Anticipation in simultaneous interpretation

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 622.

Anticipation is an important technique of simultaneous interpreting, which becomes possible due to the natural redundancy of speech and its patterned character. Human mind records certain patterns of the past experience, which are “activated” each time a person appears to be in a similar situation. Having been once bitten by a dog, which had suddenly jumped out of the bushes in the park, a jogger would anticipate this unpleasant situation each time he jogs for pleasure and stay on alert running by the bushes with the pattern “beware of dogs!” in his mind. Similarly, knowing the tradition to send Valentine cards on 14 February, it is easy to anticipate that, if a young man says to his girlfriend: “There will be St. Valentine's Day soon and I will send you ...”, the most probable word to appear is a card. Naturally, one may send roses, a bottle of wine or a computer virus, but the probability of a card in the given “patterned context” is much higher. Therefore, anticipations in oral discourse may rank from the most probable to the least probable ones. The situation may, though, turn the other way round: a person anticipates certain things to happen or to be said, but instead gets something unexpected or totally different.

This frustrated expectancy effect (ефект обманеного очікування) is often used in films and in the popular TV shows to make participants' hearts sank: “Так ви вважаєте свою відповідь вірною? Ви гарно подумали? І все ж таки хочете відповісти саме так? Ну, тоді я маю вам сказати, що ваша відповідь... (pause)… є абсолютно вірною!”

The frustrated expectancy factor may be used by speakers in telling jokes and anecdotes, e.g. “Не плюй у криницю ... – *вилетить, не спіймаєш!”; “Чим далі в ліс ... – *тим товстіше партизани”. In such “sensitive” cases interpreters should not rely upon their anticipation and never translate a joke until the speaker finishes telling it.

To anticipate further information the interpreter must correctly understand the communicative intent of the speaker (i.e. the effect the speaker might want to achieve by saying something) and also have profound background knowledge and good understanding of the subject field of interpretation.

Anticipation in interpreting may be achieved at the levels of a syllable, word, phrase, syntagma (a group of words with a common meaning and melody of pronunciation) or a complete message, thus leading to possible anticipation at the level of the whole communicative situation. Most syllables and words are meaningless without the context. However, initial syllables may help to comprehend certain words especially names of people, geographical names, non-equivalent lexical units, brands, trademarks, etc used in a particular discourse (e.g. Tony Blair, Microsoft Windows, the Netherlands, Panasonic, Internet, OSCE, GDP, VAT, Дніпропетровськ, Закарпаття, ВВП, ПДВ, etc).

Still, interpreters should be very careful with their anticipation at the syllable level and never pronounce their TL option before the speaker pronounces the full word, phrase or even syntagma. Syllables may only “tune in” the interpreter's brain to a set of possible options (a set is limited by the probability of occurrence in the context) of the on-going part of the linguistic unit, thus making the final “hearing” and perception of what is being said by the speaker easier. But, obviously, hearing Tony does not guarantee that Blair will appear next (in may be any other name), as well as Microsoft may be followed not by Windows, but by Office or Encarta, Pana- not by -sonic but by -vision and Дніпро – not by -петровськ but by -дзержинськ, etc.

Most often anticipation starts at the level of a syntagma and develops when the speaker goes on with the message, becoming more reliable when set (patterned) expressions (pat phrases) or standard combinations or words (describing standard situations) are used, e.g.

The game is not worth the ... (candle);

Protection of human ... (rights);

Election of the Secretary ... (General) – in the discourse of the Council of Europe, NATO or the United Nations;

Terrorist attacks in Baghdad and situation in ... (Iraq);

Баба з воза – ... (коням легше);

Побудова правової ... (держави);

Функціонування у правовому ... (полі);

Відмова від використання сили у розв'язанні ... (міжнародних конфліктів);

Наприкінці січня наша делегація вирушає на сесію Парламентської Асамблеї Ради Європи у ... (Страсбург).

Graphically the process of anticipation in interpreting may be presented as follows: