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Problems and Strategies in Consecutive Interpreting:

A Pilot Study at Two Different Stages of Interpreter
Training
Marta Arumí Ribas

Article abstract
Volume 57, Number 3, September 2012
This article is a contribution to the study of strategic
URI: id.erudit.org/iderudit/1017092ar competence in interpreting. After a brief overview of the main
contributions dealing with the concept of strategies and
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problems in interpreting, the article presents a pilot study
which analyses the interpreting problems encountered by two
See table of contents groups of students at two different stages of training and the
strategies they apply. It details and classifies the strategies
used to resolve the difficulties and assesses the students’
perception as to whether and how they have successfully
completed the task. A number of commonalities and
Publisher(s) differences between the two groups have been observed. In the
conclusions, it is stated that the more we learn about how the
Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal processes involved in interpreting are acquired and developed,
the more successful we shall be in establishing a basis on
which to design training parameters that address the strategic
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 Problems and Strategies in Consecutive
Interpreting: A Pilot Study at Two Different
Stages of Interpreter Training

marta arumí ribas

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
[email protected]

RÉSUMÉ
Le présent article vise à contribuer à l’étude des compétences stratégiques en interpré-
tation. Après un survol des principaux travaux liés aux concepts de stratégies et aux
problèmes en interprétation, nous présenterons une étude pilote qui analyse les problè-
mes d’interprétation rencontrés par deux groupes d’étudiants à des étapes différentes
de leur formation, ainsi que les stratégies utilisées par ces derniers. Les stratégies de
résolution de problèmes sont présentées et classifiées, puis est analysée la perception
qu’ont les étudiants de leur réussite ou de leur échec, de même que les stratégies qu’ils
ont utilisées. Nous avons étudié les traits communs et les différences pour les deux
groupes. Nous proposons, en conclusion, que mieux comprendre comment les proces-
sus d’interprétation sont acquis et développés nous permettrait de mieux mettre en avant
l’élaboration de paramètres de formation qui tiendraient compte des compétences stra-
tégiques et des réflexions pédagogiques.

ABSTRACT
This article is a contribution to the study of strategic competence in interpreting. After a
brief overview of the main contributions dealing with the concept of strategies and prob-
lems in interpreting, the article presents a pilot study which analyses the interpreting
problems encountered by two groups of students at two different stages of training and
the strategies they apply. It details and classifies the strategies used to resolve the difficul-
ties and assesses the students’ perception as to whether and how they have successfully
completed the task. A number of commonalities and differences between the two groups
have been observed. In the conclusions, it is stated that the more we learn about how
the processes involved in interpreting are acquired and developed, the more successful
we shall be in establishing a basis on which to design training parameters that address
the strategic competence and the reflective practice.

MOTS- CLÉS/KEY WORDS

interprétation consécutive, stratégie d’interprétation, problème d’interprétation, étude
pilote, questionnaire rétrospectif
consecutive interpreting, interpreting strategy, interpreting problem, pilot study, retro-
spective questionnaire

1. Introduction
Consecutive interpreting entails a large number of almost concurrent cognitive,
psychomotor and affective processes, all of which pose major challenges for the
interpreter who has to deal with them simultaneously. The interpreter is constantly
confronted with unexpected situations that must be dealt with while he/she is
already working at the limits of his/her available processing capacity (Gile 1995). It
Meta LVII, 3, 2012

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 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 813

is therefore crucial that interpreter training should be as effective as possible and that
during their training period, future professional interpreters should develop a series
of strategies or tactics that can be used to solve the problems encountered. Gile (1995;
2009) describes a series of tactics and strategies interpreters apply when problems in
the interpreting process arise. He establishes a distinction between the terms tactics
and strategies. According to this author, strategies are planned actions with specific
objectives and tactics refer to online decisions and actions taken by the interpreter
during the execution of the task to overcome the difficulties encountered. He restricts
the use of these two terms to deliberate decisions and actions aimed at preventing or
solving problems. In the present study, we prefer to use the term strategy to refer to
both immediate and longer-term actions taken to solve a problem. At the same time,
as we shall see in the results of the study, and bearing in mind that our analysis is
based on a retrospective reflection by the students after having completed a task, it
is impossible to determine whether the strategies adopted by the students when faced
with an interpreting problem are conscious and deliberate, or whether they are
unconscious, spontaneous actions and reactions in response to a difficulty.
Interpreting quality depends on certain skills and strategies that need to be
acquired over time, usually as part of a university training programme. One issue
that is central to the question of what makes a good interpreter, and is closely related
to the interpreter training, is the question of how the interpreting output of experts
and novices differs, both in terms of quality and processing (Sunnari 2003). In this
sense, a number of studies have been carried out in the field of teaching interpreting
which define how the evolution from novice to expert interpreter takes place.
Hoffman (1997) and Moser-Mercer, Frauenfelder et al. (2000) stress that the develop­
ment of expertise happens in different phases, as students progress from a cognitive
stage, through an associative stage to an autonomous stage. In translation and inter­
preting novices still need to engage in tactical learning whereby they learn specific
rules for solving specific problems. This tactical knowledge then becomes increasingly
well organised and the novice develops a set of strategies designed to optimally solve
the problems he/she encounters (Moser-Mercer, Frauenfelder et al. 2000: 110). It is
worth noting the prominent position that strategic competence has come to occupy
in recent thinking about the acquisition of interpreting expertise and the fact that
some authors (Ericsson 2001; Moser-Mercer, Frauenfelder et al. 2000) point to stra­
tegic ability as an indication of expert knowledge in interpreting. According to
Moser-Mercer (1997: 194), research on the interpreting process needs to go further,
addressing not only the knowledge structures, but, more particularly, the dynamic
nature of their application during the interpreting process.
However, following Hurtado (2001: 276), despite their fundamental importance
concerning the key role of operative knowledge in translation and interpreting, stud­
ies which examine translation and interpreting strategies are still in their infancy.
Gile (2000: 81) similarly stresses that there are very few studies that describe strategic
processes in interpreting.
This study aims to identify some general patterns in the emergence of problems
and strategies reported by students at two different stages of training in consecutive
interpreting. Furthermore, it analyses the students’ perceptions concerning their abil­
ity to resolve interpreting problems. Finally, the study evaluates whether the question­
naire used is a suitable method for studying the strategic component in interpreting.

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 814 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

The results presented are descriptive and were obtained from the analysis of a
post-interpreting questionnaire answered by the students. It is, therefore, a pilot study
whose purpose is to approach the subject on the basis of the information provided
by the individual students who participated in the study. It should be pointed out
that the questionnaire was not specifically designed for the purpose of the research,
but was previously used by the researcher (who is also a teacher of interpreting) as a
didactic instrument in the interpreting classroom. It was as a result of observing how
students were prompted by the questions in the questionnaire to reflect in detail on
the problems they had encountered in their interpreting tasks and how they had
solved them that we decided to undertake the present study to monitor the observable
patterns in the data obtained. We study the problems reported by two groups of
interpreting students (beginners and advanced) when carrying out an exercise in
consecutive interpreting. We also set out to identify the strategies reported by the
two groups of students in solving the problems detected. Another objective of the
study is to observe the usefulness of the post-interpreting questionnaire in research
on this topic.
As stated by Riccardi, “conference interpreting is no longer merely considered
an implicit competence, a skill difficult to explain and put into words and whose
teaching is even more difficult, if not impossible” (Riccardi 2005: 757). It is also a
form of declarative knowledge, rising into consciousness, which can therefore be
verbalized. Accordingly, if we succeed in understanding how the processes involved
in the exercise of interpreting are acquired and developed, we shall be able to lay the
foundations for designing training parameters which take strategic competence into
account.

2. Translation and Interpreting Strategies

The concept of strategy was first introduced in the field of translation by Hönig and
Kussmaul (1982), who defined translation strategies as processes which lead to an
optimum solution to a translation problem. Hurtado (1999: 246) defines translation
strategies as the individual procedures, both conscious and unconscious, verbal and
non-verbal, used by the translator to solve the problems encountered in the course
of the translation process, depending on the specific requirements involved.
Regarding the problems, according to Nord (1988: 151), these are objective dif­
ficulties that all translators need to resolve during a given task, regardless of their
level of competence and formal working conditions. Riccardi (1998) states that
simultaneous interpreting can be considered a problem-solving activity. The difficulty
arises from the original speech, while the solution occurs in the interpreted speech,
and the strategies consist in the mechanisms and decisions that take place between
the problem and its solution.
Returning to the concept of strategy, Hurtado (2001: 277) states that translation
strategies may be linguistic, extralinguistic, instrumental or pragmatic. Attempts
have been made to analyse translation strategies by means of experiments. The main
methodological approach used has been think-aloud protocols, that is, where the
translator (or translation student) expresses his/her mental processes while translat­
ing. Some noteworthy studies along these lines include those by Lörscher (1991) and
Kiraly (1995). In other cases software such as Camtasia and Proxy were used. They

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 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 815

allow the translation process to be recorded and to view the steps taken by the trans­
lator, namely, corrections, consulting document sources and modifications. On the
other hand, the software Translog (Jakobsen 2011), in addition to recording the
translation process, also provides time statistics, pauses by the translator, behaviour,
etc. Thus it is possible to obtain data in a more natural setting. Finally, not to be
forgotten are the eye-tracking systems, which record eye movements of the translator
across the screen.
Lörscher (1991: 125) considers a translation strategy to be a conscious and indi­
vidual process used to solve a translation problem. Therefore, translation strategies
are individual; they entail an element of planning, pursue certain objectives and are
associated with a series of actions taken in the pursuit of achieving those objectives.
He organizes strategies into three global strategies:
– propose preliminary solutions to problems (explore);
– literally repeat source or target text segments that have already been captured or
verbalised (control);
– recoup segments and reformulate them (paraphrase).
He also underlines the wide variety of strategies used. In other words, different
strategies are used by different subjects to deal with the same problem. However, he
only considers translation problems of a lexical, syntactic or lexico-syntactic nature.
The study by Kiraly (1995) presents a series of translation process indicators,
including dictionary query strategies, the use of mnemonic devices, retranslations,
etc. However, there are drawbacks to both Lörscher (1991) and Kiraly’s (1995) studies
regarding their general assertions about translation strategies. Lörscher’s study
focuses on foreign language students and consequently deals with pedagogical trans­
lation rather than professional translation, extrapolating from students engaged in
pedagogical translations to professionals who carry out communicative translation.
Kiraly studies a group of nine translators and nine translation students, which is a
rather small sample.
As shown by the studies reviewed, analysing the strategic component in inter­
preting is considered to be a fundamental source of relevant data for teaching. Abuín
(2007) provides an exhaustive review of the most prominent strategy-related studies
in the field of interpreting, which we shall now briefly consider.
Gile (2002; 2009) analyses interpreting problems and strategies through his
Effort Model.1 In this Model, Gile talks about processing capacity, which is finite and
which enables us to see the errors in the interpretation process and propose solutions
to these difficulties. Kalina (1998; 2000) has also made noteworthy contributions with
her notions of strategy, strategic processing and interpreting competence. Kohn and
Kalina (1996: 126) point out that interpreting can be explained from its strategic
dimension, in the sense that it constitutes a speech that is strategically processed and
produced with the objective of facilitating the interlinguistic transfer of mental
models which have been created on the basis of a source and target speech. Kalina
uses the term strategy in the broad sense to refer to the text processing and produc­
tion operations performed by the interpreter during the reception and/or production
of a speech. Kalina (1994; 2000; 2002) also makes a methodological contribution to
the gathering and analysis of empirical data on the interpreting process. Thus, in her
study published in 1994, Kalina provides practical and general information on gath­
ering an audio interpreting corpus and concludes that, given the diversity of the

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 816 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

existing criteria for transcribing oral material, in the case of an interpreting corpus
the selection criteria should be the most appropriate to the proposed object of study.
It is particularly important to use the introspective methodological tool of the think-
aloud protocol, which allows a subject’s comments while performing a specialized
task to be monitored. Kalina adapts this method of introspective verbalisation to the
specific circumstances of interpreting, transforming it into a retrospective tool
applied at the end of the process to obtain verbal data from interpreters about the
difficulties encountered and the strategies used during the interpreting task.
Similarly, Riccardi (1996) studies the difficulties encountered and the solutions
brought to bear by interpreters with differing degrees of experience as they tackle a
simultaneous interpreting task. From a more theoretical point of view, Riccardi
(1998) has reflected on the creative component in interpreting strategies. In her study
published in 1999, Riccardi emphasises that there are general strategies, which are
applicable to all language combinations, and specific strategies applicable to the
individual language pairs in question. Riccardi (2005) distinguishes between com­
prehension, production, overall and emergency strategies. Comprehension strategies
generally include anticipation, segmentation, selection of information, stalling or
waiting, while production strategies consist of compression, expansion, approxima­
tion strategies, generalisation, use of linguistic open-end forms, morphosyntactic
transformation and the use of prosodic elements, such as pauses and intonation.
Décalage and monitoring are counted among overall strategies, while emergency
strategies may include, for example, the omission of text segments, transcoding and
parallel reformulation.
Ivanova (2000) makes a methodological contribution to the study of strategic
competence in interpreting by examining the limitations and the possibilities
involved in using retrospective, or post-task, verbalisation instruments in process-
based studies. She explores the use of retrospective protocols for investigating the
cognitive processes mediating performance during simultaneous interpreting. She
showed that applying the methodology of delayed retrospection to SI requires careful
design and manipulation of different types of memory support for retrospection.
Instructing the subjects to verbalise segment by segment and giving them the oppor­
tunity to initiate the retrospection can elicit interesting data.
Other important studies include those by Sunnari (1995; 2003), which present
the results of using macro-processing or synthesis strategies in simultaneous inter­
preting. It is the author’s hypothesis that macro-processing is one of the key strategies
leading to a fluent simultaneous interpretation. She states that an ability to apply
macro-strategies (synthesis, summarising, elimination of redundant or superfluous
information) not only qualifies the task of the interpreter, but also determines the
quality of the interpretation.
Gran (1998) presents the results of an empirical study on reformulation strategies
used by professional interpreters and interpreting students. In her application of the
results to training, the author advocates a gradual approach to the acquisition of
simultaneous interpreting skills beginning with exercises training one skill at a time,
such as text analysis, abstracting, paraphrasing, and subsequently moving over to
the whole task. At a later stage, training will be devoted to particularly difficult or
complex parts of the interpreting process – the speaker’s pronunciation, speed of
delivery, density of information, specialized terminology, rhetoric.

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 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 817

Another particularly helpful study is that of Abuín (2007), which offers an in-
depth analysis of the various approaches to studying the problem-strategy relation­
ship. Moreover, the study presents a classification of the corresponding problems and
strategies, both during the reception of the message in the original language and the
production of the message in the target language.

3. The study
3.1. Objectives
As mentioned earlier, a review of the literature on this subject clearly shows the
importance of studying the problem-strategy relationship in interpreting according
to different degrees of experience (Moser-Mercer 1997; Kalina 2000; Abuín 2007).
Generally speaking, available published studies have focused on researching the dif­
ferences between novices and professional experts, and have left aside the differences
at different stages of training. Furthermore, as stated by Gile (2000: 81), there are few
studies which describe the strategies via observation methods and think-aloud pro­
tocols. In response, this article attempts to make a contribution to this field by focus­
ing on two distinct phases in interpreter training. The study is based on the following
objectives:
– analyse which problems novice and advanced students detect in consecutive inter­
preting;
– study the students’ perceptions concerning their ability to resolve interpreting
problems;
– analyse which strategies novice and advanced students report in consecutive inter­
preting;
– study whether there are differences between groups at different stages in their train­
ing;
– evaluate whether the post-interpreting questionnaire used is a suitable method for
studying the strategic component in consecutive interpreting.

3.2. Subjects
The initial sample size was 26 subjects at two different levels (novice and advanced)
of university training in Spain. 16 questionnaires were answered by novice students
(Universitat Pompeu Fabra – UPF) and 10 questionnaires were answered by advanced
students (Universidad de La Laguna – ULL). No selection was carried out on the
sample and all the students in the two groups were taken into consideration. Of the
26 questionnaires returned, 11 were discounted because they were incomplete, that
is, a one third or more of the questions were not answered. To be precise, 8 incomplete
questionnaires were discounted in the case of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, while 3 were
discounted in the case of Universidad de la Laguna. Thus, the corpus consists of a
total of 15 students, of whom 8 are beginners and 7 are advanced. Regarding the
distribution of the questionnaires, in the case of the novice students the researcher
distributed the questionnaires personally, while in the case of the advanced students
the questionnaires were distributed by post after the objectives of the research had
been discussed with the coordinator of the Master’s programme. Once completed,
the questionnaires were returned to the researcher by post.

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 818 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

The two levels of training studied are representative of the organization of uni­
versity interpreting courses in Spain, which are currently offered at the undergradu­
ate and postgraduate levels.
On the one hand, we studied a group of undergraduate students; to be more
precise, the students were taking introductory practical classes in consecutive inter­
preting during the third year in their undergraduate degree programme, entailing
some 40 hours of practical sessions, and having received no previous training in
interpreting. Bearing in mind that this is a compulsory subject in the Translation
and Interpreting Licenciatura2 in Spain, the group includes a wide range of students,
from those who wish to further their training in the field of interpreting to students
who intend to work as translators and therefore have no particular interest in inter­
preting itself.
On the other hand, we studied a group of postgraduate students who had
attended approximately 300 hours of practical sessions during five months of classes,
in addition to a prior B.A. and/or professional experience in other areas. These stu­
dents were admitted to a Master’s course in interpreting after having passed an
entrance test and, since they were enrolled in a postgraduate training programme,
we assumed that the students were committed to pursuing a career in interpreting
at the end of their course.

3.3. The experiment

Although the question of deciding on the material to be used in conducting the
experiment is a controversial one (Orozco 2000: 148), the original speech (see
Appendix 1) was selected bearing in mind that, as the subjects were students still
undergoing training, the use of authentic material would not be appropriate if the
experiment was to ensure a degree of complexity suitable for both groups. For simi­
lar reasons, we chose to pre-record the speech in order to limit the speed of delivery.
For the experiment, students were first asked to fill in an initial questionnaire,
asking for general information about the students. Immediately afterwards, the sub­
jects performed an English-Spanish consecutive interpreting exercise (English being
the C language of the students and Spanish, the A language) and then filled in a
second questionnaire, or post-interpreting questionnaire. Before playing back the
speech to the students, the class instructor read out an introduction to the topic that
they had been given, along with instructions on how to perform the exercise. The
students completed the exercise individually, one after the other, without having the
opportunity to listen to the versions of their classmates. The students took notes,
audio recordings were made of their performances, and immediately afterwards they
were given the post-interpreting questionnaire. A possible lack of motivation on the
part of the subjects to participate in the experiment was offset by the presence of an
audience (other students from the institutions concerned were invited to attend), who
listened to the Spanish version given by the interpreters. 8-15 students from other
class groups were present during all the interpreting students’ performances. The
notes were compiled, together with the recordings of their performances.

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 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 819

3.4. Data collection

Applying empirical research to interpreting is subject to a number of limitations. On
the one hand, in practice, the introspective method (e.g. think aloud protocols) is not
viable, due to the physical impossibility of interpreting at the same time as talking
about something else. Authors such as Fraser (1996) and Kalina (1994) point out the
need for validation techniques to ensure that the material verbalised corresponds to
cognition during the process. Nor are retrospective methods without their draw­
backs. In this sense, Fraser (1996) stresses the impossibility of recalling automatic
cognitive processes which leave no trace in the subject’s memory and which cannot,
therefore, be verbalised. Moreover, there may be some confusion in the subjects’
minds between what they have actually done and what they believe they have done,
which poses a problem of validity related to self-perception. Bearing in mind all these
considerations, a questionnaire was applied at this stage of the research, in which our
main aim was to obtain preliminary data through a pilot study. The retrospective
method has been used in research on the interpreting process in a number of cases
(Kohn and Kalina 1996; Jiménez Ivars 1999; Ivanova 2000; Abuín 2007), although
typically as a complementary instrument in the verification of results.
In our study, two questionnaires were used:
– An initial questionnaire (see Appendix 2), specially designed for this research. It
included questions about the students’ profile (age, gender, languages, first language,
training and professional experience).
– A post-interpreting questionnaire about the interpreting task (see Appendix 3),
which had previously been used by the researcher as a tool for reflecting on learning
strategies in the classroom and which she now introduced as a data collection instru­
ment for the purpose of her research. It included two types of question. Some were
open-ended (eliciting information about how useful the instructor’s introduction
to the topic had been, previous knowledge about the topic, concentration and
memory-related problems, satisfaction with the presentation). Others were of a more
closed nature and were concerned with the degree of difficulty perceived by students
in each of the consecutive interpreting phases3 (reception phase and production
phase) according to different parameters (speed, subject matter, terminology, struc­
ture, etc.). The notes taken by the students were compiled for reference purposes to
check comments about strategies used when taking notes or reproducing them.
The data were collected between January and March of 2005, coinciding with
the previously mentioned stages of training.

3.5. Data analysis

The first step in the analysis consisted of grouping together the questions about the
difficulties encountered during the consecutive interpreting phases and how the
subjects had dealt with these difficulties, and questions about secondary consider­
ations. The answers to the initial questionnaire were used to check the profile of the
subjects: training, first language and experience.
The following analysis protocol was used to study the interpreting problems and
strategies:

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 820 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

1. Compile a content analysis table containing the answers of each student to the ques­
tions in the post-interpreting questionnaire, as well as the researcher’s analysis of
those answers and the abstraction and concretion in problems and strategies. A few
examples may be seen in Table 1.
2. Draw up a comprehensive list of all the difficulties and strategies that appear in the
post-interpreting questionnaires from both groups.
3. Carry out an univariate analysis with frequency tables for problems and strategies
for each of the consecutive interpreting phases and each of the groups. Furthermore,
the percentages in respect of the total number of students in each category and in
respect of the total in each group have also been included.
4. Carry out a bivariate analysis with contingency tables in order to describe the pro­
posed solution in both groups.

table 1
Example of content analysis

Subject Description What was What did you Did you Problems Strategies
and unit the problem do? solve the
of analysis due to? problem?
012-3.2 I didn’t get the I find it I said: “the Yes Numbers Generalisation
percentage of “very” hard remainder”
birds to get the because I had
mentioned in numbers grasped the
the speech. right, it takes other two.
more effort.
008-4.1 Inability to Lack of I worked more Not very Lack of Omission
note down all note-taking quickly and well note-taking
the practice noted down practice
information. what I really
was sure of.
007-5.2 The ideas Lack of Tried to apply Sometimes Lack of Used common
don’t hang connectors logic connectors sense
together
coherently.
002-3.4 I didn’t Lack of I concentrated More or less I didn’t Summarise
understand knowledge on the understand.
the proposal elements I did
of the WTO. understand.
003-3.2 “Worshipped” I couldn’t I noted it I think I Problems of Paraphrase
think of the down in changed the equivalence
Spanish English. sense too
equivalent. much.
007-5.1 Difficulty Illegible Relied more I’m working Unclear Memory
recognizing writing on my on it. notes
some memory and
concepts. less on my
notes.

With reference to the interpreting problems, the students’ ability to solve the
problems occurring in each of the consecutive interpreting phases was evaluated by
group, and then both groups were compared. Based on the list of difficulties gener­
ated, a comparative analysis of the problem-solving strategies used for each case was
carried out and followed by a cross-group comparison.
All results have been obtained with the statistical software SPSS for Windows,
version 17.

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 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 821

When considering the tables presented, both in the case of the problems and the
strategies, it should be borne in mind that a given student may have perceived more
than one problem and applied more than one strategy.

4. Results
The results were analysed from the perspective of the objectives proposed at the
outset, that is, first the interpreting problems the students detected during the activ­
ity, followed by an analysis of the strategies they reported after performing the
interpreting exercise.

4.1. The interpreting problems

First of all, it should be noted that since we are dealing with the training phase, we do
not only understand the problems as objective difficulties as defined in section 3 when
talking about the theoretical concept, but also consider the perceptions of the students
to look at the larger number of strategies they use to negotiate their difficulties.
The problems reported by students from both groups are listed below, broken
down according to each of the interpreting phases: listening and understanding,
note-taking, decoding notes and expressing and reformulating. The objective here is
not to offer an in-depth classification, and the problems clearly belong to different
categories: from problems directly related to the interpreting task to those directly
related to the abilities of the subjects. The total number of problems gathered from
the advanced group post-interpreting questionnaires is appreciably lower than those
from the novice group, although the latter included one more subject.

table 2
General breakdown of interpreting problems

Listening and Understanding

Lack of understanding of the source speech
Numbers
Lack of common sense
Speed of delivery of the source speech
Unfamiliarity with the topic
Sound problems
Length of the source speech
Information density
Lack of practice
Lack of attention/concentration
Note-Taking
Lack of understanding of the source speech
Speed of delivery of the source speech
Information density
Lack of practice
Numbers
Decoding Notes
Unable to understand their own notes
Lack of restitution speed
Lack of connectors
Unclear notes
Memory problems

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 822 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

Expressing and Reformulating

Lack of understanding of the source speech
Feeling nervous
Lack of confidence
Unclear notes
Overuse of connectors
Problems expressing themselves

As shown in Table 3, the main problem during the listening phase in the case of
both groups is lack of understanding. Significantly, all the 8 novice students and the
7 advanced students state that they have experienced problems with listening and
understanding. The novice students also report a high percentage of problems related
to what they describe as the poor sound quality of the recording, as well as difficulties
with numbers, speed of delivery and a general unfamiliarity with the topic in hand.
In the advanced students’ group, apart from the lack of understanding, the most
salient problems were the speed of delivery, numbers, and lack of attention or loss of
concentration. A high percentage of advanced students also had difficulties with the
unfamiliarity of the topic. The predominant differences occurring between both
groups are related to problems with the sound (where novice students reported hav­
ing encountered major difficulties) and lack of attention / concentration (reported
only by the advanced students).

table 3
Comparison of problems when listening to and understanding the original speech

% of students
Listening – Understanding
Novice Advanced All students
Lack of understanding 100.00 100.00 100.00
Numbers 37.50 28.57 33.33
Lack of common sense 12.50 14.29 13.33
Delivery speed 37.50 42.86 40.00
Unfamiliarity with the topic 37.50 28.57 33.33
Sound problems 50.00 14.29 33.33
Length of the speech 12.50 14.29 13.33
Information density 12.50 14.29 13.33
Lack of practice 12.50 0.00 6.66
Lack of attention / concentration 0.00 57.14 26.66

As regards note-taking (see Table 4), the speed of delivery of the original speech
is the major difficulty encountered by both groups. However, there is an appreciable
difference between the two groups, this problem being found to affect the novice
students more than the advanced. Furthermore, the novice students pinpoint prob­
lems of lack of understanding of the original speech as directly affecting the quality
of their note-taking. Other difficulties reported by the novice students, albeit to a
lesser extent, are density of information and lack of practice. In the case of the
advanced group, the only problems mentioned are related to the speed of delivery of
the source speech and numbers, although in this case the percentages are in general
lower than those for the novice group. It should be noted that advanced students do
not mention lack of practice.

01.Meta 57.3.corr 2.indd 822 13-06-04 7:35 PM

 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 823

table 4
Comparison of problems when taking notes

% of students
Note-taking
Novice Advanced All students
Lack of understanding 50.00 0.00 26.66
Speed of delivery 62.50 37.50 53.33
Information density 12.50 0.00 6.66
Lack of practice 12.50 0.00 6.66
Numbers 0.00 12.50 6.66

When it came to decoding their own notes (see Table 5), the main difficulty
encountered by the novice students was not being able to understand their own notes
taken during the listening phase, which made it impossible to reconstruct the speech
correctly. They also mentioned unclear notes (closely related to the previous point)
and the lack of connectors.
Compared to the beginners’ group, however, the advanced group placed more
emphasis on the fact that unclear notes would make it more difficult to interpret them
later. Furthermore, the advanced group stated that they did not encounter problems
with the delivery speed. They were the only students who reported memory problems.

table 5
Comparison of problems when decoding notes

% of students
Reading notes
Novice Advanced All students
Lack of understanding 87.50 28.57 60
Speed 12.50 0.00 6.66
Lack of connectors 25.00 14.29 20.00
Unclear notes 50.00 71.43 60.00
Memory problems 0.00 14.29 6.66

Expressing in the target language, along with the listening phase, is the point at
which novice students encounter most problems (see Table 6). In addition to identi­
fying expression problems in general, this group mentions very serious problems
caused by a lack of clarity in their notes, a lack of understanding and being nervous.
A noteworthy feature of this phase in relation to novice students is the appearance
of problems related to feeling nervous and a lack of confidence, since this is the
interpreting phase during which the student feels most exposed and is working under
a great deal of pressure. As regards the advanced group, there is no overriding dif­
ficulty during this phase. As can be seen in Table 6, the difficulties mentioned are
general problems of expression, unclear notes and a lack of understanding. However,
the advanced students did not mention having problems with the overuse of connec­
tors or with personal factors such as feeling nervous or lacking confidence.

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 824 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

table 6
Comparison of problems when expressing in the target language

% of students
Expression
Novice Advanced All students
Lack of understanding 25.00 14.29 20.00
Nerves 25.00 0.00 13.33
Lack of confidence 12.50 0.00 6.66
Unclear notes 25.00 14.29 20.00
Overuse of connectors 12.50 0.00 6.66
Expression problems 37.50 14.29 26.66

4.1.1. Resolving interpreting problems

To conclude the analysis of the problems, we studied the degree of success reported
by the students at solving problems (corresponding to the question “Do you think
you found a satisfactory solution?” in the questionnaire).
Students’ answers were classified according to three categories, depending on
whether the problem was solved satisfactorily, partially or left unsolved.
For each of the phases studied, we shall only analyse those problems on which
the students provided information.
In the case of listening and understanding the overriding impression among all
the students is that they have failed to deal with the task satisfactorily. This perception
is more pronounced among the advanced students, of whom 57.10% state that they
have not solved the task, whereas only 37.5% of the novice students report this prob­
lem. With regard to numbers, the advanced students also report greater dissatisfac­
tion with their solution to the problem; none state that they have solved the problem
correctly, whereas 66.70% of the novice students report having done so. When asked
about the problems arising from the speed at which the original speech was delivered,
33.33% of the advanced students are satisfied with the solution they applied, com­
pared to 66.70% of the novice students.
In the note-taking phase, there is a greater perception among the novice students
of having satisfactorily solved the difficulty arising from the delivery speed of the
original speech. As we can see from Figure 1, the advanced students report having
only partially solved this problem (66.70%).

figure 1
Degree of resolution of the problem posed by the high speed of delivery
during the note-taking phase

01.Meta 57.3.corr 2.indd 824 13-06-04 7:35 PM

 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 825

Also in relation to note-taking (see Figure 2), the majority of students in both
groups who answered the question regarding the lack of connectors report that they
have not found a solution (66.70%). Interestingly, while the advanced students report
no degree of resolution, 50% of the novice students report having found a partial
solution. As for the clarity of their notes, 25% of both the advanced and the novice
students state that they solved the problem. However, 50% of the novice students state
that they failed to solve the problem, compared to 20% of the advanced students. At
the same time, the advanced students also report a higher degree of partial solution
(50%) than the novice students (25%).

figure 2
Degree of resolution of the problem posed by the lack of clarity
during the note-taking phase

Regarding the expression phase, 100% of the students in both groups who
answered the question state that they have not solved the problems posed by their
lack of understanding.

4.2. The interpreting strategies

In Table 7, all the interpreting strategies used in both groups are listed. As specified
in section 3.5, we have classified the strategies mentioned by the students in their
answers for each of the consecutive interpreting phases.
We have considered strategies to include those actions on the part of the subjects
requiring a greater degree of awareness and control in order to solve a difficulty (for
example, paraphrasing, repeating, memorising or trying to calm down), as well as
unconscious actions, in other words, those spontaneous reactions which occur natu­
rally during the learning process without any degree of conscious control, such as,
adding incorrect information. Thus, it is the researcher who interprets and classifies
the corpus obtained from the point of view of the strategies used, while the subjects
simply answer questions with the purpose of reflecting on how they believed they
had solved a detected problem.

01.Meta 57.3.corr 2.indd 825 13-06-04 7:35 PM

 826 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

table 7
General breakdown of interpreting strategies

Listening and Understanding

Generalising
Omitting
Using common sense
Adding wrong information
Summarising
Paying greater attention to the source speech
Leaving in English (source language)
Paraphrasing
Note-Taking
Omitting
Generalising
Summarising
Adding wrong information
Resorting to memory
Decoding Notes
Adding wrong information
Omitting
Using common sense
Repeating
Resorting to memory
Speeding up the reformulation
Changing the order
Ignoring
Expression and Reformulation
Adding wrong information
Trying to calm down
Trying to avoid calques
Choosing the right vocabulary
Summarising
Omitting
Using common sense
Paying greater attention

The main strategies used by both groups of students when listening to and
understanding the original speech are generalisation and omission (see Table 8). The
main strategy used by novice students in the listening phase is to generalise, followed
by omission and using common sense. In the advanced group the most common
strategies are omission – used less frequently than in the novice group – and sum­
marising, used more frequently than in the novice group. The strategies of paying
greater attention and leaving the item(s) in English do not feature among the
advanced students, who at the same time are the only ones to use the paraphrasing
strategy.

01.Meta 57.3.corr 2.indd 826 13-06-04 7:35 PM

 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 827

table 8
Comparison of strategies when listening to and understanding the original speech

% of students
Listening – Understanding
Novice Advanced All students
Generalising 87.50 28.57 60.00
Omitting 75.00 42.86 60.00
Using common sense 75.00 28.57 53.33
Adding wrong information 37.50 28.57 33.33
Summarising 25.00 42.86 33.33
Paying greater attention 12.50 0.00 6.66
Leaving in English 12.50 0.00 6.66
Paraphrasing 0.00 14.29 6.66

When taking notes (see Table 9), the predominant strategy among all the stu­
dents is summarising, although this strategy is still more prevalent in the group of
advanced students. In contrast, the omission and generalising strategies emerge as
the predominant options in the novice group. In the advanced group the strategy of
summarising is followed by the strategy of resorting to memory. Finally, the advanced
students mention omission and generalisation. While some novice students resort to
adding wrong information, this strategy does not figure among the advanced stu­
dents.

table 9
Comparison of strategy frequency when taking notes

% of students
Taking notes
Novice Advanced All students
Omission 37.50 14.29 26.66
Generalising 37.50 14.29 26.66
Summarising 37.50 57.14 46.66
Adding wrong information 12.50 0.00 6.66
Resorting to memory 12.50 28.57 20.00

In the note-decoding phase (see Table 10), the predominant strategy when both
groups are considered together is omission. Adding wrong information is the most
frequently used strategy in the novice group, closely followed by omission and using
common sense. Other strategies used by novice students are repetition, resorting to
memory, speeding up the performance or changing the order in which the informa­
tion appears in the speech. By contrast, the most frequently used strategy in the
advanced group is omission, followed by the use of common sense, ignoring and
resorting to memory. The main difference between the strategies of ignoring and
omitting information lies in the fact that when the strategy of ignoring appears in
the corpus, it is always reported as a conscious action on the part of the student,
whereas omission may be either deliberate or unconscious.

01.Meta 57.3.corr 2.indd 827 13-06-04 7:35 PM

 828 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

table 10
Comparison of strategies when decoding the notes

% of students
Reading notes
Novice Advanced All students
Adding wrong information 50.00 .00 26.66
Omission 37.50 42.86 40.00
Using common sense 37.50 28.57 33.33
Repetition 12.50 .00 6.66
Resorting to memory 12.50 14.29 13.33
Speeding up the reformulation 12.50 0.00 6.66
Changing order of speech 12.50 0.00 6.66
Ignoring 0.00 28.57 13.33

With regard to expression in the target language (see Table 11), the most preva­
lent strategy used by advanced students is summarising. Although the low frequency
of use of strategies by novice students, the strategy of adding wrong information is
once again a distinctive feature. There is also a low frequency of use of strategies
among the advanced students. Nevertheless, the predominant strategy of summaris­
ing is followed by omission and using common sense and paying more attention.

table 11
Comparison of strategies at the expression phase

% of students
Expression
Novice Advanced All students
Adding wrong information 25.00 0.00 13.33
Trying to calm down 12.50 0.00 6.66
Trying to avoid calques 12.50 0.00 6.66
Choosing the right vocabulary 12.50 0.00 6.66
Summarising 0.00 28.57 13.00
Omission 0.00 14.29 6.66
Using common sense 0.00 14.29 6.66
Paying greater attention 0.00 14.29 6.66

5. Discussion
The descriptive study presented here allows the identification and classification of
some of the problems and strategies found in consecutive interpreting at two differ­
ent stages in interpreter training.
During the task, the novice students reported more problems than the advanced
students, especially in the phases corresponding to understanding the original speech
and taking down and decoding their notes. It is important to emphasise that the
problems that crop up in each group tend to be different in kind. More technique-
related problems emerge for the novice group, particularly when taking and decod­
ing notes, and the same is true of more individual factors associated with feeling
nervous or lacking confidence. Yet, it is surprising to find that both lack of attention
and concentration problems related to memory during the note-deciphering stage
only affected the advanced students. It is likely that the novice students, who have
just begun to practise note-taking, are far too busy dealing with note-taking tech­
niques to bear in mind that, along with their notes, memory, attention and concen­

01.Meta 57.3.corr 2.indd 828 13-06-04 7:35 PM

 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 829

tration are also important skills when practising consecutive interpreting. It is

possible that beginners mistake problems of lack of attention and concentration,
which are truly at the root of their difficulties, for technical problems because, at that
stage of training, they believe that the key lies in techniques, whereas as they advance,
they realize that this is not the case. Nevertheless, it would be necessary to work with
a larger sample size, as well as to consider other variables, in order to carry out a
study with more statistical impact.
Regarding the students’ perceptions concerning their ability to solve interpreting
problems, the novice students report a greater ability to solve problems related to
understanding the original speech. The advanced students show a greater perception
of not having satisfactorily solved the task, both in problems related to numbers and
those caused by the speed of delivery of the original speech. In the note-taking phase,
the novice students express a greater perception of having satisfactorily solved the
difficulty arising from the speed of delivery of the original speech. As for detecting
a lack of connectors, whereas the advanced students express no degree of resolution,
half of the novice students state that they have partially solved the problem. Regarding
a lack of clarity in their notes, once again it is the novice students who report having
failed to solve the problems stemming from this difficulty. Similarly, the degree of
partial resolution expressed by the advanced students is greater than that reported
by the novice students. One possible explanation for this general tendency of the
advanced students to express less satisfaction with solving the problems may have to
do with the fact that the more advanced the students are in the training process, the
more critical they are of their performance. Their higher level of training is not nec­
essarily reflected by a greater degree of confidence in their performance. In this
context, we recall the contributions of Ericsson (2001) and Moser-Mercer, Frauenfelder
et al (2000), previously mentioned, observing that the process whereby interpreter
trainees progress to incipient expertise involves raising their strategic awareness,
their capacity to reflect on the process and their critical awareness. Gile (2009) also
advocates an explicit analysis of the strategic component, as opposed to approaches
in which strategy acquisition is mainly a “trial-and-error” procedure, involving little
or no analysis of processing capacity management.
Regarding strategies, the novice students tend to report a greater use of strategies
than the advanced students, probably because students in the novice group also detect
a larger number of problems. And perhaps because more advanced students have
mastered and internalized a number of strategies to a sufficient extent that they are
not aware of using them.
However, the advanced students have recourse to a wider range of strategies than
the novice students. Sometimes both groups use the same strategy to solve the same
kind of problem, and certain recurring patterns in the relationship between problems
and strategies can be observed, as well as some remarkable differences. One note­
worthy feature is that the novice group, who have received fewer hours of training,
resort to adding wrong information, perhaps because the students are reluctant to
leave a gap in their interpretation. They normally add information that they guess to
be true or which, although not conveyed by the speaker’s utterance, may be true. In
the case of the advanced group, who have almost finished their training in consecu­
tive interpreting, there is much more use of omissions, which is generally taken to
be a less clumsy strategy than adding wrong information, but requires a certain

01.Meta 57.3.corr 2.indd 829 13-06-04 7:35 PM

 830 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

amount of practice and decision-making to be able to use it effectively. The advanced

students also resort more often to summarising and paraphrasing, which also require
more practice and greater mastery of discourse analysis.
There are some commonalities among all the students when tackling certain
problems. The recurrences found between both groups coincide with Gile (2009),
who states that interpreters do not choose tactics or strategies at random. The author
observes that the behaviour of trainees, as well as professional interpreters, follows
certain “laws” or trends, which are sometimes conscious, but often unconscious. The
recurrences that we have found in the corpus studied are as follows: when faced with
the problem of a lack of understanding, a similar reaction can be seen across both
groups when it comes to using omission, common sense and even summarising
strategies. Faced with the problem of a source text delivered at an excessively fast
speed, omission and summarising account for high percentages in both groups, but
they then differ in their use of other strategies. When unclear notes are the source of
the problem, there is a great deal of variability, but both groups coincide when it
comes to the tendency to resort to memory and common sense. If there are sound
problems, all the students concur over the action, deliberate or not, of paying greater
attention. In cases where they do not manage to note down numbers, students from
both groups tend to generalise when interpreting. When they detect the absence of
connectors in their notes, both groups resort to using common sense. Regarding
strategies used only by the advanced students, these are found mainly when it comes
to reformulating in the target language. They are: summarizing, omitting, applying
common sense and paying more attention.

6. Conclusions
This study shows a number of trends in the strategic actions taken by the students,
depending on the level of training. Summarising the main results:
– Novice students report more problems than the advanced students;
– The problems that crop up tend to be different in kind, depending on the level of
training;
– Regarding the students’ perceptions concerning their ability to solve interpreting
problems, advanced students show a greater sense of failure to satisfactorily resolve
the task;
– There are some commonalities among all the students when tackling certain prob­
lems;
– Novice students tend to report a greater use of strategies than the advanced students;
– Advanced students draw on a wider range of strategies.
These results merit consideration in further studies, as we may hypothesise that a
greater understanding of the problem-strategy relationship at different levels of
interpreter training could have a direct impact on the development of methods and
materials contributing to improvements in the teaching of consecutive interpreting.
Likewise, the fact that advanced students have a wider range of strategies at their
disposal, which allow them to deal with a greater number of problems compared to
novice students, suggests the importance of integrating into the firsts stages of the
interpreting training the practice of identifying and consciously reflecting on inter­
preting problems, as well as investigating their causes. This practice can be expressly

01.Meta 57.3.corr 2.indd 830 13-06-04 7:35 PM

 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 831

introduced by the teacher during training with a view to providing the students with
resources which will enable them to self-regulate their interpreting performance and
raise their awareness of the most challenging aspects of the process.
Furthermore, some results, such as the spontaneous use of particular strategies,
indicate that special attention should be given to certain strategies in the classroom
and to the corresponding teaching considerations, given their likely positive or
negative repercussions on the training process.
Useful data can be elicited by encouraging the students to verbalise their strate­
gies, thus giving them the opportunity to initiate the retrospection. In particular, it
is a good way for the teacher to obtain first-hand information about the students’
concerns and their main problems.
The study also allows us to pinpoint the adjustments necessary in future research.
The pilot test verifies the overall appropriateness of the questionnaire in collecting
data on the problem-strategy relationship. The instrument is simple to administer,
and the data obtained can easily be processed and extracted for subsequent statistical
analysis. One of the questions raised when the study was designed concerned the
feasibility of retrospection. The study shows that relevant information was indeed
remembered, although the subjects varied in the length and informativeness of their
verbalisations. However, the study also reveals that the use of the questionnaire has
certain limitations. We cannot totally be sure of how much information was missed.
Repeating this kind of study in various, controlled, circumstances will help to cir­
cumvent this limitation. Moreover, there is usually an important degree of inaccuracy
when questions about the processes involved are answered retrospectively. We had
to discard a high percentage of incompletely answered questionnaires (11 out of 26).
It should also be remembered that the questionnaire is static in nature; in other
words, students are only able to answer the questions formulated by the question­
naire, whereas some other type of data-collection tool, such as interviews, focus
groups or think aloud protocols, might possibly lead to other important information
on the process followed.
Finally, we would like to stress that the results obtained in this study mark only
the beginning of a more in-depth research project on the problem-strategy relation­
ship. This will require an analysis of the internal consistency of the questionnaire
used, as well as the inclusion of new variables in order to enlarge the available corpus.
So it would be possible to analyse both the verbalisations of the subjects concerning
the process itself (through interviews and questionnaires), and the objective docu­
ments resulting from the consecutive interpreting task (the recording of the students’
interpreting performances and their interpreting notes). Similarly, with a view to
achieving a larger sample size, future studies could incorporate a larger number of
teaching centres throughout Spain, thereby increasing the sample and taking into
account certain variables which may influence the results, such as the teaching meth­
odology used at each institution and the academic and language background of the
subjects.
In summary, future studies in the field of the problem-strategy relationship in
consecutive interpreting will contribute to gain a better insight into how the processes
involved in interpreting are acquired and developed, with a view not only to enhanc­
ing the teaching of the discipline, but also to providing advanced professional inter­
preters with the means to continue to improve the quality of their work.

01.Meta 57.3.corr 2.indd 831 13-06-04 7:35 PM

 832 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank Maria Pearce, with whom we share many of the thoughts voiced in this
study. We would also like to thank Jacqueline Minett for her readings and reviews.

NOTES
1. The Effort and Attention Model (Gile 1995) stresses the need for maintaining a balance when using
mental capabilities in interpreting. It is based on the fact that interpreting mistakes derive from a
series of difficulties throughout the process: speeches which are delivered fast, density of informa­
tion, the restitution of proper nouns, a high density of technical terms, words that are confusing,
figures, enumerations, etc.
2. In Spain the Licenciatura degree is one of the major higher-education degrees previous to doctoral
studies. A Licenciatura typically requires from four to six academic years of University study. This
system is in the process of being progressively changed to the Grado (Bachelor) and Master system
in line with the Bologna Declaration on the European Higher Education Area.
3. The reception phase in consecutive interpreting includes those moments in the process when the
interpreter perceives the original speech, decodes the material, retains a portion of the information
in his/her working memory and notes down the linguistic and informative elements that he/she
considers relevant to the proper completion of the task. The production phase includes those
moments in the process when the interpreter calls on his/her long-term memory, reconstructs the
structure and the information of the original speech and recodes the message in the target language
(Gile 1995).

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 834 Meta, LVII, 3, 2012

APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Speech interpreted by the students. Was the downfall of the Rapa Nui Civiliza-
tion caused by a Biological Invasion?
In 1722 Captain Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch seafarer, reached Easter Island. He found an island
barren of trees and with a small, impoverished population, but there was clear evidence of a
great, and recent, civilisation. The most startling evidence was the architecture and of course,
the giant stone statues, or moai, which I’m sure you’ve all heard about. Ever since that first
European brought back the news to Holland, historians have racked their brains and argued
over the enigma of Easter Island, also known as “Rapa Nui” and “Isla de Pascua.”
From about AD 400 to 1550, Rapa Nui’s population increased from a small handful of
people to about 7‑9,000 inhabitants. Much of their culture, industry, building material, as well
as their food supply depended on the palm forests that covered the island. The palms were Jubaea
palms, endemic to the island and revered by the Polynesians, The Jubaea palms are now extinct.
From 1400 to 1600 the inhabitants industriously created the moai. Then abruptly, in the
century before the first contact with Europeans, Rapa Nui society collapsed as deforestation, soil
erosion, and a loss of biodiversity accompanied or even provoked bloody civil war. The islanders
toppled all of the Moai. By the time Roggeveen found them, there were only about 200 people
left on the island. The big question is, what triggered this disintegration?
Some scholars say it was a textbook example of population expanding until it overwhelms
resources. However, archaeologists have now started to question the “over-exploitation” inter­
pretation and point out that the civilization lasted for hundreds of years in reasonable ecological
equilibrium with the resources of the island. This equilibrium was maintained with the same
resource management techniques known elsewhere in Polynesia. So, if over-exploitation was not
responsible, what was?
The Polynesians who colonized Rapa Nui accidentally brought with them the Polynesian
rat. The Polynesian rat is a co-voyager, a vagrant, and is now found throughout the Pacific islands.
It has been suggested that the rat was largely responsible for the extinction of a parrot endemic
to Rapa Nui, this parrot fed on pollen and nectar. The parrot is believed to have been an impor­
tant pollinator of the Jubaea palms. The rats also probably destroyed palm seeds and thus would
have had a severe two-fold impact on forest regeneration. When the palms disappeared, the
people could no longer make canoes to get fish, and thus lost their main source of protein. The
cultural decline that followed may therefore have resulted more from disruption of both pollina­
tion and recruitment of tree species by invasive rats than from direct human over-exploitation
of forest resources.
How credible is this hypothesis? Rats are responsible for more island extinctions than any
other predators. They feed on eggs and chicks of birds nesting on the ground and in trees. On
the Hawai’ian islands, rats caused abrupt waves of extinction that eliminated many native bird
species simultaneously. The introduction of herbivorous mammals on islands may also have
caused the rapid extinction of native plants.
We have heard that habitat destruction and fragmentation is the most important cause of
biodiversity loss in the world. Invasions by exotic species are the second most important cause.
And a huge proportion of those extinctions occur on islands, which are particularly vulnerable
and prone to invasions. 93% of recently extinct species of amphibians and reptiles, 89% of birds,
and 29% of mammals lived on islands.
In 1997, an international initiative to combat invasions by exotic species was put into place.
A programme called the Global Invasive Species Programme or GISP, was developed to find
ways of dealing with exotic invasive species. GISP is funded by the United Nations Environmen­
tal Programme and UNESCO, amongst others.
GISP will draw together the best management approaches for pest prevention and control
and make these readily accessible to all nations, as well as lay the groundwork for new tools in
science, information management, education, and policy. Unfortunately, its work is not without
powerful opponents. The World Trade Organisation is not in favour of one of GISP’s initiatives

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 problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting 835

– to establish a “white list” of organisms that have been found to be non-invasive and therefore
their movement should not be restricted.
All this may seem rather depressing and hopeless, but islands have some reasons for opti­
mism if the resources are provided. Immigration can be controlled, and invaders can be detected.
Eradication is difficult, but it has succeeded on some island invaders, and the spread of invaders
can sometimes be halted. Resources could also be directed to rescue operations for endangered
species, turning some islands into Noah’s Arks of endemic endangered species.

Appendix 2: Initial questionnaire

- Affix ID label here:
- DATE:
- Age:
- Gender:
- What is your A language?
- Is English your A, B or C language?
- Do you have any training other than in translation and interpreting? Please give details:
- Do you have working experience in the field of translation and interpreting or any other?

Appendix 3: Post-interpreting questionnaire

- Affix ID label here:
- DATE:
- Before listening to the speech, and based on the introduction by the instructor, what came
into your mind about this topic?
- Were they useful while rendering your speech?
- Did you have any previous knowledge on any of the mentioned subjects?
- Did you encounter any difficulties understanding when listening to the speech?
Please specify:
Description What do you think What did you Do you think you found a Other
this was due to? do about it? satisfactory solution? comments

- What difficulties did you find when it came to taking notes?

What do you think What did you How was this reflected in Other
Description
this was due to? do about it? your notes? comments

- What difficulties did you find when it came to reproducing your notes?
What do you think What did you Do you think you found a Other
Description
this was due to? do about it? satisfactory solution? comments

- Did you encounter any difficulties when it came to expressing ideas in the target language?
What do you think What did you Do you think you found a Other
Description
this was due to? do about it? satisfactory solution? comments

- Did you have problems concentrating?

- Did your memory let you down at any point?
- Comment briefly on your presentation. Do you think it was adequate?

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