ISSUES IN INTERPRETING

STUDIES
Instructor
Basmah Alyahia
INTRODUCTION
(Interpreting is commonly referred to as ‘oral’ as opposed to ‘written’
translation, i.e. as the activity of rendering spoken messages in another
language, but this simple definition fails to accommodate a number of
important phenomena)
1. EVOLUTION AND STATE OF THE ART
1.1 BEGINNINGS
• Two main sources can be identified as fuelling the early development of interpreting
studies.
1. One is the body of insights gained by practitioners reflecting on their craft.
2. The other major source has been work done from the vantage point of other
disciplines.
Unlike the study of written translation, which owes much of its formative input to
linguistics and literary studies, research on interpreting has been sourced
predominantly by psychology. The crucial trigger for this was the increasing use of
simultaneous interpreting.
It was the skill of simultaneous listening and speaking, considered impossible
according to psychological theories of the day, which spurred experimental
psychologists in the 1960s to study this unique cognitive feat. Focusing on such issues
as the time lag between input and output (also referred to as ‘ear–voice span’) and
on the effect of various input conditions (e.g. speed, noise, text type)
• 1.2 ACADEMIC FOUNDATIONS
• In the 1960s, several personalities with a professional background in
interpreting worked towards establishing the study of interpreting (and
translation) as a subject in academia.
1- One of them was Otto Kade, a teacher of Czech and Russian and a self-taught
conference interpreter, whose work at a university in East Germany, made him
the most influential pioneer in the German-speaking area.
2- Seleskovitch played a pioneering role both in the profession (more specifically,
in the International Association of Conference Interpreters – AIIC) and in the
university-level training of conference interpreters at (ESIT) in Paris. It was there,
at the University of Paris, that Seleskovitch managed to establish a doctoral
studies programme in ‘traductologie’ (translation studies) ( in 1974).
1.3 INCREASING DEPTH AND BREADTH
• Interpreting research up until the mid-1990s was largely focused on conference
interpreting, and, with few exceptions, on the simultaneous mode.
• Interpreting as practised within social institutions, such as courtrooms,
hospitals, immigration offices, schools and social service agencies, was hardly
noticed by the international interpreting research community – until a
milestone event in 1995 placed the ‘intra-social’ dimension of interpreting
firmly on the map. The international conference entitled The Critical Link:
Interpreters in the Community, and the follow-up events held every three
years, have provided a worldwide forum for practitioners and researchers to
address profession-related concerns, such as training, standards of practice
and codes of ethics, as well as conceptual issues of interpreter-mediated
communication that arise in particular in face-to-face settings.
• By the end of the twentieth century, the discipline of interpreting studies,
while ‘still based on a number of different paradigms’, had thus taken shape as
‘an independent, self-respecting research community’.
1.4 UNITY IN DIVERSITY
Interpreting studies in the early twenty-first century presents itself as a
thriving and increasingly diverse discipline, in which a set of largely
complementary research approaches are brought to bear on a highly
multidimensional object of study.

It is important to stress, however, that the twofold distinction – between

international versus community-based, and between conference and
liaison interpreting or dialogue interpreting – must not be collapsed into
one: there is dialogue interpreting in the international sphere (as in high-
level diplomatic interpreting) just as there can be community-based
conferences in which interpreters (e.g. signed-language interpreters) are at
work.
This shared conceptual base notwithstanding, research into interpreting has followed a
variety of different pathways, shaped by tradition as well as by the demands of newly
emerging phenomena and scientific viewpoints. In a liberal use of Thomas Kuhn’s
notion of ‘paradigm’ (defined as a set of basic assumptions, models, values and
standard methods shared by all members of a given scientific community),
one could identify five paradigms of interpreting research:
1. the classic paradigm of the Paris School, based on its interpretive theory (IT
paradigm); (translation as a triangular process: from one language to sense and from sense to the other language.)
2. the (often experimental) study of interpreter’s cognitive processing (CP paradigm);
3. the highly interdisciplinary approach relying on neuropsychological experiments
and neuro-imaging techniques to investigate the neurolinguistics of interpreting
(NL paradigm);
4. the view of interpreting from target-text-oriented translation theory (TT paradigm);
(aims at adapting the text to the structures and cultural context of the target language. )
5. the study of interpreting as discourse-based interaction (DI paradigm).
2 MEMES AND MODELS
• Inspired by a similar effort in translation studies, these alternative ‘ways of
seeing’ have been described as ‘memes’ of interpreting (Pöchhacker 2004: 51–
61). Over and above
five individual ‘memes’, or key ideas (i.e.
a) interpreting as verbal transfer,
b) cognitive information processing,
c) making sense,
d) text/discourse production and
e) mediation),
the three most fundamental conceptualizations can be singled out as
‘supermemes’ of interpreting, namely, interpreting as translation, interpreting as
processing and interpreting as communicative activity.
2.1 INTERPRETING (DEFINED) AS TRANSLATION
Otto Kade (1968) defined interpreting as a form of translation (in the wider
sense) in which (a) the source-language text is presented only once and thus
cannot be reviewed or replayed, and (b) the target-language text is produced
under time pressure, with little chance for correction and revision.
2.2 TEXT AND DISCOURSE
the study of interpreting as text production can draw on insights from text
linguistics and discourse studies, both for describing relevant features of the
interpreter’s input and textual product and for analysing the determinants and
constraints of text and discourse processing.
2.3 COGNITIVE PROCESSING
Charged with the comprehension and production of verbal messages, the
interpreter has been conceived of as an information processing system relying on
memory structures (working memory, long-term memory) and a number of
cognitive subskills, such as anticipation, inferencing and macro-processing.
2.4 INTERCULTURAL MEDIATION
Viewed from a social rather than a cognitive psychological perspective, the
interpreter is seen as a mediator not only between languages but also
‘between’ cultures and value systems. Hence, the role of the interpreter, as
prescribed in codes of ethics and professional conduct, has emerged as a
particularly controversial issue (see section 8.3.4), especially in dialogue
interpreting within community-based institutions.
3. MAJOR ISSUES
This section presents some of the thematic focal points of research in interpreting
studies.
3.1 COGNITIVE PROCESSING
• Drawing on insights and methods from such fields as cognitive psychology,
psycholinguistics and cognitive pragmatics, research has explored both the cognitive
substrate (i.e. memory) and the various strategies employed in processing verbal
messages and their paralinguistic and non-verbal components
ties difficulty
• Given the limitations of human working memory, a crucial concern is the high
cognitive task load generated by the simultaneity of the main processing operations
– simultaneous source-text comprehension and target-text production in the
simultaneous mode, but also source-text comprehension, memorizing and note
taking in consecutive interpreting.
• As highlighted in Daniel Gile’s (1997) Effort Models, simultaneous processes
competing for limited attentional resources lie at the heart of performance problems
in (conference) interpreting, making attention management the interpreter’s
essential skill.
• A related focus of interest is the strategies used by interpreters to cope with
such processing constraints as 1- high source-text presentation rate (speed),
2- high information density, 3- scripted style and 4- unusual accents.
• 1-They include on-line strategies such as anticipation, compression and
syntactic restructuring as well as 2- off-line strategies preceding the real-time
task (e.g. background research, study of documents, preparation of
glossaries). Most of the latter are designed to enhance the interpreter’s
thematic and contextual knowledge and thus to aid ‘top-down’ (knowledge-
driven) processing of linguistic input. At the same time, interpreters are
guided by communicative (listener-oriented) considerations, so that features
of the situated interaction become an integral part of their cognitive
processing activity.
3.2 QUALITY
• Producing an interpretation that fulfils the communicative needs
and expectations of the intended addressee is the interpreter’s
primary task – and the principal standard for measuring the quality
of an interpreter’s product and performance.
For conference settings, quality criteria, in which fidelity to the source,
cohesion, fluency and correct terminological usage rank above delivery-
related features such as pleasant voice and native accent.

Quality implies not (only) equivalence on the linguistic

level but an equivalent effect of the interpretation on the
listeners.
• This ‘pragmatic’ perspective on quality is particularly salient for dialogue
interpreting in institutional settings, where an interpreter’s performance in
face-to-face interaction can shape, for instance, jurors’ impressions of witness
testimony (see Berk-Seligson 1988); patients’ satisfaction with clinical
interviewing, and thus the quality of medical service delivery; or an
adjudicator’s assessment of an asylum seeker’s claim and credibility. It is no
coincidence that the debate about ‘good interpreting’ and ‘best practice’ is
conducted so vociferously in relation to legal and healthcare interpreting,
where the interpreter’s role in the interaction invariably exceeds that of
transmitting information and encompasses a co-construction of interactive
discourse, that is liable to impact, for better or worse, on legal proceedings
and clinical outcomes.
3.3 TRAINING
• Fuelled by the growth of international conference interpreting, the demand
for professional interpreters led to the creation of university-level training
institutions as early as the 1940s (Geneva, Heidelberg, Vienna).
• And with organizations such as the United Nations and the European
institutions, as well as the interpreting profession (AIIC) taking an active
interest, the training of conference interpreters, at postgraduate level, has
long been consolidated and institutionalized, most recently in the form of a
European model curriculum. Its core includes:
• a) consecutive interpreting with the aid of (more or less systematic) note
taking;
• b) simultaneous interpreting in the booth, for which various preliminary
exercises have been suggested;
• c) a variable dose of sight translation, either as a simultaneous mode of its
own or in the booth (‘simultaneous with text’).
 a- Consecutive interpreting with the aid of note taking.

b- Simultaneous interpreting in the booth

c- Sight translation
No such ‘training paradigm’ has been established for (spoken-language)
interpreting in community-based settings.
Where training in public service interpreting (legal, healthcare and social-service
settings) does exist, it is usually offered at undergraduate level, if as a degree
course at all.
 3.4 ETHICS AND ROLE
As a community of practitioners with a special body of expertise and a
commitment to serve society at large, is a set of rules stipulating what is
deemed professional behavior.
• AIIC adopted a Code of Professional Ethics for conference interpreters as early
as 1957, with a ‘Code of Honor’ consisting of five articles, chief among them
the principle of professional secrecy.
• The RID Code of Ethics, dating back to 1965, went considerably further by
addressing such principles as impartiality and faithfulness,
• American signed-language interpreters have indeed been at the front of
shaping the concept of role, moving from the view of the interpreter as an
uninvolved (‘neutral’) ‘conduit’ to that of a more visible ‘communication
facilitator’ and of a ‘bilingual, bicultural specialist’.
• In healthcare settings, the interpreter’s role is the pyramid model, according
to which an interpreter’s baseline function is that of ‘message converter’,
complemented when necessary by the incrementally more ‘visible’ roles of
‘message clarifier’, ‘cultural broker’ and even ‘advocate’.

1- message converter

2- message clarifier

3- cultural broker

4- advocate
• To the extent that court interpreting is subsumed under the broad notion of
community-based (‘intra-social’) interpreting, such high degrees of ‘visibility’
are problematic in the judicial sphere, where the standard of ‘verbatim
translation’ often remains the favoured.
3.5 TECHNOLOGY
A major impact on the interpreting profession has always come from
technological developments.
1. As early as the mid-1920s, newly developed electro-acoustic transmission
systems were employed in experiments with simultaneous interpreting.
2. The biggest technological revolution upon them is undoubtedly the spread
of remote interpreting, that is, a situation in which the interpreter is not in
the same location as the communicating parties.
i. This is implemented as (audio-only) telephone interpreting, which has
been used for many years, particularly in community-based settings.
Remote interpreting in web-based video mode has become increasingly
feasible, for community-based as well as international communication
scenarios.
 i. The adoption of remote interpreting has been of particular significance
in healthcare and judicial settings as well as in the domain of signed-
language interpreting, where what is known as video remote
interpreting (as distinct from ‘video relay service’, which links video
access with a telephone call) is vastly expanding Deaf persons’ access to
interpreting services.
While the technical set-up has undergone significant improvement (including
the use of large screens and multiple camera views), ‘visual access’ remains a
problem and has been associated with
a- increased eye strain and fatigue.
b- Most critically, interpreters’ lack of a sense of ‘presence’ poses the risk of
alienation and reduced motivation.