summing up and transforming it into his own knowledge reserve. Pay attention to every learning opportunity. How do you apply your knowledge after study? The answer is generalization and summarization. Memorize useful knowledge points in a way that suits you, then classify, learn, absorb, and integrate them. In the process of interpreting, when related issues are involved, relevant content can be accurately retrieved and presented to the visitors in a concise language. Observe during work and learn modestly from others. Each interpreter is an independent individual. Education background, character traits and other aspects determine the uniqueness of every interpreter. In order to improve their level of presentation, we need to avoid weaknesses and discover and learn from other good aspects. Mutual learning among museum interpreters is facilitated through a variety of ways, such as observing studies, participating in competitions, quarterly assessments, to find out their own gaps and deficiencies, to a greater degree to improve their level of explanation, to win the visitors’ recognition.
4 Conclusions
Nowadays, interpretation has become more and more familiar in museums, as an important manifestation of the function of museum education and a common means of popular science dissemination. The team of museum interpreters is also constantly growing and developing. Hoped that some reflections and discussions in this paper would let the interpreters get rid of the innate thinking of people and interpretation become a skilled work, and facilitate the improvement of their scientific communication capability. Science popularization work starts with me, let’s disseminate more knowledge among people.
References
[1]YU Liyuan. Several methods of improving the quality of interpreters in natural museums[J]. Chinese Museum, 2003(2): 82-84.
[2]QIU Chengli, LIU Wenchuan. An exploration study of the improvement in patterns and means of explaining capability in science and technology popularization[J]. Studies on Science Popularization, 2015(5): 83-91.
[3]WAN Hong, XU Yan, ZHENG Wei, et al. Theories and practices of popular science interpretation in natural science museums: N-skills of science interpreters[M]. Beijing: China Science and Technology Press, 2017.