studi a pigoni a na mm x i x, nr 2

Joanna Ziobro-Strzępek*
Pa ń s t wo wa w y ż s z a s z ko ł a z awo d o wa i m . s ta n i s ł awa P i g o n ia w k r o ś n i e

Simultaneous Interpreting
as a Demanding Strategic Operation
– the Issue of the Interpreter’s Experience

1. Simultaneous interpreting as a complex and multi-faceted type of performance

to start the deliberations about the nature of strategies in simultaneous interpreting,

it is necessary first to take into consideration the paradigms and features which make
it such a specific kind of interlanguage performance.
Several decades ago Csikszentmihalyi (1991) stated that everything that happens in
the brain of an interpreter bears resemblance to magic. although the pool of research
within the area of interpreting studies is still growing, this statement still seems to
be veracious. The interpreter’s brain during the Si performance is like a black box
(Prunč 2007:184) and it is possible to take a look at what happens only by a thorough
examination of the product (in the case of this study the recorded performance of
the interpreters).

* Dr. Joanna Ziobro-Strzępek – Practicing conference interpreter and translator holding the Phd title (earned in
2014, area of research: simultaneous interpreting). The working languages include Polish, English, and German.
Graduated from adam Mickiewicz university in Poznań (2009). Finished a two-year course (2007-2009) in confer-
ence interpreting at adam Mickiewicz university in Poznań and a series of trainings for conference interpreters at
the European Commission, European Parliament in Brussels, as well as dG translation in Luxembourg. Full-time
lecturer at Krosno State College since 2014, teaching various subjects connected with conference interpreting and
specialised translation, supervising Ba theses in translation and interpreting. Coordinator of English language
teaching at dual language studies for translators and interpreters. Main research interests include simultaneous
interpreting (mainly conducting empirical research with the participation of conference interpreting students and
professionals) as well as combining the theory, practice, and didactics of translation and interpreting.
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Joanna Ziobro-Strzępek

differences between translating and interpreting were emphasised already by

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) who claimed that: ‘The interpreter works in
the field of commerce, while the translator proper works in the fields of scholarship
and art.’1 (Wilss 1977:33). according to Schleiermacher, the fact that both modes are
attributable to different spheres of life was a proof of their distinctive nature.
The most essential difference between written and oral translation is the notion
discussed as early as 1984 by Katharina Reiss and Hans Vermeer, the creators of
the Scopos theory in translation, namely Korrigierbarkeit (corrigibility) which is the
potential possibility of text correction which is performed by a translator after the
actual translation. in simultaneous interpretation, the fact that it is hardly possible to
introduce corrections at any time during the performance is perceived as an enormous
and insurmountable constraint. Moreover, it is believed that ‘within an identical time
span, an interpreter (not being in possession of supporting materials) works twenty
four times more effectively than a translator who is equipped with various aids’ (Kautz
2000: 287). Therefore, in the case of simultaneous interpreting performance there is
no option to correct any erroneous formulations once they have been uttered. it is
frequently necessary to resort to numerous strategies, including face-saving strategies.
The specificity of simultaneous interpreting is defined by the international asso-
ciation of Conference interpreters (aiiC) in the following manner:

in simultaneous mode, the interpreter sits in a booth with a clear view of the
meeting room and the speaker and listens to and simultaneously interprets the
speech into a target language. Simultaneous interpreting requires a booth (fixed or
mobile) that meets iSO standards of acoustic isolation, dimensions, air quality and
accessibility as well as appropriate equipment (headphones, microphones). (http://
www.aiic.net/glossary)

as defined by the international association of Conference interpreters,

a Conference interpreter is a person who by profession acts as a responsible linguistic

intermediary (alone or more often as a member of a team) in a formal or informal
conference or conference-like situation, thanks to his or her ability to provide si-
multaneous or consecutive oral interpretation of participants’ speeches, regardless
of their length and complexity. (aiiC 1984:21)

as far as the activities that this mode of interpreting entails, the Effort Model of
simultaneous interpreting proposed by Gile (1995) constitutes a cognitive framework
conceptualising Si as a set of multiple cognitive operations grouped into three basic
‘Efforts.’ The first one being the Listening Effort or Listening and Analysis Effort which
encompasses all online operations activated to allow comprehension of the source

1 „der dolmetscher nämlich verwaltet sein amt in dem Gebiete des Geschäftslebens, der eigentliche
Übersetzer vornämlich in dem Gebiete der Wissenschaft und Kunst“.
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speech by the interpreter. it includes ‘all the mental operations between perception
of a discourse by auditory mechanisms and the moment at which the interpreter
either assigns, or decides not to assign a meaning (or several potential meanings) to
the segment which he has heard’ (Gile 1995: 93), that is: the analysis of sound waves,
identification of words, final decisions about the meaning of a unit.
Secondly, there is the Production Effort (P) which encompasses all online operations
concurring to produce a target speech, including self-monitoring and self-correction.
it encompasses ‘all the mental operations related to storage in memory of heard
segments of discourse until either their restitution in the target language, their loss
if they vanish from memory, or a decision by the interpreter not to interpret them’
(Gile 1995:93).
Finally, Gile distinguished the Memory Effort (M), which encompasses all online
operations which manage in the very short term (up to a few seconds) the storage
and retrieval of information related to the source and target speech in short term
memory. This Effort includes ‘all the mental operations between the moment at which
the interpreter decides to convey a datum or an idea and the moment at which he
articulates (overtly produces) the form he has prepared to articulate’ (1995:93), that is
the initial mental representation, speech planning and implementation. The storage
of information is claimed to be particularly demanding in Si, since both the volume
of information and the pace of storage and retrieval are imposed by the speaker
(1995:97-98).
Later on a fourth Effort was added to this model, namely the Coordination Effort
(C), proposed by Eysenck & Keane (1990). This Effort is tantamount to managing
the allocation of attention and shifts between the three other efforts. Gile (1995:169)
notices certain parallel features of this Effort to what Baddeley and Hitch called the
‘Central Executive’ in their model of Working Memory (Baddeley & Hitch 1974).
Hence, the whole model was as follows:

SI = L + M + P + C

where:
L – Listening
M – (Working) Memory
P – Production
C – Coordination (Gile 1995)

in addition, according to Gile (1995:169):

at each point in time, each Effort has specific processing capacity requirements that
depend on the task(s) it is engaged in, namely the particular comprehension, short-
term memory, or production operations being performed in speech segments. due
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Joanna Ziobro-Strzępek

to the high variability of requirements depending on the incoming speech segments,

processing capacity requirements of individual Efforts can vary rapidly over time,
in seconds or fractions of seconds.

at each point in time there is a certain processing capacity requirement for each
effort’ (Gile 1995:170). The general assumption is that the available capacity must
be larger than the requirement for successful completion of a task. in order to meet
this demand, the total available capacity must be at least equal to the capacity re-
quirements. Thus, difficulties and failures can be accounted for not by the lack of
knowledge but rather by cognitive overload which leads to situations in which the
execution of a given task is delayed or not performed at all. Therefore, the application
of strategies is a sine qua non condition of simultaneous interpreting.

2. Novices vs. experts in simultaneous interpreting

Cognitive psychologists have long been interested in the role of expertise in problem
solving. The early research proved that the main difference between novices and
experts was the organisation and use of their knowledge (de Groot 2000). Further
research focused on the actual time spent by both groups on problem solving. Other
differences between these two groups were analysed in verbal protocols (Lesgold 1988).
Many scholars emphasise the superiority of experienced interpreters over novices in
the profession, as the operation of the cognitive system is seen to change significantly
over time. danks asserts that:

[L]earning, training and experience over time can both create new representations
and lead to the increased probability that certain associative networks will be
evoked as a function of prior usage (biasing effect) upon receipt of the input. The
signal source is integrated into a probabilistic neural network, the output of which
is modulated by the saliency of cues (...). Saliency is a complex interaction between
elements of the input (cues), the task, and the substrate. The implication is that to
be effective and efficient at translation and interpreting, there are several precon-
ditions. Certain cues used by experienced translators are available to them because
of their previous training and/or experience. (danks 1997:245)

as seen above, danks points out that experienced interpreters are sensitive to
a broader range of information cues in the input, which modulates the sensitivity of
the filtering system and provides richer computational output.
He further lists essential differences between novices and professionals, known
to cause substantial differences in their performance, such as: differential cue use,
richer network of activation resulting from the alterations in filtering. aware of the
problems, professionals are able to use effortful processes (strategies and tactics) in
the problem-solving task. Moreover, professionals develop a certain degree of auto-
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maticity in the processing of input, whereas selective inhibition is thought to allow

interpreters to decrease the processing time, improve accuracy and eliminate the effect
of interference on the performance.
Sternberg (1999: 298) regards expertise in translation as a sub-category of trans-
lation competence and a prototype construct which encompasses factors such as:
‘quantity of knowledge, organisation of knowledge, superior analytical ability, superior
creative ability, superior automatisation of processing, and also a superior practical
ability which allows experts to apply their more abstract, cognitive abilities within
the constraints of the field where they work’ (Sternberg 1999: 298). additionally, the
knowledge of experts in their domain has been restructured, and therefore, they
can access their long-term memory in a more efficient manner than novices. They
conduct problem-solving in a more effective way due to proceduralisation (conver-
sion of the declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge), tactical learning and Decir que es
strategic learning. Experts are reported to have developed rich patterns of declarative importante no
knowledge. They spend more time on creating the representation of a problem than hacer esto.
on finding and applying a strategy to solve it. Their representations of problems are
based on the structural similarities between these problems.
Moreover, experts start solving the problem concentrating on the given data to-
wards the issues that are unknown. The patterns that they have developed include
a lot of procedural knowledge on the problem-solving strategies. They are able to solve
problems efficiently, even facing time constraints and are able to solve problems faster
than novices. Besides, experts display high effectiveness in finding proper solutions.
They are able to monitor their own strategies and the process of problem solving.
When facing problems with untypical structure, they spend more time than novices
on the representation of the problem, as well as on the retrieval of proper strategies.
Finally, when they receive a new piece of information which is contradictory to the
initial representation of the problem, they are able to adapt flexibly by applying more
suitable strategies.
Novices on the other hand, demonstrate little declarative knowledge from a given
field, their knowledge is poorly organised and diffuse. The time used for the applica-
tion of proper strategies is longer than the time spent on creating the representation
of a problem. Moreover, novices create relatively poor and primitive representations
of problems which are based on superficial similarities between them. Novices con-
centrate on the gaps in their knowledge and on finding strategies which could be
used in relation with the information they have. Novices often apply the method of
intermediate goals when dealing with many problems. Their problem-solving strategies
include few or no automatised sequences of steps. What is more, their efficiency is
lower than in experts’ performance and they do not have a properly developed system
of monitoring of their own problem-solving strategies. Finally, novices demonstrate
inferior ability to adjust to new information which is contradictory with the initial
representation of the problem and the applied strategy (Sternberg 1999: 300).

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Observations from studies investigating the nature of cognitive performance dif-

ferences between experts and novices (e.g. Sternberg, 1999) indicate significant distinc-
tiveness. Their general findings are fairly uniform across various domains and may be
summarised as follows: (1) experts tend to favour deeper processing (i.e. at the level of
meaning), while novices tend to remain structure-focused (i.e. at the level of form); (2)
in contrast to novices, experts tend to store knowledge representations based on asso-
ciative links, which ultimately leads to relatively fast and error-free retrieval operations
from LtM; and (3) experts are known to monitor and control their cognitive processes
to succeed in performing a given task (cf. Feltovich et al. 2006). translation and in-
terpreting scholars have made similar observations of professional and trainee perfor-
mance differences predicated on the claim that the progression to expertise involves
changes in the nature of cognitive organisation and processing (e.g. Hoffman 1997;
Liu 2008). to provide one example, in a dichotic listening task professional interpret-
ers detected significantly more semantic errors while student interpreters significantly
more syntactic ones (Fabbro et al. 1991). The most crucial declarative and procedural
knowledge differences claimed to exist between experts and novices in translation and
interpreting performance are as follows (Moser-Mercer 2000):
• factual knowledge: experts’ factual knowledge is better organised than that of the
novices: experts reveal more associative links among concepts and more domain
connections, which leads to faster access to declarative knowledge;
• semantic knowledge: as opposed to novices, experts’ semantic knowledge is deeper
and almost always embedded in the context of a text or speech;
• monitoring strategies: professional interpreters constantly compare the input
against the output at various levels, including the level of the lexicon and ove-
rall meaning;
• workload management strategies: experienced interpreters use their processing
resources optimally, although they are not always conscious of the exact mech-
anisms they employ to ensure smooth delivery.
in addition, conference interpreting students are believed to undergo the following
stages of skill acquisition (Moser-Mercer 2000, 2008):
(a) a cognitive stage, also called the interpretive stage,
(b) an associative stage, also called the compiled stage, and
(c) an autonomous stage, also called the automatic or procedural stage.
in the first stage, performance is relatively slow and error-prone, it involves con-
trolled processing and requires considerable allocation of attentional resources. The
second stage entails a mixture of controlled and automatic processing as associations
are formed and the strain on declarative memory and working memory is gradually
lessened. attentional resources are nonetheless still required for control. in the final
stage, the processing of declaratively stored knowledge representations becomes more
automatic and less dependent on attentional resources. it follows from the above
that speed and accuracy are two essential aspects of lexical processing which may be
trained during interpreting practice:
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(...) increased practice can lead to improvement in performance as sub-skills beco-

me automated, but it is also possible for increased practice to create conditions for
restructuring with attendant decrements in performance as learners reorganise their
internal representational framework. in the second case, performance may follow
a u-shaped curve, (...) declining as more complex internal representations replace
less complex ones, and increasing again as skill becomes expertise (McLaughlin
1994: 115; cf. also Moser-Mercer et al. 2000: 110).

Moser-Mercer (2000) defines an expert as ‘someone who has attained a high level
of performance in a given domain as a result of years of experience,’ and a novice
as someone with ‘little or no experience in a particular domain,’ although she notes
that both categories allow for some degree of variation. indeed, there are scholars
who have made more fine-grained distinctions along the expert-novice continuum
(e.g. Hoffman 1997: 199).
in this view, ‘[t]ranslation graduates may exhibit varying levels of translation com-
petence but not translation expertise’ while not all long-time translators in a given
domain will exhibit superior performance (Shreve 2000). in other words, merely
accumulating cognitive resources (...) is not sufficient to become an expert, and the
difference between novices and experts or experienced non-experts and experts is
not simply a matter of cognitive resources in the quality and composition of those
resources, how they are cognitively arranged, represented, and stored in or retrieved
from long-term memory (Shreve 2000: 161).
as pointed out by Liu (2008: 160),

[o]wing to the lack of clearly defined objectives and consistently reliable measuring
devices for performance, research in interpreting Studies has often opted to compare
expert and novice performance in order to determine if there are observable differ-
ences in behaviours or abilities that can be attributed to different stages of expertise
development (...). However, we have to note that expertise defined through this con-
trastive approach is rather relative (...). This relativity (...) is another factor underlying
the difficulty in comparing the results of different studies on interpreting expertise
and in making generalisations across studies. However, this relative approach can
illuminate our understanding of how experts become the way they are (...).

Conference interpreters work under conditions which psychologists generally

consider to involve objective stress factors: constant information load, the time factor,
the tremendous amount of concentration required, fatigue, the confined environment
of the booth, etc. Several empirical studies have confirmed that simultaneous inter-
preting is indeed a high-stress occupation (e.g. Kurz 2003). Studies within the area
of interpretation have focused mostly on the interpretation process itself in order to
better understand the intrinsic nature of the process. The interpreter is in a position
where any decision is the consequence of what somebody else does or says. Strikingly,
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almost no other profession undergoes a similar cognitive load: the sole power of the
interpreter is within the interpreter’s mind. The technical equipment is used to carry
the acoustic signal directly to the ears of the recipients and not to help the interpreter
in difficult circumstances.
When clients of an interpreting service were asked what they considered particu-
larly difficult about the interpreting profession, the most frequent replies were ‘high
concentration’ and ‘stress’ (Moser 1996). also, there is general agreement among
conference interpreters that their profession is a very demanding one. it requires
a maximum of attention and concentration over prolonged periods of time. The
need to cope with different (often highly specialised) subjects, different speakers
and accents, the possibility of failure at all times, etc. are among the factors that are
generally regarded as contributing to stress. and stress is held to be an important
factor in interpreting (Kurz 2003).
at the beginning of a conference even the most experienced, efficient and skilled
interpreters feel some tension, since they are aware of various unknown elements that
may occur and will have to be coped with: new concepts or technical words, a difficult
accent or pronunciation, technical defects, speaker not talking to the microphone, an
unscheduled paper read at a speed impossible to keep up with. Such factors, expect-
ed in general but unexpected in particular, cannot be eliminated by the interpreter.
training and experience may help the interpreter adopt the right strategy immediately,
sometimes automatically, however, there may be circumstances requiring additional
effort and imposing more strain on the interpreter. The bigger number of unknown
factors the interpreter is confronted with, the larger the stress involved in the task.
When interpreting conditions are very demanding from the cognitive point of view,
even incidental factors like minor noise in the booth, a sneeze, a cough, a reduction
in the sound volume or somebody talking behind the booth may induce a loss of
concentration or attention. Thus, it constitutes an explanation why only few stress
studies have been carried out so far on interpreters while performing their activities
and why interpreters are not very keen to be observed and studied while at work.
in 1981-82, a large-scale survey on interpreting stress was conducted and a question-
naire was sent to 1400 aiiC members throughout the world. Completed questionnaires
were returned (Cooper et al. 1982). The questionnaire consisted of several sections to
gather information on demographic characteristics of interpreters (attitude toward
work, stress at work, behavioural manifestations of such stress), job satisfaction, indi-
cations of present physical health, type a/B personality characteristics, perceived stress
on the job and mechanisms for coping with stress. Results indicated that ‘Conference
interpreters are under a considerable amount of pressure in their job and there are
a number of areas of concern [...] work could be organised to take many of them into
account, although some are less amenable to change’ (Cooper et al. 1982: 104).
Studies of several scholars (e.g. Riccardi 1998; Kurz 2003) emphasise that short-
term or infrequent episodes of stress pose little risk, but when stressful situations go
unresolved, the body is kept in a constant state of activation, which increases the
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rate of wear and tear and may ultimately compromise the body’s ability to repair and
defend itself. Many scholars, however, find that videoconferencing and interpreting
live tV broadcasts generate much more stress than simultaneous interpreting in or-
dinary conditions: having a negative impact on performance in the case of 73% of
the respondents having experienced it (Kurz 2009).
Simultaneous interpreting is a highly complex discourse performance [...] where
language perception, comprehension, translation and production operations are car-
ried out virtually in parallel and under severe time pressure. [...] the task [...] is likely
to create a heavy processing load (tommola 1995: 180).
although the question of individual differences in personality and the ability
to withstand the stress involved in the career of a simultaneous interpreter (e.g. the
constant information load during interpretation, the confined environment of the
interpreting booth, fatigue, and the effects of environmental noise) is often discussed
by professional interpreters, virtually no research has been carried out in this area.
Ergopsychometric studies, i.e. psychological testing under stress as compared to
neutral conditions, have confirmed that there are individuals who show an unchanged
or even improved performance under load (‘consistent performers’), while others with
an equally good performance in a stress-free atmosphere tend to fail in stressful situ-
ations (Guttmann and Etlinger 1991), regardless of their status as a novice interpreter
or a professional one. also, the factor of stress has been found to affect novices to
a larger extent than it was in the case of professional, experienced interpreters.
understanding the differences in the performance between novice and profes-
sional interpreters is of crucial importance to our study, since there are significant
differences between these two groups in the application of conscious strategies, such
as those which are analysed in our study (omissions, additions, and self-corrections).
Moreover, the issue of application of strategies is also related to the omnipresent
notion of simultaneous interpreting quality. as asserted by Pym:

Quality in the broadest sense, must thus be a measure of the extent to which
a communication act achieves its aims, and that is precisely the direction in which
we would like to take our analysis. We do not accept, at least not a priori, that the
use of omissions indicates a reduction in quality, since such an assumption would
answer our questions before we look at any evidence. Our interest in this question
derives from slightly different concerns. in our work on the ethics of translation
(we have proposed that the collective effort put into any ethical communication act
must be of less value than the mutual benefits derived from that communication
act. This is so as to achieve cooperation between the participants. That approach has
enabled us to describe translation as a relatively high-effort mode of cross-cultural
communication, ideally restricted to high-reward communication acts (Pym 1997)

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More details regarding quality in simultaneous interpreting can be found in the

works of Bühler (1986), Kalina (2005), Kurz (1996, 1993/2002, 2001), Moser (1996),
Niska (1999), Pöchhacker (1994, 2002), Shlesinger (1989), and Vuorikoski (1993).

3. Strategies in simultaneous interpreting

Shlesinger (2000: 4) observes that the basic rule in interpreting studies is to ‘find the
optimal balance between the intuitive and the scientific, the controllable and the
ecologically valid, the definite and the viable, the task-specific and the psychologically
universal.’ according to Gile, interpreters should strive to achieve non-omission, based
on the universal rules of performing simultaneous interpreting: providing maximum
information, maximum effect on recipients, minimum effort, saving one’s face in
case of emergency, and maximum communication.
in the interpreting literature there are also numerous references to the 'norm of com-
pleteness' in simultaneous interpreting. This norm states that interpreters should attempt
to render everything that is said. This idea is also supported by Jones who claims that
‘The conference interpreter must be able to provide an exact and faithful reproduction
of the original speech. deviation from the letter of the original is permissible only if it
enhances the audience’s understanding of the speaker’s meaning’ (Jones, 2002).
according to numerous surveys conducted by Pöchhacker (2002), Shlesinger (1994),
IMPORTANT Niska (1999), and Kalina (2005), ‘completeness’ of interpretation is not the most im-
E!!! PARA LA portant factor for the users of interpreting services. Surveys indicate that ‘essential
SINTESIS information’ is enough and frequently a ‘pleasant voice’ compensates for certain flaws
in the performance. This is in contradiction to the assumptions of cognitive models
which assume striving for non-omission.
according to Moser-Mercer, a professional interpreters with a fair degree of
expertise will apply different strategies than a novice or inexperienced interpreter
(Moser-Mercer 1996).
However, there seems to be a certain ambiguity concerning the notion of strategy
in simultaneous interpreting. For the purposes of this study, we shall adopt the defi-
nition of strategy presented by Zabalbeascoa (2000: 119-122), who defines a strategy as
a specific pattern of behaviour aimed at solving a problem or achieving a goal, a con-
sciously performed action with an objective to enhance performance of a given task.
The conference interpreting literature presents many different classifications of in-
terpreting strategies. Kalina (1998) distinguishes general strategies: interference avoid-
ing strategies, such as e.g. syntactic restructuring, anticipation strategy, monitoring
strategies, approximation strategies. Whereas Bartłomiejczyk (2006) proposes a list of
strategies which includes the following: adding, approximation, anticipation, shifts,
compression, delaying response, inference, parallel formulation, deletion, paraphrase,
correction, lack of correction, reproduction, transcoding, syntactic transformation,
transfer, lack of transfer, visualization, personal association, personal involvement,
and finally general knowledge.
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The relation between strategies and the quality of the product of interpreting is
stressed by Riccardi (2003: 257) who, on the other hand, stresses the relation between
strategies and the quality of the interpreting product, regarding quality as a deriv-
ative of the adopted strategic behaviours at the stage of comprehension, planning,
and production. Therefore, comprehension strategies include: anticipation, chunking,
selection of information and stalling. Production strategies include compression, ex-
pansion, approximation, generalisation, morphosyntactic transformations and use of
elements of prosody, e. g. pauses and intonation. as regards general strategies, these
include decalage and monitoring of the produced communication, while emergency
strategies are e.g. deletion, transcoding and parallel reformulation.
Out of the multitude of strategies that are taught to conference interpreting
students, the ones adopted for this study include omission, addition, and self-cor-
rection, as these phenomena in interpreting can both be seen as a strategic operation
and a proof of mismanagement of cognitive resources.
as far as omission is concerned, Pym (2008) even postulates that there is an ef-
fort of omission, which would indicate that omission is a conscious and deliberate
strategy which is in opposition to what was claimed by Barik (1971) who regarded
omission as a clear mistake to be avoided. Many researchers who deal with confer-
ence interpreting are of the opinion that omission constitutes one of the undenia-
ble mistakes and it is never to be used by interpreters. altman (1994), Barik (1994),
Gile (1995; 1999), Moser-Mercer (1996) as well as Shreve and diamond (1997) have
treated omission as a technique that interpreters should resort to only if necessary
and in extreme cases of processing capacity overload.
Moreover, Gile (1998) assessed ‘errors and omissions’ as one simple category
which implies that they should be perceived equally, being indicators of lesser
quality. However, as proved by the studies on interpreting quality mentioned
above, this is not always the case. Omissions may however pose high level of risk,
therefore, as indicated by Pym (2008), interpreters strive for non-omission only in
the case of high-risk contextualization, and as a result, Pym distinguishes high-risk
omissions and low-risk omissions. Viaggio 2002; Gumul and łyda 2007 claim that
consciously applied omissions increase the level of coherence, however they can
also undermine the trust between the interpreter and the audience, being a signal
of problems. For the purpose of this study, omissions will be treated as a conscious
strategy (hipothesized to occur primarily in the performance of experts), and
a signal of cognitive mismanagement (in the case of novices), however, without
distinguishing particular types thereof.
The second strategy being the subject matter of the study is the notion of addi-
tions connected with the concept of explicitation developed in 1964 by Nida. The
list of explicitations proposed in translation includes phenomena, ranging from the
lexical to the discourse level of linguistic structure: adding connectives, categorical
shifts of cohesive devices, shifts from referential cohesion to lexical cohesion, shifts
from reiteration in the form of paraphrase to reiteration in the form of identical/
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partial repetition, filling out elliptical constructions, lexical specification, addition

of modifiers and qualifiers, addition of proper names to generic names, distribut-
ing the meaning of a source text unit over several units in the target text, replacing
nominalisations with verb phrases, disambiguating metaphors with similes, including
additional explanatory remarks (cf. Gumul 2006: 174).
another feature of the interpreting performance which is going to be analysed
in this study are self-corrections. The definition of self-correction for the purposes
of this study is derived from the area of sociology, social organisation and social
interaction. a distinction is made in these disciplines between ‘self-correction,’
i.e. correction by the speaker themselves vs. ‘other-correction’, i.e. correction by
another person (Schegloff et al. 1977). The only type relevant for this study shall
be the self-correction.
The strategy of self-correction involves self-monitoring, Gerver (2002) claims that
self-monitoring in Si operates at two levels: pre-articulation and post-articulation. and
according to Gerver, the procedure in interpreting is as follows: interpreters generate
the target language response, test it, and if the response is approved, they utter it. after
articulation, the uttered segment is tested again, and if it is unsuccessful, the interpreter
creates a new response. as stated by Levelt (1983:78), self-corrections depend on how
much of the original utterance needs to be repeated/corrected. if an error is detected
via monitoring and its cause has been diagnosed, a conceptual fragment marked as the
correction of some earlier fragment is inserted at the end of the stream. This correction
fragment may include old concepts already implemented linguistically.
Simultaneous interpreting per se assumes that self-corrections are a strategy which
should appear as rarely as possible, only in case of the detection of a grave error in
the performance. in certain context they are also regarded as a face-saving strategy
(for details see Jones 2002). However, the notion of self-corrections is rarely discussed
in the Si research. and the objective of this empirical study with the participation
of interpreters is to investigate the possible differences in the distribution of self-
corrections by novices and professionals.

4. Design of the study

The study described in this paper focused on the performance of 10 professional in-
terpreters, most of whom also work as academic teachers, and 10 novice interpreters
(after 2 semesters of practicing simultaneous interpreting). all the interpreters parti-
cipating in the study had the following language combination: a: Polish, B: English
and C: German.
The study was conducted in two parts, therefore, the subjects were divided into
2 groups according to their experience in interpreting:
• Professional interpreters (Subjects 1-10)
• Novice interpreters (Subjects 11-20)

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 Simultaneous Interpreting as a Demanding Strategic Operation – the Issue of the Interpreter’s Experience

The speeches to be interpreted in the experiment were selected on the basis of the
following criteria:
• topic familiarity
• high degree of orality
• acceptable delivery rate
• the text cannot contain excessive amounts of specialised vocabulary due to the
possibility of an adverse effect on the performance and increase in processing
capacity requirements
• the text cannot be altered in any way, therefore, official versions of the speech shall
be selected in order to guarantee the objectivity of the findings (Shlesinger 1989)
The procedure of the experiment involved a warmup (which was not recorded
for the purposes of this study), then interpretation of the speech from Polish into
English (17 minutes). after a short break, the interpreters interpreted the second task,
which also lasted approximately 17 minutes. after the actual interpreting task the
interpreters were asked several questions in an interview.
The following general hypotheses were proposed on the basis of the above literature
analysis and the findings of the interpreting research. Firstly, in terms of omissions,
more omissions are expected in the performance of novices, mostly due to mis-
management and competence-related problems. Judicious omissions are expected to
be applied in a conscious and purposeful manner in order to decrease the processing
capacity requirements, mostly by experts, but also by novices. differences due to the
direction of interpretation are expected. Perhaps more omissions will occur when
interpreting into the mother tongue due to potential comprehension problems. also,
professionals in an interpreting task are aware of the problems which may occur, and
are able to use effortful processes (strategies and tactics) in the problem-solving task.
Therefore, professionals are expected to be able to manage local cognitive load well
(on the level of particular sentences/clauses), hence, a small number of omissions is
expected in general, since interpreters in general strive for non-omission, and omi-
ssions should be rare in their case.
as regards additions, they are expected to be more frequent in the performance
of experienced interpreters who, as results from the reviewed literature, tend to speak
a lot and add words or even segments to their performance. additions are expected
to be used as fillers while waiting for meaningful segments of the text, to formulate
thoughts, which is also consistent with the experience of the author of this paper. Since
novices are prone to omit words and segments of speeches rather than add anything
to their performance, few additions are expected in their performance.
in terms of self-corrections, fewer self-corrections expected while interpreting into
mother tongue – an assumption of a correlation between the directionality and the
number of self-corrections. Fewer self-corrections are expected in the performance
of experts, as a result of their competence.

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Joanna Ziobro-Strzępek

5. Results of the study

The following tables present the results of the study in a breakdown into the two
groups: experienced interpreters and novices.

Table 1. Overall scores for omissions – professionals

PL-EN EN-PL
Subject 1 33 39
Subject 2 29 11
Subject 3 35 34
Subject 4 35 24
Subject 5 32 20
Subject 6 34 27
Subject 7 39 26
Subject 8 38 24
Subject 9 32 22
Subject 10 31 34
total 338 261

Table 2. Overall scores for omissions – novices

PL-EN EN-PL
Subject 1 22 23
Subject 2 29 21
Subject 3 40 27
Subject 4 38 25
Subject 5 26 26
Subject 6 33 15
Subject 7 28 35
Subject 8 32 20
Subject 9 41 25
Subject 10 23 21
total 312 238

in relation to the hypotheses mentioned previously, novices were expected to

apply more omissions due to mismanagement of cognitive resources. This hypo-
thesis was not corroborated. Professionals applied more omissions, however, nov-
ices omitted more significant segments, especially when interpreting into Polish,
which could have resulted from more limited understanding of the source speech.
Whereas in the case of professionals omissions concerned single words or short
phrases, which was conducive to achieving congruence. as far as the number of
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omissions is concerned, it occurred that novices strived for non-omission more

than the professionals, contrary to the initial expectations.

Table 3. Overall scores for additions – professionals

PL-EN EN-PL
Subject 1 11 14
Subject 2 10 12
Subject 3 3 4
Subject 4 6 12
Subject 5 6 4
Subject 6 7 5
Subject 7 10 6
Subject 8 8 9
Subject 9 4 6
Subject 10 7 9
total 72 81

Table 4. Overall scores for additions – novices

PL-EN EN-PL
Subject 11 3 5
Subject 12 0 2
Subject 13 1 5
Subject 14 3 9
Subject 15 6 11
Subject 16 0 5
Subject 17 3 7
Subject 18 2 5
Subject 19 1 6
Subject 20 5 8
total 24 63

in the case of additions, the subjects also made comments which would corrob-
orate the assumptions of the experimenter concerning the existence of additions
applied as a conscious strategy to gain some time to think about the upcoming
difficult word or phrase. all of the above observations are consistent with the
experience of the author concerning the strategies consciously applied in the per-
formance of simultaneous interpreting. Fewer additions were indeed applied by
the novices, especially when interpreting into English, as a result of more limited
competence in this language.
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Joanna Ziobro-Strzępek

Table 5. Overall scores for self-corrections – professionals

PL-EN EN-PL
Subject 1 16 12
Subject 2 12 5
Subject 3 7 12
Subject 4 22 8
Subject 5 5 5
Subject 6 9 6
Subject 7 5 5
Subject 8 3 5
Subject 9 5 3
Subject 10 4 3
total 88 64

Table 6. Overall scores for self-corrections – novices

PL-EN EN-PL
Subject 11 32 15
Subject 12 20 19
Subject 13 20 18
Subject 14 33 17
Subject 15 28 15
Subject 16 35 17
Subject 17 19 10
Subject 18 26 19
Subject 19 29 21
Subject 20 27 12
total 269 163

Few self-corrections were applied by experts, and at the same time many by nov-
ices. a surprisingly lower amount of self-corrections by novices when interpreting
into Polish, which could be the result of better competences when interpreting into
the mother tongue. Whereas no significant differences in the case of experts.
in the interviews, all of the subjects declared having applied omissions, additions
and self-corrections as conscious strategies (in the case of professionals), mostly to
free their processing capacity. 6 out of 10 novices indicate that the reason for the
application of most omissions was the insufficient comprehension or the complete
lack thereof. as a result, they were forced to resign from interpretation, even if they
thought they were able to interpret but they resigned not to risk the loss of the avail-
able processing capacity.

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in general, the obtained results have shown significant differences in the appli-
cation of judicious strategies in the case of both groups, which is of significance to
teaching simultaneous interpreting. a more detailed study with the participation of
more experts and novices and a group-specific classification of omissions, additions,
and self-corrections could shed a new light on the findings hereof. Nevertheless, as
mentioned previously, interpreters, especially experts in the field, are reluctant to
participate in experimental studies, even against remuneration, as simultaneous in-
terpreting is a highly specialised and stress-prone activity.

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str eszczenie

Tłumaczenie symultaniczne jako wymagające działanie strategiczne – kwestia doświadczenia

tłumacza

Strategie, takie jak pominięcia (omissions), dodatkowe elementy tekstu (additions) i poprawki
własne tłumacza (self-corrections) są uważane za warunek konieczny wykonywania tłumacze-
nia symultanicznego we wszystkich jego aspektach. dlatego też opracowano projekt badania
empirycznego, którego celem była analiza dystrybucji wspomnianych strategii w tłumacze-
niu z języka polskiego na angielski i z języka angielskiego na polski, wykonanym przez 10
profesjonalnych tłumaczy i 10 studentów tłumaczenia ustnego studiujących w Państwowej
Wyższej Szkole Zawodowej w Krośnie. Opisane badanie empiryczne jest próbą nowego
spojrzenia na sposób, w jaki wyżej wymienione strategie są stosowane przez tłumaczy na
różnych poziomach zaawansowania.

słowa kluczowe

tłumaczenie symultaniczne, doświadczenie, pominięcia, dodatkowe elementy tekstu,

poprawki własne, jakość tłumaczenia

abstr act

Simultaneous Interpreting as a Demanding Strategic Operation – the Issue of the Interpreter’s

Experience
Strategies such as omissions, additions, and self-corrections are regarded as a sine qua non
condition of simultaneous interpreting in all its aspects. Therefore, an empirical study was
devised in order to examine the distribution of the aforementioned strategies in the perfor-
mance of 10 professional interpreters and 10 student interpreters from Krosno State College.
The rendition of two selected speeches was analysed on the basis of an experiment involving
bi-directional interpreting from Polish into English and from English into Polish. The study
will shed a new light on the way the aforementioned strategies are applied by interpreters at
a different level of advancement.

k ey wor ds

simultaneous interpreting, experience, omissions, additions, self-corrections, interpreting

quality

164