Academic Journal of Nawroz University (AJNU), Vol.12, No.4, 2023 This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License Copyright ©2017. e-ISSN: 2520-789X https://doi.org/10.25007/ajnu.v12n4a1478 415 Teaching and Learning Simultaneous Interpreting at Kurdistan Region Universities: Challenges and Strategies Alaa Khorshid Ahmed and Shivan Shlaymoon Toma 1,2 Department of Translation, College of Languages, University of Duhok, Duhok, KRG – Iraq ABSTRACT: Simultaneous Interpreting (SI henceforth) is a mode of oral translation which plays an important role in the realm of translation. SI is unlike written translation where the prior is more difficult when it comes to practice in the field. Moreover, SI is an exclusive skill which requires more than an ability to speak many languages. It is a process that leads people to communicate directly across cultural boundaries. The key problem is how to mitigate or overcome SI obstacles. This problematic area is going to be investigated in this study. The main aim of this study is to highlight the key challenges and problems facing the process of teaching and learning SI, then to find out strategies to address all the challenges of teaching and learning SI that instructors and students are currently facing. This study hypothesizes that having neither facilities nor well-trained teachers pose problems for teaching and learning SI at the Departments of Translation; students are troubled by learning SI at translation departments since there are many obstacles; and teachers struggling with having no equipment, deficiency in student’s level, and many other problems. The findings of this study revealed a number of obstacles that are addressed by students and instructors. Then some suitable solutions are raised to either mitigate or overcome them. The conclusions verified the validity of the hypotheses of the present study and ended up with a number of conclusions and recommendations. Keywords: simultaneous interpreting, challenges, strategies, problems and obstacles, solutions and recommendations. 1. Introduction In recent years, a great deal of interest in Simultaneous Interpreting (SI henceforth) has been shown. The main concern for any interpreter is to do the interpretation in labs and to have all needed facilities. However, it has been long time Kurdistan region universities are suffering from the lack of labs, facilities, and well-trained teachers. Currently, there are no data on addressing SI obstacles. The SI subject is considered useless and not helpful for the students of translation departments as they lack interpretation tools at the departments. Teachers are in trouble and they are really confused on how to teach SI without having neither facilities nor well-trained teachers. Therefore, the key problems are how to bridge this gap and overcome such obstacles. To investigate these problems, the following questions are addressed: 1. What are the biggest obstacles that students of translation departments face in the SI class? 2. Is it useful to investigate students’ struggles of SI? 3. To what extent the students’ and the teacher’s provided solutions are useful and helpful in belittling the obstacles? 4. Does the lack of tools of SI slack the progress of the students’ performance in SI? Generally, SI is considered to be one of the most difficult modes that interpreters may face as the original message, Source Language (SL) should be carried into the Target Language (TL) simultaneously and stuffed with the least imaginable bit of emotion and with very specific and intended syntactic and lexical means. This research aims at giving a general introduction to SI, highlighting the main challenges and problems facing the process of teaching and learning SI at Kurdistan region universities, finding out strategies to address all the challenges of teaching and learning SI that teachers and students are currently facing in their departments, and investigating any differences or similarities in the type of challenges facing both governmental and private universities in terms of teaching and learning SI. This study is limited to teachers and students from a number of governmental and private universities including the University of Duhok, Nawroz University, Cihan University, and University of Sulaymaniyah. Also, the study is limited to simultaneous, not consecutive, interpreting.