SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETING

Simultaneous interpreting

is a type of interpreting in which the speaker makes a speech and the

interpreter reformulates the speech into a language his audience
understands at the same time.
 Whispered interpreting or chuchotage

is a form of simultaneous interpreting which involves whispering of the

translation to the client by the interpreter who is sitting or standing very
nearby.
 How did simultaneous interpreting start?

In the 20th century we saw the introduction of the profession known as

Consecutive Interpretation, with its initial usage taking place at the
conclusion of the First World War with the signing of the Treaty of
Versailles. Prior to that time, the language of diplomacy had been French,
but after the war the importance of English was rapidly growing. Because of
this it became necessary in these meetings for there to be translations
between French and English. A team of interpreters was created in the period
between World War I and World War II and these interpreters worked in the
English-French language pair at the United Nations.
 Equipment required for simultaneous interpreting

Special equipment is required to complete the simultaneous interpretation

process, and this includes soundproof booths, earpieces and microphones.
The audience hears the target language through a system of headphones and
receivers, which, with today’s modern technology, has become completely
wireless.
 Where is simultaneous interpreting used?

Simultaneous interpreting is used for large meetings, conferences, seminars,

multilingual events and any other type of event that attracts a large audience.
A translator has to cope not only with the special nature of different languages like
terminology, compound words, idioms, dialect terms, neologisms, abbreviations or
proper names, but also with stylistic differences between two languages.
But language is not the only challenge that simultaneous interpreters face. There
are also cultural challenges, social challenges, affective challenges having to do
with their role as message mediators between groups with different cultures and
sometimes different interests, as witnesses of events and actions about which they
may feel strongly, as persons whose social and cultural status and identity can be
perceived differently by the principals in the interpreter-mediated communication
and by themselves.
The main cognitive challenge of simultaneous interpreting is precisely the high
pressure on the interpreter’s mental resources which stems from the fact that they
must understand a speech and produce another at the same time at a rate imposed
by the speaker.
The practical consequence of this challenge is the presence of errors, omissions
and infelicities in the simultaneous interpreters’ production. In many cases,
interpreters are able to translate a speaker’s statement faithfully and in idiomatic,
sometimes elegant language, but in other cases, which are far from rare, errors,
omissions and infelicities can be numerous.
In a study of authentic online simultaneous interpretations of President
Obama’s inaugural speech in January 2009 by 10 professional interpreters
working into French, German or Japanese, Gile found 5 to 73 blatant errors
and omissions over the first 5 minutes of the speech. In other words,
interpreters made on average from 1 to more than 14 blatant meaning errors
or omissions every minute when translating a difficult speech.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cXNTArhA0Jg
 Cognitive problem triggers

According to the Tightrope Hypothesis, three types of phenomena cause

the overwhelming majority of errors and omissions among professional
simultaneous interpreters.
The first is mismanagement of attentional resources.
The second is an increase of processing capacity requirements.
The third is short information-carrying signals with little redundancy
such as short names, numbers, short lexical units in text with little
grammatical or semantic redundancy.
 Triggers most often discussed among interpreters belong to the second
category and include in particular the following:

a. Rapid delivery of speeches, dense speeches and speech segments as well as

written speeches read out aloud. In all these cases, interpreters are forced to
analyze much incoming information-containing signal over very short periods,
which puts the Reception Effort under a heavy workload. Moreover, since they
cannot afford to lag behind, they also have to formulate their target speech rapidly,
which imposes a heavy load on the Production Effort.
b. Embedded structures and multi-word names (names of organizations,
conventions etc.). In both of these cases, interpreters have to store much
information in memory as the target speech unfolds before they can reformulate it.
In multi-word names, the problem arises mainly due to the need to reorganize the
components in the target language.
 Triggers most often discussed among interpreters belong to the second
category and include in particular the following:

c. Noise and low quality signal from the speaker. This includes poor sound
produced by the electronic equipment, background noise and also strong accents,
poor language quality such as incorrect lexical usage and grammar, poor logic and
ambiguous formulation of ideas.
d. Working from one language into another which is syntactically and/or lexically
very different. The lexical difficulty applies mostly to interpreting from languages
which have a much smaller lexicon, and finding a way to express in the target
language a concept can require considerable effort and time – at cognitive scale. As
to syntactic differences, they have the same effect as multi-word names, in that
they require waiting and storing much information in short-term memory before
reformulation of the message in the target language.
 Failure sequences. Example 1: Direct Reception Effort failure

A common failure sequence starts with a source speech segment with high
information density (e.g. a number, a complex name) or noisy signal
(background noise, strong accent etc) the analysis of which requires much
processing capacity at a time where little is available, for instance when the
interpreter is busy reformulating a previous segment. This results in failure to
‘hear’ the segment – actually, not to hear but to understand the sounds or
signs – and in omission of the relevant information in the target speech, or in
an error.
 Failure sequences. Example 2: Indirect effect of increased processing
requirements in the Reception Effort

Another typical sequence starts with a similar, informationally dense or

noisy source speech segment which the interpreter identifies as requiring
more processing capacity. She/he may decide to focus on the perception and
analysis of this segment, which takes away attentional resources from
production of the target speech. This may result in a deterioration of the
linguistic quality of the target speech, or in slower output, leading to
increased lag behind the speaker. This lag may overload the interpreter’s
short-term memory, leading to the interpreter’s inability to remember
previously analyzed information which has yet to be reformulated in the
target language.
Failure sequences. Example 3: Effect of forced waiting

An excessive lag behind the speaker can also occur when the source speech
is neither informationally dense nor noisy, but syntactic differences between
the source language and target language force the interpreter to wait a while
before reformulating the content of the beginning of sentence, which may
result in overload in the Memory Effort.
 Failure sequences. Example 4: Indirect effect of intensified Production
Effort

Interpreters may understand a concept or idea expressed in the source speech

but find it difficult to reformulate it in the target language. The extra time
and effort mobilize processing capacity away from the Reception and
Memory Efforts, which may result in errors and omissions. Sometimes, the
production difficulty stems from the interpreter’s wish to produce an elegant
speech, which requires less available lexical units, or a complex sentence as
opposed to a simple one. In such cases, the problem lies not with features of
the source speech or its delivery by the speaker, but with the interpreter’s
strategic and tactical choices.
 Failure sequences. Example 5: Effect of excessive focus on text in
simultaneous with text

Having in the booth the text of an address which a speaker reads has both
advantages and drawbacks. The attractiveness of the text to interpreters
stems from the fact that it makes the linguistic content of the speech easily
available to them in print with virtually no effort required for the linguistic
identification of the signals and more freedom to manage the Reading part
of the Reception Effort while the Listening part is entirely paced by the
speaker. As a result, they are tempted to sight-translate the text and use the
speech sounds for the sole purpose of checking the speaker’s progression in
the text.
 Failure sequences. Example 5: Effect of excessive focus on text in
simultaneous with text

This entails two risks: one is that the speaker’s deviations from the text –
skipped parts and added comments – can be missed because not enough
attention is devoted to the Listening component; the other is that difficulties
in sight translation slow down the interpreter while the speaker is speeding
ahead.
 The skills and qualities needed to be a ​simultaneous interpreter

Requirements from simultaneous interpreters are more stringent than being

“perfectly fluent”, being “able to express easily even complicated ideas” and
being “able to understand a language perfectly.”
 The skills and qualities needed to be a ​simultaneous interpreter

As a simultaneous interpreter, it is a must to have impeccable knowledge in

one or more languages in addition to your native language. Just being
bilingual is not enough, your understanding of that language should be
comparable to a native speaker.
Learning is an ongoing objective for a simultaneous interpreter, so once
interpreter training has been completed it is important to constantly be
feeding your mind new information, whether it be current events or
information on topics that you know little to nothing about.
 The skills and qualities needed to be a ​simultaneous interpreter

The ability to deal with stress well is a quality that is important to have as
a simultaneous interpreter. At times the job can be very stressful, fast paced
and tiring and this can take a toll on some interpreters. When you are
interpreting everyone is counting on you in order to be able to communicate
with one another. That is an immense amount of responsibility to have on
your shoulders, especially if it is regarding a negatively charged political
matter or a high profile court case. You have to keep up in pace and
constantly be accurate throughout your entire interpretation. Your focus has
to be 100% during simultaneous interpretation, not allowing yourself even
seconds to think about something else and that is very demanding and
stressful.
 The skills and qualities needed to be a ​simultaneous interpreter

Keeping control of your emotions can be a difficult task in itself, but you
have to remember to remain the “silent voice” on stage. You are an actor or
actress and it is your job to play the part of the person that you are
interpreting for. You not only have to interpret linguistically for them but
you have to display their emotions and true meaning of what they are saying
to the audience.
 Strategies in simultaneous interpreting

The most fundamental strategies used by interpreters to cope with the

cognitive difficulties of simultaneous revolve around preparation of their
interpreting assignments. This is done mainly through documents, including
both conference documents such as the agenda or program of the meeting,
lists of participants, calls for papers, documents describing the
conference, texts to be read and abstracts, powerpoint presentations,
and external documents such as newspaper articles, books, scientific
journals and, increasingly, internet sources of various kinds.
 Strategies in simultaneous interpreting

Interpreters also prepare glossaries which they can use in the booth to help
further speed up the comprehension and production processes. A specific
preparation strategy for simultaneous interpreting with text consists in
marking the texts in advance for more rapid reading and translation. In
particular, important concepts and names can be highlighted with a
marker or underlined, idiomatic, expressions and names can be written
between the lines or in the margins, complex names which require
reordering of their components can be marked with numbers above
each component to indicate the order in which they will be translated
into the target language, sentences can be segmented with slashes to
show visually the boundaries of their syntactic or logical constituents.
Preparation strategies give interpreters access to knowledge, including
terminology аnd relevant names and acronyms for people, places,
organizations, products etc. which make it possible for them to understand
and reformulate very specific and very specialized information to which they
are normally outsiders.
 Individual tactics

When interpreting from one language into another language with very
different syntax, interpreters often start their target language reformulation
as soon as they have enough information from the unfolding source speech
with a short autonomous sentence or with a ‘neutral’ beginning rather than
commit themselves in one specific direction. This is intended to avoid
working memory saturation associated with the syntactic difference-
induced lag. Another preventive tactic consists in reformulating the last
element in an enumeration of names first: this is assumed to save on
processing capacity, as working memory can dispose of this last name
before it is processed in more depth along with the other components of the
list.
 Individual tactics

When interpreters fail to remember a large number such as 3 251 127, they
may resort to an approximation such as “over three million”; when they do
not know the exact target language equivalent for a specific term, they may
resort to a hypernym, for instance “device” to replace the name of a specific
machine; similarly, when the speaker cites the name of an organization or a
convention, interpreters who are not familiar with the name or have missed
it may choose to say “the group”, “our organization”, “the convention”.
 Individual tactics

When encountering a term interpreters do not know in the target language,

they may choose to explain the relevant concept with a few words. They
may also decide to reproduce the source language term in their target
language utterance. This may work well in some cases, for instance when
translating from English into many languages in fields like medicine,
information technology or finances, because many users read reference
documents in English and are familiar with English terms, but this tactic is
direction-sensitive.
 The quality of simultaneous interpreting

Cognitive pressure and its implications as analyzed so far show that on the
whole, the product of simultaneous interpreting cannot be expected to be as
fully faithful to the original and of uniformly high linguistic quality as desired
from written translation. How much information is actually lost through
interpretation remains to be investigated and is probably highly variable across
speakers, interpreters and situations. Another vulnerable quality component in
simultaneous is intonation, which often becomes unnatural. Monotonous
intonation in simultaneous has a negative impact on the listeners’ perception of
many other quality components, including fidelity and professionalism.
 Learning interpreting

The main objectives of training are fourfold:

- teach students the basic techniques of interpreting, generally both
consecutive and simultaneous;
- improve their proficiency in the use of these techniques up to
professional level;
- teach them professional norms;
- test their level of proficiency at the end of training to provide the market
with qualified professionals.
In many programs, consecutive is taught before simultaneous and teaching
consecutive before simultaneous has a number of advantages. One of them is
that it is good training for careful listening. If they have not listened
carefully to the speaker, despite the notes they have taken, they are generally
incapable of reconstructing the speech. This also makes consecutive a good
diagnostics tool for language comprehension, language production and
analytical skills: if an interpreter’s output in simultaneous interpreting is
weak, the problem may lie in poor comprehension of the source language, in
poor analytical skills, in poor language production skills in the source
language and/or in poor management of attentional resources.
Besides consecutive as general preparation, specific exercises are sometimes
given to students for a ‘softer’ introduction to the pressure of simultaneous,
and in particular to the sharing of attention. These include shadowing
exercises, paraphrasing exercises, counting backwards in the booth
while listening to a speech.
 Conclusion

Simultaneous interpreting is one of the most common kinds of interpreting,

but also the most difficult one. A simultaneous interpreter is someone who
interprets for someone in another language while the speaker speaks without
interruption. It is really a very complex process to interpret simultaneously.
This requires a kind of mental miracle, and that is why it is an unusually
demanding and complex activity to carry out, one that requires an unusual
level of concentration, which tires out the interpreter rather soon – which
affects his or her concentration, which, in turn, affects his or her
performance.
Thank you for your attention!