General Overview on Interpreting

GENERAL OVERVIEW ON INTERPRETING
IDA AYU MADE PUSPANI
1. INTRODUCTION
Translation in general covers written and oral rendering; written translation covers wide range of fields: sacred text (Bible & Vedas), scientific text, legal, economic, medical and literary.
On the other hand, interpreting deals with oral translation in which the rendering of the message is conducted immediately after the utterances delivered by the speaker, in special communication situation, to bridge participants` gap in language between the addressor and the addressee and the rendering is delivered by the help of an interpreter as a mediator. According to Pochhacker (2004), interpreting is a form translation in which a first and the final rendition in another language is produced on the basis of one time presentation of an utterance in a source language.
In addition Setton (1999), notes that interpreting is a process by which a spoken language or utterance takes place in one language which is intended or presumed to convey the same meaning as previously existing utterance in another language.
Interpreting has been conducted to mediate participants of communication of whom having different language background as well they do not speak the language acquire by each of them, so an interpreter is needed to mediate the gaps of the communication between those two participants. Interpreting involver three ways communication speaker- interpreter (function as hearer and speaker) – hearer


2. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING
Both written translation and interpreting are belong to the field of translation studies but the focus of the attention is different one another. Written translation covers the field on the written text ranging from scientific documents, legal, economic, sacred text, literary text and manuals. Written translation is not delivered directly but in certain time according to the need of the client and can use the aids of dictionaries, team work and prove reading as well as the help of expert in which type of text is going to be translated. In terms of time duration written translation may acquire more time before it is considered as final work.
Interpreting (oral translation) focuses on the time of the rendering immediately after the delivery of the utterances from the speaker, the interpreters renders the message of the speaker to the hearer. Interpreting as an oral translation is delivered in communication situation, where the needs of attention is focused on the message of the utterance of the SL and the transfer of the message to the TL
3. MODES OF INTERPRETING
Interpreting has different mode to the written translation, this type of translation is conducted almost at the same time the message of the SL delivered. The stretch of time given to the interpreter/translator is very short, so the interpreter should bare in mind the topic of the subject that is going to be interpreted, who are involved in the communication and the context of situation where the communication takes place. There are three types of interpreting: simultaneous, consecutive, and liaison ( Hatim and Ian Mason, 1996).
In simultaneous interpreting, the transfer of the message of the SL to the TL is
conducted at more or less at the same time. And in consecutive interpreting the focus of the transfer comes after the SL message has been delivered, and it tends to concentrate on the information relevant to the text structure and context. While liaison interpreting, the focus of the interpreter is maintaining the continuity of exchange of the message of the participants in the communication.
According to Pochhaher (2004) interpreting viewed from the modes of rendering there are two modes: they are consecutive and simultaneous interpreting, they are differentiated based on the pace of time of the rendering. Simultaneous interpreting the
rendering is conducted almost at the same time as the flow of the utterance from the
speaker to the interpreter and the interpreter at the same pace of time renders the message of the utterance of the speaker to the hearer. Mostly simultaneous interpreting is delivered in international conference where the interpreter stays behind in the booth while she/he renders the message of the SL to the TL. Conversely, in consecutive interpreting; the utterance of the speaker may be uttered in certain pace of time when the speaker makes a pause then the interpreter starts to interpret the message of the source language to the target language, this type of mode is conducted based on the needs of the user (client). The differences between simultaneous and consecutive interpretation is on the amount of time elapses between the delivery of the source utterance and the delivery of the interpretation.
Rendering in consecutive interpreting can be rendered in certain chunk of utterances, approximately in a few minutes of utterances or shortly after the speaker has
uttered few sentences, this depends on the needs where the communication takes place. According to Santiago (2005) in the mode of consecutive interpreting the interpretation of the complete message is delivered after the speaker has stopped producing the source utterances. At the time of the interpretation is rendered and the interpreter is the only person in the communication environment who is producing a message.

3 .INTERPRETING PROCESS
In other to be able to interpret a text (presented orally) the interpreter must be able to receive and understand the incoming message then express its meaning in the target language . To accomplish this task, the interpreter must go through the overlapping series of cognitive processing activities:
- attending the message
- concentrating on the task at hand
- remembering the message
- comprehending the meaning of the message
- analyzing the meaning for the message
- visualizing the message non verbally ,
- and finally reformulating the message in the target language.
Seleskovitch (1978) compresses these task into noting that “the immediate and deliberate discarding of the wording and retention of the mental representation of the message;” and interpreters often refer to this as ”dropping form”. By discarding the form
(words, structure etc.) of the source text the interpreter is free to concentrate on extracting
and analyzing the meaning of the text, and conceiving the strategies for formulating the
message into the target language. She also points out there is a practical reason for interpreter to discard the form of the source text , as there is only so much that a person can hold in their Short-Term Memory. When the interpreter receives the source text the information passes initially through his/her STM (Short Term Memory). If the interpreter does not do anything with this information it will soon disappear.
Smith (1985) notes that “STM has a very duration. We can remember six or seven items only as long as we give all our attention to them. .If an interpreter attempts to retain the form of a source utterance his/her STM will be quickly filled with individual lexical items, which may not even compose a full sentence. As the limitation of the STM that interpreter is required to drop form and concentrate on meaning. Both Smith and Seleskovitch propose that meaningful segment of a great size can be placed into a long term memory (LTM) and retrieved after. Of course a chunk of information must be understood in other to be meaningful.

4. SETTINGS AND CONSTELLATIONS OF INTERPRETING
The setting or the social context of interactions in which the interpretation carried out viewed as the historical phenomenon where members of different linguistics and cultural communities entered into contact for some particular purpose. Apart from such contact between social entities in various inter-social settings, mediated communication is also conceivable within hetero-lingual societies, in which case we can speak of in intra-social settings.
Intra social setting, the first mediated contact between communities speaking different languages will have served the purpose of trading and exchanging goods, of doing business, which would give business interpreting as a `primeval` type of interpreting. Hoof in Pochhaher (2004) notes that business interpreting as the form carried out commercial negotiation as a liaison interpreting.
Inter-social interpreting covers broader areas of setting such as in court, legal interpreting, health -care interpreting , media interpreting and other related fields.
From the description above can be drawn some views on the contact and setting of the interpreting carried out
Isolated contact
EXPEDITION
Exploration
Warfare
conquest
Missionary work

Institutionalized contact

TRANSACTION
Trade and business
Military
Diplomacy

ADMINISTRATION
Colonial administration
Law and justice
Religious service
Public service

Constellation of Interpreting derived from the situational interaction, the model prototypical as noted by Anderson (2002)

A three party interaction with bilingual interpreter assuming the pivotal mediating role between two monolingual client, this is often call bilateral/ dialog interpreting; if it is conducted in business it often called as liaison interpreting.
In multilateral communication and institution where a conference is held represented by many delegates , the mediator is needed to delivered the message as some of the members do not speak the language of the person who delivered the speech in the conference this constellation is called conference interpreting . The needs of interpreter in this kind of communication might be more than one depending on the need of mediation in the communication situation.
While community interpreting covers a wide range of interpreting ranging from: health care interpreting , legal interpreting( court, and other legal proceedings), as mostly conducted as social service interpreting.
5. MEMORY TRAINING IN INTERPRETING
The professional interpreters need training and tests of their quality in conducting the interpretation, especially those who are employed by public institution. In the US, special certification should be made whether an interpreter meets a certain minimum standard for example federal certification programs for Spanish, Haitian Creole and Navajo for the District Court Interpreters, as it is stated in The Court Interpreters Act of 1978.
In order to be professional, interpreter needs training; this cover a wide range of knowledge according to the field of the interpreter going to be specialized in such as: conference interpreter, media or court interpreters in whichever languages they are concerning .
This training basically should introduced memory training for the beginner in attending the message of the SL before it will be transfer to the TL ( Zhong, 2003).The purpose of memory training (STM) in interpreting is to achieve a better understanding of the source language , which will lead to adequate interpreting – memory in consecutive interpreting consists of nothing more than understanding which is conveyed by the words. Understanding is the first step in successful interpreting; therefore memory training is to be provided in the early stage of interpreter training.
Memory functions differently in consecutive and simultaneous interpreting because the duration of memory is longer in CI than in SI. There are different methods of training STM for SI and CI respectively. Interpreting starts with the encoding of


information from the original speaker. According to Gile`s effort model, interpreting is STM-centered activity; the process of interpreting could be re-postulated into:
Encoding of information the SL +storing information + Retrieval of information + Decoding information in to the TL

In consecutive interpreting, there is probably up to 15 minutes (depending on the speaker`s segment) for the interpreter to encode and then store the information and the interpreter stars to retrieve information and decode it into the TL. While in SI, encoding and decoding of information happen almost at the same time. The duration for storing the information is very limited. Therefore, in the first step of interpreting, encoding (understanding) information uttered in the SL is the key to memory training.
There are three main possibilities in storing information in STM: (1) Acoustic coding, (2) visual coding and (3) semantic coding. Visual coding may be used by interpreters in conference situations with multimedia. Notes in interpreting are to assist in such visual coding of information. But in most interpreting contexts, interpreter will depend on acoustic and semantic. Therefore, exercises should be designed for this purpose. The following methods are recommended:
Retelling in the SL: the instructor either reads or plays recording of a text of about 200 words for the trainees to retell in the same language. The trainees should not be allowed to take any notes. In the first instance, trainees should be encouraged to retell the text in the same words of the original to the largest possible extent.
The following tactics should be used by trainees after certain time of retelling:
categorizing: grouping items of the same properties; generalization :drawing conclusion
from particular examples or message from provided text: comparison: noticing the differences and similarities between different things , facts and events: description describing a scene, a shape, or a size of an object, etc.
Trainees are encouraged to describe, summarize and abstract the original to a large in their own words. Shadowing exercise: which is defined as “a paced, auditory tracking task which involves the immediate vocalization of auditory presented stimuli, i.e., word-for word repetition in the same language , of a message presented through a headphone”(Lambert,1899). This kind of exercise is recommended for training of simultaneous interpreting, especially in splitting of attention skills and the STM in SI.
Another, effective memory training is mnemonic to memory in which the basic principle is to use as many of the best functions of the human brain as possible to encode information. As human brain has evolved to encode and interpret complex stimuli-images, colour, structure, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, spatial awareness, emotion, and language- using them to make sophisticated interpretations of the environment

6. CONCLUSION
Interpreting is an oral form of translation in which a spoken language or utterance take place in one language that is presumed to convey the same as previously existing utterance in another language. It focuses on the time duration of the rendition of the SL into the TL. Interpreting is conducted in three- party communication by the present of an interpreter to bridge the gaps of communication between the addressor and the addressee and the interpreter functions as the mediator in the communication situation.
As both the speaker and the hearer belong to different language and cultural background , and in condition that they need the mediator to bridge their communication as the speaker doesn`t have the knowledge of the hearer and vice-versa .

REFERENCES
Hatim, Basil and Ian Mason.1996.Discourse and The Translator .London: Longman

Santiago, Roberto.2005”Consecutive Interpreting: a Brief Review.
Http://home. Interlink.net/-terperto/id.html

Seleskovich, Danica and Lederer, Marianne.1978.Interpreter Pour Tradiure. Paris:
Didier Erudition.

Setton, Robin.1999.Simultaneous Interpreting: A Cognitive Pragmatic
Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamin

Smith, AH.1985. Aspect of Translation Studies in Communication 2.London: Secher and
Warburg

Pochhaker, Franz.2004.Introducing Interpreting Studies. Routledge: New York

Zhong,Weihe. 2003..”Memory Traning in Interpreting. In Translation Journal and the
Author 2003. URl:http://accurapid.com/journal/25interpret htm