Interpreting Studies
Interpreting studies is the branch of translation studies that investigates the oral and signed mediation of spoken or signed communication across languages in real time.
Definition
The study of interpreting—the immediate oral or signed rendering of utterances from one language into another—as a cognitive activity and a socially situated practice.
Scope
This area covers research on interpreting in its main modes and settings: conference interpreting in simultaneous and consecutive modes; community and public-service interpreting in legal, medical, and asylum contexts; the cognitive processes that make real-time interpreting possible; and sign-language interpreting between signed and spoken languages. It draws on cognitive psychology, discourse analysis, and sociology, and addresses interpreter roles, ethics, quality, and training.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How do interpreters process and render speech in real time?
- How do conference and community interpreting differ in their demands?
- What roles and ethical norms govern the interpreter?
- How is interpreting quality defined and assessed?
Key theories
- Effort models of interpreting
- Daniel Gile's account of simultaneous and consecutive interpreting as a balance of competing processing efforts—listening, memory, production, and coordination—that can be overloaded, explaining many interpreting errors.
- Interpreting as interaction
- Cecilia Wadensjö's dialogic model that treats community interpreting as a coordinated, three-party interaction in which the interpreter actively manages talk rather than acting as a neutral conduit.
History
Interpreting research began with the professionalization of conference interpreting after the Nuremberg trials and the founding of training schools, where Danica Seleskovitch developed the interpretive (theory of sense) approach. From the 1980s, cognitive models (Gile) and, from the 1990s, dialogic and sociological studies of community interpreting (Wadensjö) broadened the field, consolidated in Pöchhacker's textbooks.
Debates
- The interpreter's role: conduit or participant
- A central debate contrasts the traditional ideal of the interpreter as an invisible neutral conduit with interactionist findings that interpreters inevitably coordinate and shape the encounters they mediate.
Key figures
- Franz Pöchhacker
- Daniel Gile
- Danica Seleskovitch
- Cecilia Wadensjö
- Miriam Shlesinger
Related topics
Seminal works
- seleskovitch1978
- gile2009
- pochhacker2016
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between translation and interpreting?
- Translation works with written or recorded text and allows revision over time, whereas interpreting renders spoken or signed language immediately and in real time, under tight cognitive and temporal constraints.
- What are the main modes of interpreting?
- The principal modes are simultaneous interpreting, done while the speaker continues, and consecutive interpreting, done after the speaker pauses; community settings also use whispered and dialogue interpreting.