Introduction

This volume intends to fill a gap in the field of Interpreting Studies (IS) for numerous reasons. Firstly, it addresses the C to A language direction, which has received limited research attention to date. Secondly, it is a longitudinal study focusing on the development of interpreting competence, and there is only a limited number of longitudinal studies in the field of IS. Thirdly, it aims to provide an integrated approach to the analysis of the target language production of trainee interpreters, through examining explicitation shifts (translation studies), shifts of grammatical cohesion (text linguistics), and disfluencies (psycholinguistics) in the target language output of interpreter trainees. These analyses are complemented with trainees’ retrospective evaluative comments and evaluation from the target audience and interpreter trainers. The research presented in this volume examines how the development of productive skills in C to A consecutive interpreting, as an independent variable, is mirrored in the changes of dependent variables in the consecutively interpreted target language texts of trainee interpreters, namely explicitation shifts, shifts of grammatical cohesion, and disfluencies.

My research is built on the models of competence development, the production aspects of consecutive interpreting, models related to cognitive load in interpreting, and models describing the dynamic nature of interpreting competence. I see these models as closely interconnected; as interpreting skills develop, the process of interpreting would become more automatic, requiring less cognitive effort.

My presuppositions were the following:

As trainees progress in their studies, in their consecutively interpreted target language output there will be fewer disfluencies, more interpreting-specific explicitation shifts, stronger cohesive ties, and will receive better evaluations from the target audience and interpreter trainers. In addition, the development of C to A consecutive interpreting competence will be mirrored in students’ self-reflective retrospective comments as well. Furthermore, their target language texts will be more accurate and they will use strategies characteristic of expert interpreters rather than novices.

This volume is structured in the following way. Chapter one lays the foundations of the current research by describing the different types of interpreting and providing an overview of the models of interpreting that are relevant for my investigations, namely the Interpretive Theory of the Paris School, Gile’s Effort Models, Seeber’s Model of Cognitive Load, Setton’s Cognitive-Pragmatic Model, and Gumul’s Model of Interpreting Constraints. Chapter two offers a critical analysis of competence models in interpreting, surveying both prescriptive and dynamic models of interpreting competence. Chapter three reviews models of the development of translation competence, together with their implications for the development of interpreting competence. In addition, a summary is provided of research into expertise in interpreting. Chapter four provides a description of interpreter training in Hungary, and at the University of Szeged. Chapter five details the methodological challenges of research in IS, and possible choices researchers are faced with, while chapter six summarizes the research gap and the research questions of the present study. In chapter seven the material, methods, and participants of the present study are described.

The results of empirical investigations are presented in chapters eight through fourteen. Chapter eight describes the results of the content analysis of the consecutively interpreted target language texts, followed by a description of problem triggers in the source language texts and the strategies used by interpreter trainees in dealing with them in chapter nine. Chapter ten focuses on disfluencies in the consecutively interpreted Hungarian target language output of students of interpreting, while chapter eleven deals with shifts of grammatical cohesion between the source language and the target language texts. Chapter twelve investigates explicitation operations in the target language texts, and in chapter thirteen an analysis of the students’ retrospective comments is provided. Chapter fourteen summarizes the evaluations of the students’ target language output by interpreter trainers and the target audience.

Chapter fifteen discusses and summarizes the results according to topic and outlines the individual development path of each interpreter trainee. Chapter sixteen presents the conclusions, suggestions for further research, and the implications for interpreter training.

The volume closes with a list of references and six appendixes.

Some of the chapters are partly built on research articles or volumes published earlier. These are marked at the beginning of each chapter in footnotes.