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36

New Demands on Interpreting

and the Learning Curve in Interpreter

Training

Robin Setton

GITIS, Fujen Catholic University, Taiwan, China

¦

ETI, University of Geneva

Abstract: Demands on conference interpreters have changed in the

50 years since the birth of the modern profession. Meetings on

complex topics are compressed into a few hours, English is spo-

ken in many varieties, and interpreters must increasingly deal with

discourse which is fast, dense and/or often read from text, and

must often provide clear, accurate SI into a B (acquired) language.

The paper examines the cognitive and technical challenges posed

by these modern conditions, and the strategies of experienced pro-

fessionals for dealing with them, then reviews the existing inter-

preter training model and the stages trainees pass through in devel-

oping basic competence, and proposes exercises and other mea-

sures to upgrade interpreter training to meet the new challenges.

Keywords: simultaneous interpreting; multilingualism; international

communication; interpreter training; speech processing; spoken word

1. Introduction: new demands

The demands on conference interpreters have changed since the

37

New Demands on Interpreting and the Learning Curve in Interpreter Training

profession was born in the relatively stately, Europe-based discourse

environment of the mid 20th century. Today, technical and administra-

tive information is exchanged at a frantic pace, as people of all nation-

alities vie to define the legal and economic fabric of the emerging global

community in a score of languages and as many regional variants of

English. Nothing can be pinned down to a particular domain or decade,

but there has been a cumulative sea change in the content, language,

pace and format of presentation of information, putting pressure on

schools to update and adjust the traditional model of interpreter training

developed in the 1960s.

First, the range of subject matter has expanded into every

conceivable domain, making the ability to assimilate highly specialised

knowledge for brief periods an important component of expertise.

Second, the linguistic environment has changed, putting pressure on

interpreters either to learn more languages, where there is the political

will to uphold multilingualism (as in the EU); or, to offer simultaneous

SI into a B language, when multilingualism comes up against logistical

or economic limits, or more generally, due to the uneven balance of

language competence resulting from history. The burden of

communication between the Indo-European-speaking incumbent powers

and newly enfranchised communities speaking Arabic, Chinese, Finnish,

Hungarian, Japanese or Thai (the list may lengthen in the coming

decades) will rest on interpreters from these cultures. Still more new

regions, nations and communities have been given a voice, but not

necessarily in their own languages, so that the vast majority of the

“new arrivals” must use what English they can master to contribute to

the globalising world. This places new demands on interpreters’ English

comprehension.

Thirdly, the pace and format of conference communication have

changed under economic and competitive pressures as well as advances


38

in communications, word processing and duplication technology. The

impatience and urgency of the age generate fast, confused and often

mixed-media input (power-point presentations, videos, slides) ranging

from redundancy and incoherence at one extreme to impossibly con-

centrated facts and figures at the other. While visual and graphic ac-

companiment can help to make oral presentations clear and punchy,

the opposite is true when speakers read a prepared written text instead

of speaking spontaneously or from notes. This poor substitute for com-

munication is increasingly resorted to, not only by arrogant techno-

crats or absent-minded academics, but also, more understandably, by

non-native speakers unsure of their oratorical skills. The information

density of such presentations, or monotonous or unnatural delivery, in

which the usual helpful attention-holding features of live spontaneous

speech are missing or distorted, place an added burden on any listener.

Whether an interpreter can provide a useful rendition depends in large

part on whether she is given the text in advance in time to prepare, or

failing that, to help her to follow the speaker. In any case, the combina-

tion of text and speech makes this an exercise cognitively distinct from

ordinary consecutive or simultaneous interpreting.

In summary, today’s conference interpreter is often called upon

to provide listeners with a comfortable rendition, sometimes in his/her

acquired language, of fast, specialised and/or linguistically deviant

discourse, delivered in an unnatural mixture of oral and text-based forms.

This paper will review the existing model of interpreter training and

explore possible adaptations and extensions to prepare the next genera-

tion of conference interpreters for this environment. They face a com-

munity of impatient, ambitious and often highly specialised communi-

cators who, despite some command of the world language, still rely on

interpreters for the exchange of sophisticated and state-of-the-art in-

formation and ideas. In this environment, we can provide added value

39


only by adding precision and relieving effort.

1.1 Cognitive and communicative limits and possibilities

Despite these new players, new manners and new ethos of

discourse, the nature of interpreting remains basically unchanged:

whether supported (or distracted) by various electronic devices and

resources before or during the task, it deals with live, real-time verbal

exchanges and remains firmly within the realm of live human

communication, psycho-dynamically radically distinct from written

translation and immeasurably beyond the pretensions of automation.

What an interpreter can achieve is therefore still governed by the basic

parameters of human communication and cognition. Verbal

communication, in particular, relies on the real-time interaction between

linguistic and other evolved faculties:

(1) computation and representation, including meta-representation

(mind-reading, or recognising intentions in others), which are

close to what we ordinarily call deduction (and inference),

imagination and empathy;

(2) linguistic competence, or the mastery of code-based linguistic

systems which greatly increase the potential for sophisticated

information exchange;

(3) linguistic performance, or, roughly, the speed with which

thoughts evoke expressions and vice versa, in an interaction

between (1) and (2);

(4) short- and long-term memory in which to manipulate conceptual

and linguistic representations.

A communicator’s task is to offer his/her addressees stimuli which

yield relevant cognitive effects (a modification of their cognitive

environment) for an acceptable processing effort in the contexts avail-

able to them. An interpreter’s or translator’s task is the same, with the

added requirement that the effects provided be similar in relevant re-

spects to those which the original speech gave access to for the origi-


40

nal addressees (Wilson & Sperber 1988, 1995; Gutt 1991/2000).

In real-time linguistic communication this means that certain words

and contexts must be available to hearers at the same time so that they

can be processed together. The cognitive apparatus described above,

common to speaker, interpreter and addressee, imposes constraints,

but also flexibilities that can apparently be exploited to develop adaptive

behaviours like simultaneous interpretation. For example, complex

concepts may be held longer in memory than the phonological or graphic

representations of all the words that prompted their synthesis; and a

few words may be enough to prompt the synthesis of these same

concepts in the mind of a listener who has other elements available to

help infer them. This means that by a skilful use of language and devices

like intonation and connectives, an interpreter can direct attention to

contexts which he/she shares with his/her audience, using their inferential

abilities to compress the discourse while still fulfilling the translator’s

guarantee of providing access to the same cognitive effects for an

acceptable processing effort, and therefore, a version which adequately

resembles the original in relevant respects.

The routine and widespread use of SI today has shown that with

training and practice, a competent bilingual can develop a viable

configuration of these faculties adequate to the task of keeping an

audience abreast in real time, and in another language, of the arguments

and most of the information being presented by a communicator. Live

access to the shared cognitive environment of the meeting is probably

the key factor in making this feasible without the luxury of time afforded

to the written translator. In their basic training, interpreters learn to use

shared context to compress and reformulate speech where necessary

to be as communicative as possible.

Skilled interpreters can adapt to considerable variations in speaker

style, delivery and content, but within certain limits set by their own

and their audience’s cognitive processing abilities. The more extreme

41


examples of modern discourse — from the master of the universe or

the emerging-economy aspirant — intensify the challenges at both ends:

information extraction from fast or incoherent speech full of jargon,

formulas or non-standard language, and presentation, “hitting the spot”

in a listener who is often tired, jaded and overwhelmed with information.

These challenges will not be met just by developing faster reflexes,

in-booth electronic glossaries or speed-reading techniques. Mind-read-

ing and empathy, and a convincing tone and style (oral highlighting),

will be as critical as better preparation, text-processing and informa-

tion-filtering skills. Today, time and the difficulty of simulating the com-

plex reality of a modern conference force training programmes to fo-

cus on the basics: sensory coordination, an opportunistic attitude to

context and knowledge, specifics like note-taking, and attention to lin-

guistic interference, register or voice quality. The graduate must then

develop his/her own strategies for dealing with extreme conditions, like

speed, accents or incoherent speakers through practice and exposure.

The basic training course is a necessary but not a sufficient condition

for the advanced competence needed to handle the whole range of

contemporary assignments and speakers.

1.2 Training: constraints and prospects

Interpreting competence (as distinct from linguistic) entails

operational techniques and strategies, in both consecutive and

simultaneous, for capturing meaning while at the same time formulating

its expression. Three levels can be distinguished: (1) potential

competence, consisting of the linguistic and cognitive prerequisites which

qualify a novice to begin training; (2) competence, as achieved by the

promising beginner graduating from a training programme; and (3) all-

round professional expertise, as achieved by many, but not all conference

interpreters after several years’ experience. These levels can be seen as

plateaus on a journey from talent to reliability and thence to quality.


42

Interpreter training programmes are usually under institutional (and

humane) pressure for both fast turnover and high pass rates. Most

courses last 8–12 months. In principle a shorter course may be

successful if trainees are admitted at a higher level, but “high levels”

are not always available: new entrants can only be expected at best to

have good linguistic and intellectual skills and background knowledge;

they still have to configure these for interpreting, learn note-taking and

how to keep their languages apart, develop basic SI techniques and so

on. To have a good chance of success, they should be able on admission

to understand fluent speech comfortably in all their working languages

(“passive” proficiency), with some sensitivity to paralinguistic clues

like intonation, discourse particles and body language, but excluding

specialised topics and genres and odd dialects; and to command their

active languages well enough to express structured ideas clearly. They

will also need to exhibit the potential eventually to assimilate and adapt

to a wide range of topics and concerns, identify with a multitude of

different speakers, and represent them convincingly. In short, they

must be quick and lively thinkers with natural curiosity, receptive and

communicative empathy, and a basic starting knowledge of the affairs

of the world. Education to first university degree level is generally

assumed to be a prerequisite for the necessary critical and logical

discernment and ability to assimilate new and complex ideas at short

notice. The trainee’s initial conceptual and lexical baseline will depend

on the nature of his/her first degree.

Candidates can be pre-selected on linguistic criteria by elimination

on standard proficiency tests like TOEFL, and/or written exams

involving précis, translation, or adapted Cloze tasks, but the final decision

requires an oral aptitude test and interview, usually including public

speaking and informal interpreting. Selection is difficult, and after 50

years even the most experienced training schools are still trying to perfect

this screening process. However, more than half of these trainees now

43


survive what can only be called the mental reconfiguration process

needed to become a conference interpreter.

The next sections describe the process by which the qualifying

candidate is trained to the basic competence (level 2) expected of a

beginner entering the profession. As such he/she will have skills and

techniques adequate to joining a team who will ensure communication,

on a topic they have had some chance to research, among a group of

people speaking fairly standard variants of different languages, at a

reasonable pace. To do this, the young graduate has developed his/her

basic linguistic and cognitive endowment into a set of interpretation-

specific skills: the ability to inhabit unfamiliar contexts and subject

areas temporarily and at short notice, and to capture, synthesise and

communicate verbal information immediately, in notes or on-line, co-

ordinating listening and talking and making fast priority decisions. Af-

ter reviewing how these skills are acquired and developed from the

standpoints of the course designer and the student, we will explore

possible extensions of this training model to “level 3” skills, including

the mastery of fast, non-standard and mixed-format speech, and/or of

clear, cogent simultaneous interpretation into a foreign language.

2. The standard model of interpreter training

With time, experience and the promotional efforts of AIIC, con-

ference interpreter training has become increasingly harmonised in lead-

ing schools, with most recognised courses implementing the basic prin-

ciples developed in the 1960s (ESIT, in Paris, playing a key role), such

as priority to speaker meaning over literal transposition, progression

from consecutive to SI, classes taught into the teacher’s A language,

use of authentic materials, paraphrase and gisting exercises, and so on.

AIIC rewards compliant schools with recognition in a published list,

and leading employers of interpreters like the EU and UN have largely

approved the model. Leading European schools have now formed a

European Masters’ Consortium based on agreement on a core curricu-


44

lum and guidelines for entrance and diploma examinations.

This training model owes its success largely to direct contact

with practice through professional trainers, and the early recognition

of the specificity of interpreting as distinct from text translation and

language teaching. Its pioneers aimed to equip interpreters for the ca-

nonical type of meeting of the time — the birth of a new Eurocentric

multilateralism — typically, a negotiation in which most participants

spoke spontaneously or from notes, specialised or technical content

was recognisably distinct and circumscribed, and simultaneous inter-

preters and most speakers spoke their native languages.

2.1 Progression by output objectives

In terms of objectives, three stages can be identified in the train-

ing of a conference interpreter. First, the student must acquire basic

mechanisms to capture and faithfully render oral speech input. She

must then try out these skills on various kinds of material and develop

personal strategies for implementing them, aiming for accuracy and

completeness of content. Finally, as his/her personal technique stabilises,

he/she should turn his/her attention to momentum, fluency, style and

making contact with the audience, in other words to making his/her

output as communicative as possible without loss of fidelity.

The “capturing and rendering” mechanisms are different in

consecutive (CI) and simultaneous (SI). Most programmes stagger the

introduction to these two modes, with consecutive preceding and

preparing for simultaneous. The basic progression is shown

schematically in Figure 1. In practice, progression may be more complex,

with trainees at first working only into their “A” language in each mode

before attempting to work into “B”, on the principle that other difficulties

should be minimised while basic skills are being acquired, and that

proficient production of a foreign language is more demanding than

comprehension. The goal set for each stage — in terms of simultaneity,

accuracy and presentation — is stated in brackets.

45


Semester

Consecutive

Sight Trans-

lation

SI

I

1 Basic

mechanisms

(Capturing +

noting)

Mechanisms

(Scanning+

capturing)

II

2 Consolidat-

ing personal

note system

(Accuracy

and

completeness)

Intermediate

(Wider

scanning,

noting)

1 Basic

mechanisms

(Listening +

formulating)

III

3

Communicativity

(Momentum,

fluency,

audience

contact)

Communicativity

(Momentum,

fluency,

audience

contact)

2 Personal

online strategy

(Accuracy and

completeness)

IV

3

Communicativity

(Packaging,

fluency, style)

Figure 1: Phases in interpretation training (course designer’s perspective)

Sight translation is rarely called for nowadays on most markets,

but is often taught as a valuable exercise in detachment, particularly in

preparation for SI with text, to which it stands in a similar relation as

consecutive to simultaneous. SI-with-text is usually introduced last, as

a special type of SI, and may be added as a separate test in the final

examination. With adequate preparation (20 minutes for a 15-minute

text) and steady delivery of the text by a speaker without additions or

omissions, graduates may perform as well or better than at free SI. But

to prepare interpreters for the fast and often unpredictable recited

speeches of real life, with texts supplied late or not at all, a more so-

phisticated pedagogy may be necessary.

A final stage, no less intensive than the others, begins when the

young graduate comes into contact with real-life conditions. Some


46

programmes try to prepare them for this in the final stages of training

by broadening the range of material, inviting live speakers, organising

mock conferences, occasionally exposing students to fast, difficult

speeches in unfamiliar accents, inculcating habits of document prepa-

ration and teamwork, and sending students out on short internships.

Modern conditions prompt us to explore what more could be done to

project the learning curve with additional exercises, internships, or im-

proved simulation techniques.

2.2 Training doctrines: multitasking vs holistic

Interpreter training doctrines can roughly be divided into two

schools, the multitasking and the holistic. In the first approach, SI

(the main task required in 90% of assignments today) is seen as built

up of component sub-tasks like shadowing and lexical retrieval, which

might be mastered separately before being combined in the full task.

The holistic model treats interpreter training as a specialised extension

of the individual’s education up to that point, conceived of in

constructivist terms (after Piaget) as a specific, targeted enhancement

of his/her innate and educated ability to synthesise and express meaning

through language. In both approaches, the enhancement of pure

linguistic proficiency and expansion of general knowledge are left to

the individual trainee.

Interpreter trainers have developed and tried an array of cognitive

and linguistic exercises to accompany the passage of trainees through

these successive phases, which can be viewed either as component

tasks to be assembled later, or simply as steps towards new habits of

processing speech for meaning. These include same-language

shadowing, shadowing while counting (forwards or backwards) fol-

lowed by a comprehension test, summarising or gisting, same-language

sight translation, anticipation exercises (the speech is interrupted in

mid sentence and students supply a likely continuation), or paraphrasing,

47


either off line, or on line with the option of pacing by a trainer who

gives a signal to stop and start producing. A variant of this is “smart

shadowing”, in which the student produces a series of mini-consecu-

tive renditions of successive chunks, with pauses gradually reduced

until the exercise blends into SI (Setton 1994). Many of these exercises

have also been found beneficial in advanced language enhancement

(Mackintosh 1989). In reality, if some schools ostensibly defend one

or another of these dogmas, the instinctive, experience-based peda-

gogy of most individual teachers narrows the gap. Holists recognise

the callisthenic value of exercises like same-language on-sight paraphrase,

or counting backwards while monitoring incoming speech, and theo-

retical multi-taskers also grow impatient to prepare students for real

life.

In addition to the three stages of skills acquisition we can discern

in most course designs, there are occasional calls to organise progression

in materials, from easier to increasingly harder speeches (e.g. Kalina

1998). In practice this is very difficult to implement. Simple stories and

descriptions can be used in the very earliest stages, moving on to

argumentative or discursive material later on; topics from current affairs

are to be used in the first few months, graduating to technical material

in the latter half of the course. The length of segments for CI, or of

time on-microphone in the booth, can also be gradually increased. But

as always with real-life materials, although some texts are immediately

recognisable as very easy or difficult, most contain both easy and

difficult passages; and besides, teachers would resist monitoring of

their choice of materials as too invasive. There is no clear consensus,

let alone a measure, of the relative difficulty of texts or speeches; and

no one seriously believes one could do better by composing artificial

exercises. The same obstacles, plus managing audiovisual technology,

pose a challenge for planning exposure to “advanced” difficulties such


48

as accent, speed and incoherence.

2.3 The learning curve

Interpreting must recruit the same faculties as ordinary language

communication, but the clear differences in the responses and errors

made by novices, beginners and professionals suggest that becoming

an interpreter entails a significant and probably irreversible

reconfiguration of the way we use language and memory. Young ac-

tors and dancers may at first have difficulty seeing their voices and

bodies objectively and treating them as tools of their profession. Lan-

guage and memory, the faculties which interpreters have to reconfigure

and deploy in new ways, are no less intimate, personal and normally

taken for granted than the body and voice, and trainees may experience

resistance and discomfort in this reconfiguration process, and become

disoriented and demoralised before seeing results. Understanding the

learning curve in interpreter training might give us some insight into

fluctuations in individual (and group) morale, which can be critical in

interpreter training, and may help to understand how far we can take

the training process. Seven stages in students’ progress have been

observed.

2.3.1 Spontaneity

As we have seen, schools select candidates who seem gifted with

the natural empathy, curiosity and mental agility conducive to

communication. In the first weeks, they practice on stories, simple

descriptions or plans for action — in other words, the basic forms of

information exchange, built of everyday scenes and sequences, in which

our linguistic faculties evolved and are most at home. Throughout history,

intelligent bilinguals with these qualities have interpreted such

communications well and even brilliantly without special training, and

our students are no exception: instinct and universal underlying scenarios

49


suggest what is important or secondary, and social empathy naturally

generates rhythm and emphasis.

2.3.2 Alienation

Unfortunately, professional interpreters in the modern world are

not paid to tell stories and give simple descriptions. When less familiar

topics are introduced, instinct and experience no longer help. The con-

scientious beginner must assume that everything is equally important,

and so falls back on his/her linguistic competence, trying to ensure that

everything is correctly translated. To understand and empathise with

unfamiliar speakers and their motivations and arguments, he/she must

become consciously aware of logical structures and links which are no

longer given by ancient, universal scenarios but belong to the

constructed, diversified stage of our history.

As the trainee learns to deconstruct speech for consecutive note-

taking, he/she falls back into a counter-instinctive “transcoding” mode

that brings with it a series of illusions and false unrealistic expectations:

that communicators should speak “correctly”; that the meaning is all

contained in the words, and that all will be well if he/she can only

record all the code and find the right equivalents to re-encode the infor-

mation in the other language. At worst, the student takes exhaustive,

literal and unusable notes, forgetting that listeners have inferential abilities,

just as a novice driver forgets that other motorists on the road have

gears, brakes and mirrors: all attention is on the technicalities of encod-

ing and decoding, and the faculties of empathy and attributing inten-

tions to others are switched off.

2.3.3 Bogged down

This task — to record in notes all the meaning of orally delivered

discourse — is obviously impossible: even trained court reporters can

capture only the words. In attempting it, students completely overload

some of the faculties needed for normal communication, while neglecting


50

others completely: sentence processing and lexical retrieval claim all

available resources, while perception and pragmatics are left idle. In

SI, if they have not first been weaned of this reflex in consecutive and

sight translation, they will naively follow sentence structure and find

themselves repeatedly “garden-pathed”, and, having turned off the

spontaneous mode of language production, cannot find the simple and

straightforward expressions that would get them out of the maze.

At this point, students become aware that their performance is

awkward, incoherent, and despite all efforts still inaccurate and

incomplete, and some demoralisation may set in. This stage poses the

greatest challenge to the trainer. Impassioned speeches about “using

the context” make little impression on students down in the dumps

and wondering why they can no longer speak their own let alone any

foreign language. They do not understand why precious time should

be wasted looking at the speaker or audience, or thinking about

anything not encoded in the text.

It is difficult to teach someone to ride a bicycle using words

alone, without gestures and a demonstration; indeed the teacher may

never have explicitly formulated the essence of cycling to him/herself.

Also, when words are the problem, as in interpreting, a verbal explanation

may cause greater confusion. Explaining strategies is difficult and may

backfire; students may seize on expressions like “(do/don’t) follow the

speaker” to claim that different teachers are giving them conflicting

instructions. A demonstration by the teacher is good for credibility but

is no panacea.

2.3.4 Reconstruction

Though students may flounder and struggle through this difficult

period, if all is well they should be constructing a new knowledge- and

technique-based competence through experimentation with note-tak-

ing (and in SI, on-line cognitive management). The turning point comes

51


under converging pressure from three sides. Teachers explicitly set

completeness as an intermediate goal, with firm instructions to forget

about style and elegance. Performances are recorded and played back,

and students can see where notes got in the way, or some thought was

needed. With practice and variety — every new speech is different —

they eventually find the mix of listening, thinking and jotting down

which captures most of the information without losing touch with the

speaker’s message.

The bicycle analogy may give rise to the tempting fallacy that

there is a set of procedures or strategies for consecutive or simulta-

neous interpreting which will solve all or most problems if only the

teacher can spell them out — transmitting procedural knowledge in

declarative form — for example, how to deal with an utterance which

begins in a certain way. But the strategies and automatisms which some

teachers and researchers have sought to generalise and formulate,

whether from experience or corpus analysis, are often post-hoc

rationalisations and artifacts of the analytic framework; the symbols

and layout guidelines for CI, though widely taught to great effect, are

valuable techniques which help to capture information, but they are not

instructions on how to process it.

In practice, a trainee does not become proficient by “acquiring” a

set of all-purpose procedural rules for the consecutive or simultaneous

interpreting of any discourse by any competent bilingual. Rather, he/

she is constructing his/her own mix of procedures, notes, techniques

and reflexes, based on his/her own strengths and weaknesses in memory,

background knowledge and natural empathies. This may be instinc-

tively felt by many professional trainers who offer tips and techniques

on a modest, take-it-or-leave-it basis, accepting the individual variabil-

ity which can be so frustrating to researchers.


52

2.3.5 Resurfacing

As a student’s consecutive note system crystallizes and stabilizes

(and later in SI, as expressive agility on line improves) he/she quite

suddenly finds that enough working memory capacity has been freed

to capture and render most of the content, the first component of

“fidelity”. As this new-found control reaches a certain threshold, the

student should emerge onto a new plateau where he/she again finds the

spare resources to follow the speaker’s communicative intentions as

well as noticing certain key terms — but now over a wider range of

relatively unfamiliar discourses, subject matters and formal registers.

This should make him/her aware, albeit perhaps not explicitly, that un-

derstanding comes only when linguistic input is processed in contexts,

and that, unlike the simple stories and descriptions for which contexts

are already available in the common background of any educated mem-

ber of society, the material he/she will be called on to interpret needs

additional context to be installed in advance, from general encyclopaedic

knowledge to specific local background acquired through preparation

and being there at the event with the communicators.

To parody the sphinx (an emblem said to have been worn by

interpreters in some national armies (Roland 1982)) the three ages of

the interpreter are defined by the source in which they seek their

salvation, and which determines their success: language for the student,

information for the professional ... and energy and motivation for the

veteran. If all goes well, the trainee approaching graduation will stop

aiming to find the exact code equivalents of all the words and phrases

in his/her languages, and instead set about getting access to sources of

context, in the form of general knowledge, history, geography and

contemporary issues, through reading and if lucky, through travel.

2.3.6 Horizons

The expanded horizons the student will now explore must also

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include a wide variety of speakers. Just as the reflexes and strategies

he/she has developed (type and quantity of notes, lag in SI) are built

from the raw material of his/her cognitive strengths and weaknesses,

the speed and depth of his/her interpretation depend on his/her indi-

vidual experience and points of reference. Again, these skills cannot

be “automatisms” in the sense of formulas applicable to any input and

any speaker in any situation; they must be tested, run in and honed on

a wide variety of speakers, styles and subject matters. Only then can

the interpreter develop a flexibility and freedom which feels like the

rediscovery of his/her linguistic gifts, and aspire to real eloquence.

If this exploration is accompanied by a humanistic curiosity, the

interpreter should find points of contact which help him/her identify

with speakers and messages which had once seemed alien or arid,

helping at least to make his/her job interesting, and at best, to draw on

a degree of empathy, at some level, with most communicators. This

takes expansion in both breadth and depth: “horizontally” across speakers

with different backgrounds, accents, styles or cultures, and “verti-

cally” by penetrating to implicit meaning, or under- and overtones,

through a better command of the working languages as they are used.

This process is open-ended, continuing throughout life.

2.3.7 Style and eloquence

The more we know and understand of a speaker’s background,

topic, motivations and concerns, the better we can anticipate; the bet-

ter we can anticipate, the more attention we have to spare; the more

attention we can spare, the better we can hear ourselves to check and

polish our production on line. In final examinations and recruitment

tests, schools and employers expect pleasant and communicative

delivery, and even something approaching eloquence, in addition to a

faithful rendition of the content and thrust of the speech. But in practice,

they must often be content with adequate accuracy of content and


54

tolerable presentation, without distracting tics and obtrusive hesitations

and repairs. At the end of an intensive course lasting for eight to twelve

months, trainees have made huge strides, but mostly in the underground

struggle of cognitive reconfiguration, and they have not been long enough

out on the final plateau to show a marked difference in the quality of

production, which is much more noticeable between beginners

(graduates) and more experienced professionals than between novices

and graduates (see e.g. Liu 2001).

It was always recognised that a young graduate interpreter would

need to make a further leap to adapt to the reality of the booth in an

international conference, but in the last forty years the list of real-life

parameters which training cannot fully simulate has lengthened, including

a wider variety of speakers, accents and cultural styles, more complex,

specialized or technical subject matter to be assimilated, faster and

“mixed-media” presentation of information using slides, videos and in

particular, recited text, and last but not least, the need to work into a B

language. Several schools have taken steps to adapt by teaching

simultaneous into the B language and/or SI-with-text as a specific skill,

increasing the technical content of exercises, “mock” conferences with

live speakers, internships and courses on conference preparation. Space

does not allow for a review of these adaptations and their success, but

only to look briefly at how expert professionals deal with these

conditions, and offer some suggestions for further training.

3. Quality under additional pressure: speed, text and

working into B

Conference speeches nowadays are often too fast and dense for

any simultaneous interpreter (and often for the speaker himself) to hope

to convey all the sense and information comfortably to a live audience.

Speakers at large medical conventions have admitted to this author

55


that, having been given 10 minutes to present five years’ research work,

they aim only to arouse listeners’ curiosity so that they will read the full

paper in the conference proceedings. They do nevertheless often present

as much factual matter as possible at top speed, so that the interpreter

cannot aim for the same kind of rendition as he/she would, for example,

in a leisurely negotiation. We have to weigh task norms against cogni-

tive possibilities.

3.1 Quality and compromise

Quality is a combination of fidelity and communicativity. Fidelity

to the speaker is the minimum requirement which can be met by a

trained graduate with adequate linguistic competence and control of

the capturing and rendering techniques acquired in training. The con-

tent of the interpretation depends on the speaker, but the real added

value of interpreting is in communicativity, for three reasons. First, it is

his/her contribution to a level playing field between the dominant cul-

ture and world’s new talent, the newcomers and competitors who want

to be heard and published in English. Second, the simultaneous inter-

preter must be more communicative than the speaker because unlike

him, he/she is restricted to audio — a voice in a headset. Third,

communicativity is largely a matter of language-specific devices.

To serve an uncommunicative speaker with an uncommunicative

speech is not only ethically dubious (particularly in the case of a non-

native speaker) — we cannot justify it on the grounds that we only

have to provide the same effects as those provided to the original

audience, since they might have made a special extra effort — but also

practically not that much easier. The interpreter can in principle have

one of three goals: (i) to pass on all the content at the same processing

cost to his/her addressees as the rest of the audience must make; (ii) to

improve on the speaker by aiming to pass on all the content but in a


56

more communicative way1 ; or finally — in practice, the only feasible

strategy, which should come naturally, to the extent of his/her ability;

(iii) to aim for his/her own compromise between effects and effort, i.e.

compress and highlight, sacrificing some fidelity (completeness) for

the sake of more communicativity. Abnormal input will usually force

some such trade-off in which the most relevant content is extracted

while leaving attention to spare for self-monitoring.

Fast, recited speech is difficult not so much because the words

come too fast to be decoded because they are often “out of synch”

with the clues to the contexts in which the words make sense. Speech

and writing provide such clues in different ways, each suited to the

medium of reception: speech has evolved devices in every language,

from intonation to word order, that point to contexts in time for a

hearer to extract meaning while the words are still in short-term

memory, whereas writing, a recent adaptation originally designed to

record facts and figures rather than persuade or entertain, is struc-

tured and punctuated for readers can go back and forth over the code

to extract meaning at their own pace. A written text read out fast is a

“mixed-media” instrument of communication which is neither fish

not fowl, the two media conflicting instead of complementing each

other, demanding too much effort from listeners unless the reader

restores enough of the clues (like intonation) appropriate to aural,

linear perception.

With the information processing techniques developed in basic

training, an interpreter can recast such a communication into a more

spoken form and make it accessible — sometimes more so to his/her

1. Participants listening to monotonous recited text without using interpretationalso often appear from the booth to have “switched off” or sunk into apathy, butone cannot assume this.

57


listeners than to those listening directly. “Making accessible” means

holding the audience’s attention and directing them to the most relevant

points as comfortably as possible. However, to be able to do this be-

yond a certain threshold of input speed, prosodic poverty and informa-

tion density, he/she will need the text and something more than basic

SI competence: SI-with-text involves reconciling two continuous, si-

multaneous inputs, and doing two kinds of translation at the same time:

from one language to another, and from written to spoken language.

As a prelude to speculation on training strategies, let us look at

how experienced professionals deal with extreme processing conditions.

3.2 Dealing with fast input

Experienced interpreters develop what appears to be a four-speed

gearbox to handle wide variations of speed and “terrain” (in particular,

information density). Slow input is often naturally fleshed out with

various kinds of neutral padding, partly because when sentences take a

long time to come out, the interpreter starts producing smaller, syntac-

tically self-contained units that need extra connective material. At nor-

mal speed, interpreters pace speakers (in terms of word-count, though

obviously not necessarily structure), but usually add some voice modu-

lation to compensate for the lack of visual accompaniment. Fast spon-

taneous speech is usually redundant or repetitive enough to be com-

pressed with no loss of information. Finally, fast and dense input can

only be handled by a “bullet-point” strategy.

Research has confirmed a narrower range of speed variation in

simultaneous interpreters than in the speakers they interpret (Dejean

1980; Stenzl 1983)1 , and users of SI often claim to recognise a

standardised “interpreters’ voice” or professional tone. But it is impor-

1. A similar “centering” effect has been observed to some extent for register, withinterpreters tending to neutralise extremes of formality or colloquial speech(Shlesinger 1989).


58

tant to note that while these phenomena have been observed and mea-

sured in terms of words or syllables per minute or frequency modulation,

this does not mean that they can simply be reproduced by an untrained

amateur with instructions to speed up, slow down, or “modulate”. Main-

taining fidelity while changing pace obviously means processing mean-

ing deeply enough to allow paraphrase, compression and meaningful

intonation. With fast, dense speeches the challenge is to maintain and

convey the sense of the speaker’s communication in real time while

making relevance-driven priority choices from a mass of detail.

3.3 SI from (and/or with) text

It is clear that SI-with-text is cognitively quite distinct from CI,

ST and SI, being the only mode in which the interpreter ostensibly has

a choice between two simultaneous inputs (Figure 2):

Figure 2: Inputs, time and products in different forms of interpretation

Phase 1 (First pass) Phase 2 (Second pass)

Consecutive SPEECH NOTES

NOTES MEMORY SPEECH

Sight Translation(Text?) TEXT

(Text read out?) NOTES SPEECH

(MEMORY)

Free SI(speculative SPEECH

preparation) (MEMORY) SPEECH

SPEECH

SI with/from text (TEXT)TEXT

NOTES SPEECH

(MEMORY)

This conflict is resolved in principle by the generally agreed (but

not self evident) norm of “checking against delivery”: if the speech

deviates from the supplied text, the speech takes precedence. But this

59


does not necessarily simplify the task; the interpreter often cannot sim-

ply ignore the written text in the hope of complying with the norm and

avoiding the cognitive complication of two inputs. The speaker might

(consciously or not) expect the interpreter to get more across with the

help of the text for proper names, numbers, formulae and other dense

nuggets of information; or, as hinted earlier, to make up for his own

inability to speak convincingly in a language not his own.

Professional conscience dictates that we should take all possible

measures to improve our chances of doing a good job, which means

trying to get advance copies of any texts to be read out. In practice we

get them either hours in advance, minutes in advance, or not at all,

which means we have to develop three kinds of strategies for prepara-

tion and/or coping on line. Let us look at the cognitive characteristics

of the challenge in these three different situations, and professionals’

strategies for dealing with them.

3.3.1 Text preparation techniques: managing representations

Professional translation and interpretation both combine the two

cognitive activities of “translating” and “interpreting” in the elementary

sense: i.e. finding expressions in a TL equivalent to those in the SL, and

building semantic representations from SL speech input and express-

ing them in TL with appropriate pragmatic force. As we have seen, the

beginner should have learnt well before graduation to balance these

cognitive operations so that the former (translating) is subservient to

the latter (mind-reading and persuading), i.e. in which the TL words

and structures retrieved are recruited into the expression of the con-

ceptual representations without disturbing or cramping it.

This balance, or resisting SL interference, is easier when the in-

put words and structures are carried only on a sound wave and quickly

evanesce, and harder when they remain visible on the page. “Interfer-

ence” just means that the processing device is being presented with the

wrong representation for the job. The potential intrusion can be coun-


60

tered by highlighting or leaving in place those forms and structures to

be retained as such — numbers, proper names, figures — and

neutralising all the rest by deleting them or replacing them on the page

with something more evocative than it is formally intrusive — the same

principle as in consecutive note-taking.

Whatever the mode, an interpreter is always working with the

same raw materials — chunks of language and knowledge, represented

in one of three ways: text, notes or memory. In dealing with a range of

mixed input formats (text, speech or both), the trick is to provide him/

herself with the kind of representation which is most helpful and effec-

tive to produce the words he/she chooses to convey the message. We

cannot do without memory — or mental representations — but we can

use text and notes as much or as little as we need to. In SI-with-text,

for example, or for sight translation when the text is given to us in

advance, we can use notes as well as the text, or even instead of it.

Bearing in mind that we usually have several texts to prepare for a

given session, the strategy depends on the time available:

(1) Texts provided a week in advance: Time to prepare is the

main resource available to written translators, but writing out

a full translation of a text to be interpreted on line is not

effective, except in the rare case of very literary or “written”

texts or passages (and provided the handwriting is 100%

legible), because such a text may not be optimal as a speech

(aurally digestible), and because of the “check against deliv-

ery” norm — the speaker may jump paragraphs or add com-

ments which escape the interpreter engrossed in the proud

recital of his/her literary masterpiece.

(2) Texts provided a few minutes in advance: now the exercise

resembles the other “mixed-input” forms of interpreting, con-

secutive and sight translation (Figure 2). In these forms, pro-

61


duction is fed by up to three inputs: memory, notes and the

words of the original language, of which the latter is the most

dangerous as a source of linguistic interference (consecutive

being less vulnerable to this). In SI-with-text, last-minute

preparation may be the most effective method, since the ideas

are still fresh in short-term memory and can be supplemented

with notes on the text that perform both suppressing and high-

lighting functions.

(3) Texts coming too late for preparation: when there is no time

to “selectively suppress” parts of the written representation,

and especially if it looks more obtrusive (long crafted

sentences) than useful (names and numbers), the interpreter

may prefer a “hot potato” strategy, setting the text aside and

working purely by ear, as if no text were available.

In a preliminary study of text marking for SI within a wider

multivariate study (Setton and Motta, in preparation), 18 experts and

novices were given short texts of speeches to prepare for a few minutes

before interpreting them from audiotape1 . Their markings fall neatly

into three categories: saliency enhancers (underlining, highlighting,

circling), structuring marks (bracketing, arrows, large commas), and

target-language or “intermediate” solutions (words, abbreviations,

symbols). No direct correlation could be detected between the number

or type of markings and the quality of the interpreting performances

(which were independently graded by separate panels, from recordings

and transcripts). But some suggestive patterns emerged. The top five

performers (all professionals with over 10 years’ experience) made

either a “saliency” mark, a word or a note every other line on average,

1. Tape-recordings of the two speeches lasted 3 and 7 minutes respectively. Sub-jects had a choice of writing implements and were given the texts 3 minutes and7 minutes in advance respectively.


62

as compared to five such marks every four lines for the five poorest

performers (all novices who had just learned the technique); the best

experts made “restructuring” marks every 6 lines on average, the novices

every 3.5 lines. Experts marked more economically, decisively (rarely

revising their own markings) and regularly (throughout the text).

3.4 Simultaneous interpretation into a B language

It is probably already the case that in most multilingual interna-

tional meetings, especially outside Europe, more participants speak and

listen in English than in all the other languages combined, making even

Chinese, Arabic or Spanish “minority” languages in this context. The

“local” interpreters are therefore usually interpreting into their mother

tongue, but the pressure is far greater when they are working into “B”

and almost everyone is listening and dependent on them, including their

colleagues in other booths.

The good news, revealed by a recent study of SI into B (Donovan

2002), is that users don’t care whether the interpreter is working into

A or B, provided they receive a clear, fluent and accurate version and

the accent and grammatical errors are not too distracting. The bad

news is that failures leading to communication breakdown, or even

lasting distrust of all interpretation, are more serious and common in SI

into B. The ESIT literature reiterates that SI into B is risky, to be avoided

if possible, and may only be needed “provisionally” (Seleskovitch and

Lederer 2002: 323–4; 341). However, no alternative is foreseeable in

the near future for many (perhaps most) of the languages for which SI

is now needed, so we must explore ways of improving training.

Professionals at the meetings in Donovan’s survey told her that

when working into B they were anxious about finding the right word or

register, especially when the subject matter changed unexpectedly, and

found it harder to self-monitor. In cognitive terms, both these prob-

lems seem to stem from the poverty of linguistic resources: more at-

63


tention to lexical retrieval means, at best, less for self-monitoring, and

at worst, missing vital items and links in the input, resulting in incoher-

ence and possible breakdown. On the production side, the message

may be obscured (mostly in students) — and time lost — by wordiness,

circumlocution and misuse of half-learned expressions, and (even in

professionals) diluted by vague expressions like “we should also men-

tion” or “there is also such and such”, and by the lack of syntactic

resources to express complex relationships (conditionals, compound

tenses), or pragmatic resources to express hedges and shades of

conviction.

4. Retrofitting and expanding the training model

4.1 Detachment, language and preparation

Fast input, recited text and working into B seem to be three very

different conditions, but interestingly, the skills needed to manage them

converge in some respects. First, the ability to detach oneself from the

linguistic forms of any input (be it a visible written text or an incoming

speech), widely recognised as being at the core of interpreting

competence, is tested much more severely when the input is in one’s

mother tongue. Second, acquiring the local and specialized contexts

needed to make sense of discourse, by preparing for a conference,

provides crucial support in all three conditions — speed, SI-with-text,

and working into B. This knowledge helps to project the listeners’ cog-

nitive environment, allowing a much wider choice of expressions (in

B) likely to get the message across; and it makes it easier to scan text,

paraphrase, compress and summarise, and to elaborate and specify

points which may be unfamiliar to an audience from a different culture.

In a very general sense, if communication is an interaction between

language and context, one may often compensate for a gap in the other.

It appears, then, that training to the “super-competence” needed


64

for the modern conference should focus on three areas:

l language enhancement, including exposure to a wider variety

of speakers and/or B-language activation for the booth;

l perfecting the “detachment” techniques already acquired in

basic training: text scanning, summarising, gisting and

paraphrasing;

l background preparation: acquiring the essentials and termi-

nology of new and unfamiliar topics.

4.2 Language enhancement

Interpreting pedagogues agree that language enhancement must

ultimately be the student’s responsibility, and ESIT writers recommend

distinct exercises for acquisition and activation respectively: active lis-

tening to radio or TV, listening to the language for initial acquisition,

with the aim of eventually being able to switch to hearing the sense, for

interpretation (Seleskovitch and Lederer 2002); active writing, noting

down and researching the usage of any half-understood expressions

thoroughly before trying to use them actively; and précis-writing to be

checked by native speakers (ibid; Donovan 2004).

B-interpreters often obscure the message by reaching for words

that they cannot always grasp. Language activation for interpreting

therefore avoids the traditional goals of advanced language study, like

“increase your word power”, concentrating instead on flexibility, clarity,

structure and rhythm. The strategy recommended for working into B

is to put oneself in the position of the listeners (Seleskovitch and Lederer

2002: 325–326), but this is also a good guiding principle for working

from fast or written input, where the danger of neglecting self-moni-

toring is also present, in this case due to distraction by the input rather

than difficulty with the output. Exercises more specifically geared to

linguistic flexibility in interpreting include:

65


(1) Simplifying paraphrase: chopping long sentences into short

ones, which entails supplying appropriate cohesive links and

connectors, including intonational stress (with ample guid-

ance and suggestions from the teacher).

(2) Controlled paraphrase, where the teacher imposes the first

word of the output sentence.

(3) Syntactic tools: Practice in the use of grammatical devices

that offer structuring alternatives not available in the students’

A language (e.g. the -ing constructions in English).

(4) Pragmatic tools: classes can be devoted to specific devices,

like connectors, using Cloze-type tests in which all such links

are deleted and must be supplied by the students.

(5) Lexical drills, such as finding short synonyms for longer

expressions.

(6) Basic register-switching exercises, such as rephrasing pomp-

ous text (Latinate English) in words of one syllable (Germanic

English), and vice versa.

If the time and effort needed to train an interpreter depend on his/

her potential and knowledge at induction, the same is true of working

into a B language. Seleskovitch and Lederer (2002) point out that a

language learned at school is usually too weak for interpretation even

as a C, and Donovan (2004) acknowledges the difficulty of reliably

identifying candidates at admission tests whose B language is “robust

and resourceful” enough for SI. In Asia, SI into B is not a matter of

choice. There are many bright candidates, but unfortunately, most of

them are fresh out of a university language course. There are at least

four measures to address this situation, which should preferably all be

taken together:

(1) Some basic training in relatively informal consecutive

interpreting, on simple material and preferably into the A


66

language, might be offered in the last undergraduate year.

Such courses have recently been made compulsory in Chi-

nese universities. They may at least have the enormous ad-

vantage of pre-selecting promising novices and thus taking

some of the burden off entrance testing to professional

courses.

(2) Grants should be provided to help promising students spend a

year or more in the country of their B language.

(3) Interpreter (and translator) training courses should make ev-

ery effort to attract A-language students in both (or all) the

working languages of the course. Apart from the obvious

benefits of language exchange and mutual assistance with work

into B, it is difficult otherwise to make “intercultural commu-

nication” a perceptible reality for the (local) majority of

students. In particular, mock conferences with relay

interpretation, in which each student can experience what it

is to rely on others and be relied on, are an eye-opener on the

true meaning of clarity and coherence, not to mention humil-

ity and teamwork.

(4) B-language enhancement should be compulsory in professional

courses, offering exercises at all the three levels defined by

Seleskovitch and Lederer (2002): for acquiring a C language,

upgrading a C into a B, and activating a B for SI. This would

offer a chance to fast learners and/or those who had slipped

through at admission, but they should be prepared for a rigor-

ous eliminatory exam before being admitted to the B-language

booth (usually in second year).

4.3 SI-with-text

SI-with-text requires a level of detachment and linguistic agility

67


that is only acquired after several months’ experience of consecutive

and free SI. As an introduction, students can be given a text to prepare

for a few minutes, and then asked to render it without stopping. Reading

a text out while the students have it in front of them may accustom

them to receiving the two inputs simultaneously, but they should try to

formulate mentally at the same time. After a few successful exercises,

students can move to the booth and continue in standard SI-with-text

mode, then gradually exposed to faster and more difficult material, and

— after initial warnings — omissions and additions or parenthetical

asides.

For “fourth-gear” or “bullet-point” competence, the essence of

paragraphs must be captured at a glance. This is possible from a

well-laid-out page of consecutive notes, but markings on a solid text,

though they may help, are not enough. Text scanning and filtering

skills must be developed through on-sight paraphrase and translation

exercises coupled with practice in gisting and summarising,

culminating in a group exercise in which students take turns to produce

bullet-point summaries of successive paragraphs of a text after a few

minutes of preparation.

4.4 Multipurpose exercises

Some exercises are beneficial both to B language activation and

developing the advanced text processing skills need for fast, mixed-

media or anomalous input. They include (i) shadowing or repeating,

then replaying and checking the recording. Shadowing speeches by

native speakers of the B language — always followed by self-critical

playback — is also recommended to increase familiarity with different

accents and styles, and as training for fast SI into B; and (ii) sight

translation, which in addition to preparing for SI with text, can also be

done as paraphrase from B into B to increase flexibility.


68

4.5 “Multicultural” input: living with the rainbow

Interpreters are better than most people at understanding foreign

and regional accents, not only from experience but because they are

used to using context and inference to offset decoding problems (such

as poor sound), and vice versa (falling back on literal translation when

the topic is completely unfamiliar). But beginners are often caught un-

awares by unusual accents or diction. Interpreting schools should keep

a library of tapes with samples of the main groups of regional accents,

e.g. for English: Estuary English or RP, North Country, Geordie, Scots,

Irish, New York, Texan, Dixie, Australia/NZ, Philipino, Indian sub-

continent, two or three African varieties, Gallic, Latin, Lusophone,

Russian, East European, North and South Chinese, Japanese, Thai.

However, this material should be used with the usual background prepa-

ration of the subject matter.

5. Conclusion

Fifty years of interpreter training have revealed a number of clear

steps in the progression from talented candidate trainee to polished

professional. But training programmes under excessive time pressure

may focus too much on “multitasking” exercises in the difficult

intermediate period, and neglect to follow students through to the final

polishing phase that makes the consummate professional. Quality

ultimately comprises both accuracy (as assessed primarily by peers)

and a communicative style (as assessed primarily by users).

Finally, in all these drills and exercises for emergencies, we should

not neglect erudition and the art of interpreting thoughtful, meaningful

and communicative speech. It would be a pity if, after all the time we

spend on learning languages and specialised skills, interpreters forgot

how to render the best speeches of our time.

69


Bibliography

1. Dejean Le Féal, Karla. (1980). Die Satzsegmentierung beim freien

Vortrag bzw. beim Verlesen von Texten und ihr Einfluss auf das

Sprachverstehen. In Sprache und Verstehen, vol. 1, 161–168.

Tübingen: Gunter Narr.

2. Donovan, Claire. (2002). User expectations. Proceedings of EMCI

workshop, Paris 2002. Teaching simultaneous interpretation into

a B language, 1–13. Paris: ESIT.

3. Donovan, Claire. (2004). European Masters Project Group:

Teaching simultaneous interpretation into a B language: preliminary

findings. Interpreting 6:2, 205–216.

4. Gutt, Ernst-August. (2000). Translation and relevance: cognition

and context. Manchester: St Jerome.

5. Kalina, Sylvia. (1998). Strategische Prozesse beim Dolmetschen:

theoretische Grundlagen, empirische Fallstudien, didaktische

Konsequenzen. Tübingen: Günter Narr.

6. Liu Minhua. (2001). Expertise in simultaneous interpretation: a

working memory analysis. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University

of Texas at Austin.

7. Mackintosh, Jennifer. (1989). English up-date: An experiment in

in-service training for practising conference interpreters. In L. Gran

& J. Dodds (eds.), The theoretical and practical aspects of teaching

interpretation, 219–228. Udine: Campanotto

8. Roland, Ruth. (1999). Interpreters as Diplomats: A Diplomatic

History of the Role of Interpreters in World Politics, Ottawa,

University of Ottawa Press.

9. Seleskovitch, Danica and Lederer, Marianne. (1989). Pédagogie

raisonnée de l’interprétation. Paris: Didier Erudition.

10. Seleskovitch, Danica and Lederer, Marianne. (1995). A systematic

approach to interpreter training, Tr. J. Harmer. Silver Spring,


70

Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf.

11. Setton, Robin. (1994). Experiments in the application of discourse

studies to interpreter training. In Cay Dollerup and Annette

Lindegaard (eds.), Teaching Translating and Interpreting 2: Insights,

Aims, Visions. Papers from the Second Language International

Conference, Elsinore, Denmark, 1994, 183–198. Amsterdam and

Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

12. Setton, Robin and Motta, Manuela (in preparation). Syntacrobatics:

restructuring and formal autonomy in simultaneous interpretation

with text.

13. Shlesinger, Miriam. (1989). Simultaneous interpretation as a factor

in effecting shifts in the position of texts on the oral-literate

continuum. Unpublished MA thesis, Faculty of Humanities, Tel

Aviv University.

14. Sperber, Dan and Wilson, Deirdre. (1986/1995). Relevance:

Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.

15. Stenzl, Catherine. (1983). Simultaneous Interpretation: Groundwork

towards a Comprehensive Model. M.A. Thesis, Birkbeck College,

University of London (unpubl.).

16. Wilson, D. and D. Sperber (1988) Representation and relevance.

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Biography of the author

Robin Setton is Director of the Graduate Institute of Translation and

Interpretation Studies (GITIS) at Fujen Catholic University, Taiwan,

China, where he developed the current syllabus during a first tenure in

1990–4, and Professor of Interpretation at the Ecole de Traduction et

d’Interprétation (ETI) of the University of Geneva (currently on leave).

A professional conference interpreter since 1979, he has trained

71


interpreters in Europe and the Far East. He is the author of a monograph

(Simultaneous interpretation: a cognitive-pragmatic analysis:

Benjamins, 1999) and articles on cognitive, linguistic and cultural aspects

of interpreting. He holds a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from the Chinese

University of Hong Kong, and postgraduate degrees in Conference

Interpretation, Translation, Chinese Studies and Linguistics from the

University of Paris.

Email Address

[email protected]; [email protected]

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