The Interpreters' Newsletter n. 18 - 2013

Since the early 1970s, interpreting strategies have aroused much interest among interpreting research scholars. Strategies should be recommended as components of interpreter training because they are useful for interpreters to solve or avoid problems resulting from cognitive and language-specific constraints. This paper reports on a small-scale study, investigating if undergraduates’ strategy use is positively related to their teachers’ inclusion of strategy training in the consecutive interpreting classroom. Forty-one undergraduate trainees and three of their teachers participated in the study. Retrospection was used to collect data on participants’ mentioning of strategy use immediately after performing consecutive interpreting from English into Chinese. Questionnaires were administered to elicit data on teachers’ inclusion of strategies in class. Data analysis shows that sixteen strategies were used by the students and that those strategies were taught by their teachers. A correlation analysis shows that there is a moderate correlation between student’s strategy use and their teachers’ inclusion of strategy training.

According to the AIIC, the forwarding of preparation material to interpreters prior to simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a contractual term, as it enables interpreters to fully harness their expertise and provide a better service. Yet, despite being largely acknowledged as a fundamental support tool and a helpful resource by professional interpreters and students alike, preparation has been the subject of a limited number of experimental studies. This study aims to examine the importance of preparation for the SI of speeches including a number of cultural items, in order to both underline the importance of previous knowledge for achieving a higher level of proficiency in SI and to raise awareness in speakers and event managers about the need to provide interpreters with all the relevant documents.

Prosody in simultaneous interpretation (SI) is a recent research field receiving increasing attention but still insufficiently explored for certain language pairs. The present contribution discusses the prosodic features of interpreted texts as such and in relation to the source text (ST) for the German-Italian language pair. The target texts (TTs) of six professional interpreters were transcribed and analysed according to the following analysis criteria: speech rate, pauses (filled and unfilled and their position in the text) and syllable lengthening, intonation and prominence. The objective of the study was to analyse the prosody of professional interpreters through the perceptual method, assessing the features of prosody as observed in interpreting practitioners. Since the ST is an example of impromptu speech, the study also aimed at understanding the role played by spontaneous speech in the interpreting process. The results concerning interpreters’ speech rate and intonation confirmed consolidated theories in SI, whereas categories such as pauses, stress on words and the sub-category of syllable lengthening raised new points, showing that some specific behaviour is intentionally produced by interpreters to deal with difficult portions of text through the use of prosodic features.

The issue of quality has been extensively discussed in Interpreting Studies (IS). Quality is subjective, ineffable and cultural. As the “aspiring-to-science community” (hereafter “ATSC”1) defines “scientific” as empirical, quantifiable and objective2, it is bound to struggle when dealing with such a concept. Yet, precisely because it stipulates that a scientific approach requires a quantifiable dimension, it has to try and define quality in an objective manner. Shackled by its postulates, the ATSC has drawn upon two approaches that have predictably come short. One vainly seeks to define quality and subsequently “objective and quantifiable” criteria to assess it. The other claims to draw on marketing and strives to measure user satisfaction, primarily through questionnaires. The most advanced work in marketing, however, has taken on board the findings of cognitive

This paper explores the way in which 10 professional interpreters develop and cultivate their expert interpreter competence. It draws on semi-structured in-depth interviews and carries forward the previous process- and experience-based account of interpreter skills and (sub)competencies based on the same 90,000 word corpus (cf. Albl-Mikasa 2012). The main points addressed are the requirements that can be learned, the timeline of acquisition of the various (sub)competences, and the ways in which they are further developed. These ways include formal continuous professional development, semi-formal assignment- geared knowledge building, informal off-the-job acquisition of relevant information, on-the-job learning by doing, and the evolvement of savoir-faire in the course of professional life.