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Date: 2015-10-07; view: 467.

OF BEHAVIOUR

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COMMON PATTERNS

These observations make it possible to assert that anticipation in interpreting is a kind of a cataphoric (forward) semantic link, which the interpreter establishes with the future context adjusting his mind and his thesaurus to the semantic patterns that are most likely to appear. It is rather a semantic pattern with a certain sense, but not exact words in this pattern, that is anticipated by the interpreter, because one and the same sense may be rendered in speech by various words (contextual synonyms). Let us consider the following example:

Ми перебуваємо зараз на історичному для України ®перевалі, який збігається з рубежем ® віків. І треба мати чітке уявлення про стан, завдання, можливості та перспективи розвитку ® держави і суспільства.

(from the Address of the former President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma to the people of Ukraine and to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, 1999)

The probability of appearance of Ukrainian words 1) на перевалі, перехресті, етапі, 2) віків, століть, тисячоліть, 3) держави і суспільства, нашої держави, нашої країни, України is equally high because all of them render similar senses for the interpreter and thus represent identical semantic patterns. Therefore, the “operational memory” or thesaurus of the interpreter becomes “tuned” to the following anticipated English options: 1) at the stage, point, span,juncture,2) centuries, millenniums,3) of the state and society, of our state, of our country, of Ukraine and whatever option is chosen in simultaneous interpreting under the extreme limit of time (3-7 seconds), the corresponding senses (змісти) will be rendered correctly and, thus, the interpreter's task will be successfully completed.

Anticipation, though, does not take place in a “contextual vacuum”. Anaphoric (backward) and exophoric (outward) semantic links are also of great importance. Thus, the message: “During this decade we have created thousands of new jobs. Today there is about a million people in employment in Wales” should be correctly rendered by the interpreter as “Зараз в Уельсі (або у Валлії) близько мільйону людей мають роботу (або працевлаштовані)”. Possible confusion of in employment with unemployment, which may occur due to the poor sound or bad pronunciation of the speaker (see Unit 11 where difficulties of rendering affirmative and negative constructions are described) should not be the case due to the following reasons: 1) in the previous utterance the speaker mentioned the fact of creation of the new jobs (anaphoric link) and 2) interpreter must know that there is about 2,9 million of people in Wales altogether, so having 1 million of them unemployed would not be realistic (exophoric link).

Similarly, anticipating of the correct number of population in a phrase Зараз населення України складає біля ® 49 мільйонів чоловік is possible because each professional simultaneous interpreter has to know the number of population of his country which is a part of the mandatory interpreter's background knowledge thesaurus.

Anticipation may, however, become difficult or impossible if the speaker uses a great number of numerals, proper names and items of specific national lexicon, which the interpreter cannot relate to any particular denotatum. In such situations interpreter may become "blind" for some time and “gaps” in interpreting are most likely to occur. One of the most typical cases is when Ukrainian or Russian speakers refer to their colleagues by their first names and patronymics (which says nothing to a foreign listener): Як щойно підкреслив Андрій Іванович… . If the interpreter doesn't know what particular family name Андрій Іванович is associated with, it is better to say: As the previous speaker/our colleague/the gentlemen in front of me has rightly remarked…”. However, to avoid potential problems, interpreters are highly recommended to keep lists of participants of the conference with their first names, patronymics and family names correctly printed, as well as printouts of various diagrams, tables, transparencies or slides for the Microsoft Power Pointâ presentations as reference materials in the simultaneous interpretation booth.

In cases when the speaker uses totally unknown to the interpreter names of people or geographical names, the only reasonable way out is to apply practical transcription, so that the “phonic substance” of the lexical unit is rendered more or less correctly, like in the following cases: Javier Solana – Хав'єр Солана; Chiswick– Чизік; Newnham – Ньюнем; the town of Seixal near Lisbon – місто Сейшалпоблизу Лісабону; Tottenham – Тоттнем,etc.