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

2. What are interpreting strategies?

2.1. Defining interpreting strategies

According to Liontou (2012: 13), the term “strategy” stems from ancient Greek, referring to the planning of military activity and the art of making use of available military forces. It is now widely used in various disciplines, including Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies. In both areas, the translator and foreign-language speaker use strategies while facing difficulties in their performance.

Based on previous descriptions (Kalina 1992: 253, 1998, 2000: 5; Gile 2009: 200; Bartłomiejczyk 2006: 152; Lee 2013b: 24), the defining characteristics of interpreting strategies are as follows:
a. Strategies are intentional and goal-oriented procedures for the solution or prevention of problems (Gile 2009: 200; Bartlomiejczyk 2006: 152). According to Gile (2009), the demanding working conditions of the interpreter (e.g. high time pressure, fast delivery, high information density, unfamiliar themes, etc.) may drive his or her available processing capacity to the point of saturation, thus causing problems. Additionally, the interpreter’s knowledge gap may also pose problems. To solve or prevent those problems, the interpreter may adopt strategies.
b. Strategies are used either consciously or unconsciously. However, after successful repeated use, they may become unconscious and automatic, as is found by Zanetti (1999: 90). It is then that they reduce the cognitive load because only if strategies are activated automatically will the interpreter overcome his or her capacity limitations and make the best use of available processing capacity (Kohn and Kalina 1996: 132; Riccardi 2005: 758; An 2009: 206). One categorization about conscious and unconscious strategies is the division between knowledge-based and skill-based strategies, the former being results of conscious analytical processes, and the latter being results of procedural knowledge, having been internalized and automatized (Riccardi 2005: 760/762). It is found that experts’ performance is more automated and unconscious than that of novices (Moser-Mercer 1997), pointing to the need of development of strategy use from conscious to automated.
c. Some interpreting strategies are present in monolingual communication (e.g. repair, inference, waiting, etc.) while others are specific to interpreting (e.g. anticipation, compression, addition, omission, changing order, etc.).
d. More than one strategy can be applied at a certain point in interpreting. For example, the use of chunking or segmentation is often associated with anticipation, waiting, and stalling, all for the similar purposes of coping with source-text complexity (Kohn and Kalina 1996: 130) or coping with the source speech structure (Pöchhacker 1994: 133).
e. The use of strategies may result in potential information loss, credibility loss, impact loss, or time and processing capacity cost (Gile 1997/2002: 172). For example, the use of omission and compression lead to loss of information. The frequent use of repair may harm the interpreter’s credibility. The use of waiting means loss of time and storing information in memory, and thus temporarily increases the cognitive load.
In the interpreting literature, strategy is termed as “tactic” (Gile 2009: 201) or “strategy” (most scholars’ choice). However, strategies and tactics have different connotations. According to Gambier (2010: 412), a strategy is a planned, explicit, goal-oriented procedure adopted to achieve a certain objective, while a tactic is a sequence of locally-implemented steps. Strategy is achieved through the use of tactics, and the achievement may require monitoring and modification to fit a given context. In the field of Translation Studies, a strategy is a general concept, referring to what happens before and after a translation event. By contrast, a tactic is more specific, referring to the specific techniques used to complete a translation act. In such sense, it seems that traditional approaches to translation, semantic translation vs. communicative translation (by Peter Newmark), documentary vs. instrumental translation (by Christiane Nord), and foreignization vs. domestication (by Lawrence Venuti), qualify as strategies. Other categories may include comprehension and production strategies (Chesterman 1997). On the other hand, specific acts to implement those strategies such as anticipation, inference, segmentation, restructuring, compression, omission, and repair and so on, are tactics. However, the literature does not differentiate between strategies and tactics. Apart from Gile (2009) who uses the term “coping tactics”, most scholars use “strategy” to cover both strategy and tactics. To conform to the literature, this article will use “strategy” instead of “tactics”.
2.2. Varieties and definitions

According to a thorough study of recognized experts whose names are quoted in the references, a differentiation of 27 strategies was set up. As presented in Table 1, anticipation, compression, omission, segmentation, addition, waiting, and approximation are among the most explored ones. Some apply to all interpreting modes (SI, CI, and sight translation/ST); for example, compression, omission, addition, waiting, etc. By contrast, others apply only to SI (and ST), such as anticipation, segmentation, and regulation of EVS (referring to as Ear-Voice-Span in SI and Eye-Voice-Span in ST). The use of some of the strategies, such as transfer, requires that the working languages involved should be etymologically or phonetically similar.