Until now, Ghelly Chernov s work on the theory of simultaneous interpretation (SI) was mostly accessible only to a Russian-speaking readership. Finally, Chernov s major work, originally published in Russia in 1987 under the title Osnovy Sinchronnogo Perevoda (Introduction to Simultaneous Interpretation) and widely considered a classic in interpretation theory, is now available in English as well. Adopting a psycholinguistic approach to professional SI, Chernov defines it as a task performed in a single pass concurrently with the source language speech, under extreme perception and production conditions in which only a limited amount of information can be processed at any given time. Being both a researcher and a practitioner, Chernov drew from a rich interpreting corpus to create the first comprehensive model of simultaneous interpretation. His model draws on semantics, pragmatics, Russian Activity Theory and the SI communicative situation to formulate the principles of objective and subjective redundancy and identify probability prediction as the enabling mechanism of SI. Edited with notes and a critical foreword by two active SI researchers, Robin Setton and Adelina Hild, this book will be useful to practicing interpreters in providing a theoretical basis for appreciating the syntactic and other devices that can be used by both students and experienced interpreters in fine-tuning their performance in the booth.

Annotation Until now, Ghelly Chernov s work on the theory of simultaneous interpretation (SI) was mostly accessible only to a Russian-speaking readership. Finally, Chernov s major work, originally published in Russia in 1987 under the title Osnovy Sinchronnogo Perevoda (Introduction to Simultaneous Interpretation) and widely considered a classic in interpretation theory, is now available in English as well. Adopting a psycholinguistic approach to professional SI, Chernov defines it as a task performed in a single pass concurrently with the source language speech, under extreme perception and production conditions in which only a limited amount of information can be processed at any given time. Being both a researcher and a practitioner, Chernov drew from a rich interpreting corpus to create the first comprehensive model of simultaneous interpretation. His model draws on semantics, pragmatics, Russian Activity Theory and the SI communicative situation to formulate the principles of objective and subjective redundancy and identify probability prediction as the enabling mechanism of SI. Edited with notes and a critical foreword by two active SI researchers, Robin Setton and Adelina Hild, this book will be useful to practicing interpreters in providing a theoretical basis for appreciating the syntactic and other devices that can be used by both students and experienced interpreters in fine-tuning their performance in the booth.

Simultaneous interpretation is among the most complex of human cognitive/linguistic activities. This study, which will interest practitioners and trainers as well as linguists, draws more on linguistics-based theories of cognition in communication (cognitive semantics and pragmatics) than on the traditional information-processing approaches of cognitive psychology, and shows SI to be a valuable source of data on language and cognition.Starting from semantic representations of input and output in samples of professional SI from Chinese and German into English, the analysis explains the classic phenomena – anticipation, restoration of the implicit-explicit balance, and communicative re-packaging (‘re-ostension’) of the discourse – in terms of an intermediate cognitive model in working memory, allowing a more unitary view of resource management in the SI task. Relevance-theoretic analysis of the input discourse reveals rich pragmatic information guiding the construction of the appropriate contexts and the speaker’s underlying intentionalities. The course of meaning assembly is reconstructed in annotated synchronised transcripts.

Interpreting has been a neglected area since the late 1970s. Sylvie Lambert and Barbara Moser-Mercer have attempted to give a new impulse to academic research in print with this collection of 30 articles discussing various aspects of interpreting grouped in 3 sections: I. Pedagogical issues, II. Simultaneous interpretation, III. Neuropsychological research.Being a professional interpreter may not be sufficient to explain what interpretation is all about and how it should be practised and taught. The purpose of this collection of reports on non-arbitrary, empirical research of simultaneous and sign-language interpretation, designed to bridge the gap between vocational and scientific aspects of an interpreter’s skills, is to show that the study of conference interpretation, by way of scientific experimental methods, as tedious and speculative as they may often appear, is bound to contribute significantly to general knowledge in this field and have tangible and practical repercussions. The contributors are specialists from all over the world. Introduction by Barbara Moser-Mercer.

This text aims to update the state-of-the-art in research on simultaneous interpretation with contributions from modern linguistic and cognitive theory, and to demonstrate the value of T&I data to the study of language and the mind.

Language Interpretation and Communication: a NATO Symposium, was a multi-disciplinary meeting held from September 26 to October 1st 1977 at the Giorgio Cini Foundation on the Isle of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. The Symposium explored both applied and theoretical aspects of conference interpre tation and of sign language interpretation. The Symposium was sponsored by the Scientific Affairs Division of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, and we would like to express our thanks to Dr. B. A. Bayrakter of the Scientific Affairs Division and to the Members of the NATO Special Programme Panel on Human Factors for their support. We would also like to thank Dr. F. Benvenutti and his colleagues at the University of Venice for their generous provision of facilities and hospitality for the opening session of the Symposium. Our thanks are also due to Dr. Ernesto Talentino and his colleagues at the Giorgio Cini Foundation who provided such excellent conference facilities and thus helped ensure the success of the meeting. Finally, we would like to express our appreciation and thanks to Becky Graham and Carol Blair for their invaluable contributions to the organization of the Symposium, to Ida Stevenson who prepared these proceedings for publication, and to Donald I. MacLeod who assisted with the final preparation of the manuscript.