This is the author’s self-archived preprint version (before proof) of the accepted article

This is the author’s self-archived preprint version (before proof) of the accepted article.
To cite this article:
Li, Xiangdong. (2015). Putting interpreting strategies in their place:
Justifications for teaching strategies in interpreter training. Babel 61(2), 170-192. DOI: 10.1075/babel.61.2.02li
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/babel.61.2.02li
Putting interpreting strategies in their place:
Justifications for teaching strategies in interpreter training
Xiangdong Li
School of Translation Studies, Xi’an International Studies University, China


1. Introduction

Oléron and Nanpon (1963/2002: 49) might have been the first to use the term “strategy” in Interpreting Studies in the 1960s when they argued that “[…] the interpreter is part of a complex situation […] we can talk of strategies designed to try to control the situation and involving various compromises […] when time constraints become excessive.” Subsequently, more attention to interpreting strategies was inspired by interest in language acquisition strategies in the early 1970s (Pöchhacker and Shlesinger 2001: 96). Barik (1971) and Wilss (1978) were among the first few scholars to write about interpreting strategies. This line of research was continued by Stenzl (1983) and then reflected in the work of Snelling (1992), Kohn and Kalina (1996), Kalina (1998), Riccardi (1995, 2005), and Liontou (2012), to name a few.

Strategies make it easier for researchers to describe the process of interpreting, and they reveal the decisions made in a given situation to reach a communicative goal (Riccardi 2005: 753). An understanding of how interpreters employ certain strategies to solve problems is essential for researchers to know more about the relations between the original discourse, the interpreted discourse, possible problems in interpreting, the strategies applied, the interpreter, and the заcommunicative setting. That might be why interpreting strategies remain one of the interests of doctoral research projects; for example, Kalina (1998), Chang (2005), and Liontou (2012).
Interpreting strategies have been approached from different perspectives. Some researchers look at individual strategies, such as anticipation (Lim 2011; Liontou 2012), segmentation (Lee 2007), omission (Lee 2013a), or compression (Sunnari 1995). Some are concerned with the use of different strategies under the impact of different variables—for example, strategies coping with extreme speech conditions (Meuleman and Van Besien 2009), culture-loaded elements (Pöchhacker 2007), or language-specific difficulties (Riccardi 1995; An 2009). Others write about all possible strategies used by professionals or student interpreters in given interpreting scenarios (Kalina 1998; Donato 2003; Bartłomiejczyk 2006; Liontou 2011).
However, the inclusion of interpreting strategies in interpreter training is seldom touched upon in the current literature. As is argued by Kader and Seubert (2015), interpreting strategies should be an important component of interpreter training because the cognitive constraints imposed by the interpreting task require the use of strategies to solve or avoid problems in comprehension and production. The different working modes of consecutive interpreting (CI) and simultaneous interpreting (SI) pose mode-specific difficulties which need to be overcome by means of strategies. Additionally, the two working languages involved may be lexically, syntactically, sociologically, or culturally different. Under such circumstances, communicating the content of the source text to the target audience also requires the use of certain strategies. Moreover, repeated successful application of strategies leads to automation which means that the interpreter can spare more processing capacity to cope with the incoming message. Furthermore, differences in strategy use between professionals and novices should be the basis of interpreting teaching.
This paper aims to justify the integration of strategy training into interpreter education by synthesizing and presenting evidence from the current literature. It first defines strategies and their varieties, argues from various perspectives why it is important to include strategy training in interpreter training and then proposes the goals and methodology of strategy training, as well as some exercises to develop it.