2012 The Importance of Being Not Too Ea PDF

In Barbara Ahrens / Michaela Albl-Mikasa / Claudia Sasse (Hg.) (2012).
Dolmetschqualität in Praxis,
Lehre und Forschung. Festschrift für Sylvia Kalina. Tübingen: Narr, 59-92
Michaela Albl-Mikasa
The importance of being not too earnest:

a process- and experience-based model of
interpreter competence
1 Introducing interpreter competence
The work presented in this chapter on interpreter competence draws on a

90,000 word corpus of in-depth interviews1 with 10 experienced professional
conference interpreters working in the German market. The interviewees, 4
female and 6 male interpreters2, were randomly recruited (the criteria being
their availability) from the 32 respondents that had filled out the question-
naire analyzed in my earlier paper on the implications of Global English on
the interpreting profession (Albl-Mikasa 2010). They all work as freelance
conference interpreters in the German-speaking market: 1 for the EU, 2 for
the EU and the private market, and the other 7 in the private market; 2 of
them have a working experience of 30 plus years, 2 of 20 plus, and the other
6 of about 15 years; 9 have German as their A language and English as B or
C, 1 has an English A and a German C (most of them also have other C lan-
guages); 8 of them are members of AIIC. Each interview lasted for 60 to 70
minutes and their word-for-word transcriptions (disregarding prosodic and
other para-linguistic features) range from 7,000 to 11,000 words each.
For a theoretical foundation, there are a number of highly interesting
models of translator and interpreter competence. However, for the analysis
and presentation of my interview data, they are not detailed enough (Pöch-
hacker’s “Kompetenzanforderungsmodell”3, 22007: 44-45, 2001: 22), rather
translation-specific (Göpferich’s “Translationskompetenzmodell”4, 2008:
155-157, 2009: 20-21), or clearly interpreter training-oriented (Kutz’s “Leip-
ziger Kompetenzmodell der Dolmetschdidaktik” (LKM), 2010: 12, 189-232).
An intriguingly detailed model is Kiraly’s translator competence model,
which distinguishes between “translation competence per se”, “personal
1 The work was sponsored by ZHAW-internal IFEF project funds.

2 See also the acknowledgements at the end of this chapter.
3 Pöchhacker distinguishes “linguistic and cultural competence, interpreting (transfer)
competence, interpreter (professional role) competence” (22007: 44-45, my translation).
4 Göpferich distinguishes “communicative competence in at least two languages, do-
main competence, tools and research competence, translation routine activation com-
petence, psychomotor competence” (Göpferich 2009: 20).
60 Michaela Albl-Mikasa
competence”, and “social competence” (cf. Kiraly 2006: 72-75).5 Interpreters,

however, do not look at what they know and are able to do in the terms used
in this model. They do not speak about “world knowledge”, “strategies”,
“norms and conventions”, or even “culture”, which label the subskills speci-
fied by Kiraly (cf. footnote 5). What they address are performance- and pro-
cess-related requirements and capabilities – things they do, can do, and need
to do. This ties in with what Kutz (2010) calls “Handlungstypen”, that is,
internalized prototypical knowledge schemata about (sub-)processes in in-
terpreting (cf. Kutz 2010: 198, 206).6 Yet, as mentioned above, Kutz’s very
comprehensive and detailed account of “Dolmetschkompetenz” is geared
towards interpreter training, that is, its aim is in line with Kalina’s pedagogic
claim
to break down the vague definition of skill to be acquired into subskills that are to
be mastered one after the other, in distinct, well-defined learning stages, so that a
fully developed teaching method for training future interpreters can be estab-
lished. (Kalina 2000: 12)
Unsurprisingly, this again does not match the practice-oriented views ex-
pressed by the professional interpreters in my survey, who do not consider
delimitable steps, stages, or categories (as geared towards training).
As it turns out, it is Kalina’s division of the overall interpreting process
into pre-, peri-, in-, and post-process dimensions (cf. Kalina 2006: 257) that is
a most fitting scaffold for structuring and modeling the process-oriented
skills specified by my informant interpreters. The approach taken here is,
therefore, to look at interpreter competence through the eye of the experi-
enced conference interpreter, and thus, to flesh out abstract notions of
(sub)competence7 with concrete, experience-based, and performance-geared
instantiations of interpreting skills reported by the professional. Second, the
aim is to provide a framework for these professed skills, on the basis of, and
by extension of, Kalina’s model and by referring back to various elements
and concepts from the other models mentioned above.
The resulting model, which seeks to describe interpreter competence
from the vantage point of the interpreter’s living experience, has an empiri-
cal basis that is neither representative nor complete in its presentation of the
5 “Translation competence per se” includes the skills “linguistics, culture, text typology,
norms and conventions, terminology, world knowledge, strategies, technology, re-
search”; “personal competence” the skills “autonomy, preparedness for lifelong learn-
ing, quality control, sense of professional responsibility”; and “social competence” the
skills “etiquette, negotiation, teamwork” (cf. Kiraly 2006: 72-75).
6 It is also in line with Pöchhacker’s definition of interpreter competence proper as „situ-
ationsadäquate[s], von berufsethischen Normen getragene[s] Verhalten und Agieren
während, vor und nach der zu vermittelnden kommunikativen Interaktion“ (Pöchha-
cker 2001: 22).
7 As for abstract notions of interpreter competence, see also Chabasse (2009).
A process- and experience-based model of interpreter competence 61
various subskills, but I hope to paint a more tangible picture of the profes-
sional interpreter’s “haves and must-haves” for the aspiring student and to
pass on some delightful insights to the reader and, in particular, to Sylvia
Kalina, who has always taken such keen interest in each individual inter-
preter – student or colleague – and in the interpreter’s activities and profes-
sion.
2 Modeling interpreter competence
As mentioned before, the model’s architecture is an adaptation of Kalina’s

description of the overall interpreting process dimensions (pre-, peri-, in-,
post-process). I added the para-process dimension because the interpreters
reported business-related matters to be of major relevance for their work.
One interpreter highlighted this in the following words:
The longer I’m in the business, the more I feel that interpreting proper in the
booth is only 50% of my job, the rest are all those other things you have to man-
age. For you need to get an assignment in the first place, before you can start
thinking about techniques and stuff. And whether an interpreter’s performance is
deemed good does not only depend on what comes out of the booth, it’s how you
present yourself, how you deal with the customer, how you handle the job all
along. (I-10)
The para-process dimension covers all aspects of the interpreter’s small-scale
enterprise, exoprocess- (building up and organizing one’s own (freelance)
business) as well as endoprocess-related (from the first contact and negotia-
tion of working conditions; meeting and supporting the customer during the
event; down to how to present the bill, express a word of thanks, and pave
the way to a follow-up assignment). It is thus a dimension running along-
side, as well as above and beyond, all other processes.
Against the background of the information gained from the interviews,
and given the framework sketched out above, the process-related skills can
be specified as follows:
Pre-process skills:
a) High-level command of working languages
b) Low-key computer-assisted terminology management
c) A generalist’s informed semi-knowledge
d) Streamlined assignment preparation
Peri-process skills:
a) Teamwork and a cooperative attitude
b) Unimposing extrovertedness
c) Professionalism between instinct and a sense of realism
d) Pressure resistance and frustration tolerance
In-process skills:
• Comprehension skills
a) Below-expert scanning, identifying, and matching
b) Contextualization
c) English as a lingua franca (ELF) compensation
• Transfer skills
a) Simultaneity
b) Capacity relief measures
• Production skills
a) Synchronicity and décalage modulation
b) Reduction
c) Balancing act between high fidelity and audience design
d) ELF accommodation
e) Performance, presentation, prosody
Post-process skills:
a) Terminology wrap-up
b) Quality control
Para-process skills:
a) Business know-how, customer relations, and professional standards
b) Lifelong learning predilection
c) Meta-reflection
This results in the conceptualization shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1: Process- and experienced-based model of interpreter competence
3 Fleshing out abstract notions of interpreter competence
The following presentation of interpreter subskills concentrates on confer-

ence interpreting in simultaneous mode.8 The account is an analysis of the
authentic statements of the professionals introduced above.9
8 It also applies to consecutive interpreting, where, however, additional skills regarding

memorization and note-taking are needed.
9 The interviews were conducted in German, so the quotes are translated versions of the
statements; the advantage is greater anonymity. This is also the reason why I refer to all
interpreters as ‘she’ and all speakers/source text producers (and other participants in the
3.1 Pre-process skills

The pre-process skills dealt with in this section include the fundamental
skills acquired by an interpreter throughout his life. Since skills such as lan-
guage knowledge and preparation know-how have immediate consequences
for and effects on the interpreting processes, they are presented under this
heading.
a) High-level command of working languages

Interpreters generally agree that their command of A and B languages needs
to be of a very high level. But what exactly does that mean? In the interviews
a distinction was made between interpreters working in the private market
and those working for the EU. In the EU, where interpreters exclusively
work into their mother tongue, greater importance is attached to linguistic
form. Strict linguistic criteria are therefore applied to entrance tests, where
“solid rendering of the source speech content is not sufficient to pass the
test” (I-3). That form equals or is more important than the message also ap-
plies to interpreting on TV or for government departments, that is, when
rendering linguistically versatile politicians. On the private market, where
interpretation is from and into one’s B language, “one can realistically say”
(I-3) that standards are not as high. In the prevalent case of specialist subject
conferences (e.g., a civil engineering conference or a financial results an-
nouncement), the output should be “grammatically correct, principally
idiomatic and unobtrusive” (I-3), as well as easily understood “delivery of
content and subject matter and proper pronunciation of highly technical
terms such as polydicarbonate” (I-3). There is no need to surpass the average
speaker, the natural scientist/biologist, or even the law person with some-
what greater linguistic awareness and more complex language use. In par-
ticular, when it comes to technical conferences in the literal sense of the
word (cars, engines), speakers cannot be expected to have rhetorical train-
ing. Therefore, a solid command of the language is sufficient in these con-
texts, which means, however, that a German B should be a non-deficient
German, that is, it is not acceptable to get articles or case-‘n’ wrong more
than once or twice. In the case of C languages, the ‘rare-to-find-an-
interpreter-for’ ones are accepted as official working languages even when
the interpreter feels “not yet ready to survive every situation, for example,
deliver a solid performance at a medical or archeologist conference” (I-4).
For interpreters with an English B, “there is always a danger to content
oneself with a kind of mediocre conference English” (I-7), which one is
alerted to only “on those rare occasions when one works in a team with an
communicative interaction) as ‘he’. With regards to the interpreters’ quotes, the 10 inter-
viewees were coded from I-1 to I-10 in alphabetical order and referenced as such.
English A colleague” (I-7). The problem is aggravated by the increase in

non-native audiences, where an effort to speak one’s English at one’s best
(by exploiting the full range of idiomatic expressions, phrasal verbs, and
collocations) would only lead to comprehension failure on the part of the
listeners. At the same time, interpreters report being increasingly confronted
with “wrong” (I-8) English by non-native speakers so that they feel the need
to actively go against its influence. This is one of the reasons why a number
of interpreters see it as a major drawback to have to interpret non-native
speakers more often (on the interpreters’ preference for native speaker
source text producers, cf. Albl-Mikasa 2010). As a consequence, interpreters
take a number of formal and informal measures to attend to the cultivation
of their (active and passive) language competence (the acquisition and main-
tenance of which is subject to further analysis of the corpus data).
b) Low-key computer-assisted terminology management

In addition to high language proficiency levels, terminology work is another
sine qua non for the interpreter. The terminological results of an interpreter’s
(internet, textbook, expert, or other) research have to be processed in such a
way that they are readily available for (a) long-term retrieval and (b) imme-
diate assignment-geared use. With regards to (a), a terminology manage-
ment program or database10 has several advantages. It allows the interpreter
not only to go beyond alphabetical lists of translation equivalents, but to
include additional information, such as definitions, explanations, colloca-
tions, usage information, examples, source references (where the informa-
tion originates from and whether or not it is reliable), and even hyperlinks to
other relevant entries, especially illustrations or diagrams (e.g., of technical
devices), or to full articles with detailed encyclopedic information on the
topic. Because it would be time-consuming to have to decide what to put
where, all this information is integrated in the same entry field. All in all it is
a rather low-key kind of terminology management, yet one that is more
sophisticated than assignment-specific glossaries. It allows the interpreter to
cross-reference and flexibly search the database for terms that are relevant
for different assignments, to hold information specifically processed and
refined for interpreting purposes, and to preserve it for later events. Regard-
ing (b), such a tool enables the interpreter to access the relevant terminology
through her laptop in the booth or to print out a paper version of it as a
memory support and, ideally, to retrieve the “essentials” (I-3), that is, the
10 An interpreter-specific terminological database is, for instance, “LookUp”, designed by

Frank Austermühl, Sabine Meyer, and Christoph Stoll (www.lookup-web.de). For a
report on the use of new technologies by interpreters, see Stoll (2002), Will (2009), and
Kalina (2010).
most important terms and concepts specifically earmarked in the database

beforehand.11
However, terminology work comprises not only the systematic manage-
ment of an interpreter’s terminologies, but also the collection and integration
of relevant terms as she comes across them in newspapers, other media, or
on any possible occasion. And, finally, it includes the gathering of typical
stumbling blocks, which the interpreter sees recur and catch her out, such as
particular syntactic constructions (e.g., how to render notions of sollen) or
abstract words (e.g., Leistung, differenziert).
The interpreter’s terminology management competence goes hand in
hand with a particular attitude. It is less a matter of looking up and knowing
technical or special purpose terms and phrases, but of “gaining access to and
opening up a whole terminological microcosm” (I-4). For instance, when
having to work in a fishery or dairy industry context, one of the interpreter’s
“principal instruments” (I-4) is the capacity to take an interest in working
one’s way into such relatively dry subject matters and to see new vistas
opening up when operating modes, procedures, correlations, and contexts
reveal themselves.
Moreover, interpreters need to be alerted to and on the lookout for
changing terminology. Due to ongoing internationalization even well-
established terms will suddenly be exchanged for new ones. For instance,
companies reporting in accordance with International Financial Reporting
Standards (IFRS) will have to use IFRS terminology, so that a standard term
such as balance sheet will suddenly be statement of financial position, or the
standard British English (BE) term profit and loss account (P&L) will become
income statement (normally used under US Generally Accepted Accounting
Principles).
c) A generalist’s informed semi-knowledge

In the interviews an interesting distinction was made between an inter-
preter’s longer-term built-up competence, which means having some under-
standing of the content matter at hand (including ready availability of the
relevant terms), and a short-term “pseudo-competence”(I-1) of getting the cor-
porate wording of an organization right. In the former case, the lexical and
terminological decisions are taken on the basis of the interpreter’s back-
ground knowledge. For instance, when faced with the word Generator in a
German source text, the interpreter has to decide between the English gen-
erator (Gleichstromgenerator) and alternator (Wechselstromgenerator). To know
that Wechselstromgeneratoren are usually used in cars will greatly facilitate
the interpreter’s choice of the correct term. The alternative is to learn glossa-
11 A ready-made function of that kind is, however, not yet available in programs such as
LookUp.
ries by heart and to have some short-term storage of what things are called
in a given context, for example, that of a particular EU committee, or to
know the jargon of a particular company (e.g., the different labeling of the
same screw at Mercedes or Volkswagen). The pseudo-competence is needed
for the interpreter to avoid simply rattling along trying to keep up with the
speaker:
Even to translate a simple recipe into German, one that is altogether clear and un-
ambiguous, is almost impossible unless you know how to cook or unless you
have cooked from recipes. The longer I’m in the job the more I feel that you can-
not afford not to take an interest in everything. (I-8)
The need to have some insight into most things results from the experience
that conferences are like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolate: you never know
what you’re gonna get. “Especially when you work with English, anything
that is possibly talked about can become a matter of interpretation” (I-3).
Once the “honeymoon period” (I-7) is over, interpreters feel the requirement
to be able to cope with anything that may be addressed. This is why they opt
for a wide array of knowledge rather than in-depth knowledge. They point
out that it is better to know the important facts and events of a number of
topics than to have expert knowledge about just one. At the same time, there
is a general tendency to build up a basic repertoire for one’s main contract
areas (be they banking and finance, the automotive industry, or medicine).
For these recurring subject matters, interpreters are ready to invest more
time, and even attend a seminar or analyze a specialist book, journal, or any
other source to get a more thorough idea of what the respective facts and
concepts “are about, how they are interrelated, what they do and how they
work” (I-3). Aside from this, the minimum criterion for each individual con-
ference is to have at least a basic idea of what the speaker is aiming at. While
it is sometimes unavoidable “to keep throwing in one chemical term after
the other” (I-2), the principal goal for an interpreter is to build up a kind of
“informed semi-knowledge” (I-8) in the most common fields they are con-
tracted for and not to spend too much time on one particular topic (outside
the preparation for a given assignment). It is said to be “counterproductive”
(I-3) to deal with a particular topic in greater depth at the expense of other
areas. Thus, the interpreter’s “world knowledge competence” (Kiraly 2006:
72) is described by the interpreter as follows:
Be a generalist, have a basic, network-like idea of the most important facts of
many fields, have them ready and available and know how to quickly work your
way into any other subject matter. (I-3) (see also the following section (d) on
preparation skills)
An important point is that the interpreter’s building-up of subject knowl-
edge is not so much geared towards particular subject areas, fields, or disci-
plines, but to text and conference types. It is with a view to a particular event
(e.g., an annual general meeting of shareholders (AGM) or a press conference on

the annual financial statements) that interpreters need to gain a general idea of
what things are all about: It is against this backdrop that they have to work
out the key elements and main components (e.g., the balance sheet and the
profit and loss account in the context mentioned above) and know which ones
are crucial; for it is in the context of these events that one concept may be of
particular relevance, e.g., the profit and loss account (P&L) takes precedence
over the balance sheet in the above-mentioned context which it does not on a
more general level. Knowing these basic patterns allows the interpreter to
stand on firm ground. Even if her performance is not perfect or a term is
missing (which can be looked up or taken from a colleague), she will have
things under control and avoid committing one of the interpreter’s “capital
sins” (I-3) (e.g., mixing up balance sheet with P&L). It will also help her to
draw the correct inferences in case her acoustic memory retains only part of
the message (such as ‘-illions’, in which case she will know that blue-chip
companies are dealing with billions when it comes to total assets and reve-
nues, while net income is usually in the range of millions). Getting such key
matters wrong, would immediately lose her all credibility and endanger a
follow-up assignment.
d) Streamlined assignment preparation

Preparation is generally strictly targeted to specific assignments. It is felt to
be uneconomical to prepare subject matters in the vague hope that they will
one day be on an event’s agenda. Even if they were, the information pre-
pared a long time ago would be difficult to relocate and the preparation
work might have to start all over again. There is broad agreement among the
informant interpreters that preparation competence involves efficiency and
economy of effort and comprises, in particular, the following subskills:
Fast orientation: Interpreters must learn to easily and quickly access and
navigate a new subject matter and get oriented. They have to know “where
to start, where to search, what to look at and how to go about it” (I-8), espe-
cially if the topic is entirely new and complicated. The interpreter’s most
important source is the internet. While in the days when many of my infor-
mants started the internet was not available as an inexhaustible source of
information, they are now faced with the situation where megabytes of
documents pour in the night before an assignment. This makes fast orienta-
tion skills even more important. People who tend to get bogged down in
inefficient search routines are said to be inept for the job. The skill involves a
targeted, tailor-made, systematic preparatory routine.
Selective approach, fast overview: Advanced interpreters have given up any
self-imposed claim for completeness when it comes to preparing an assign-
ment. They need to know where to put the focus and how to separate the
essentials from the non-essentials and they must “dare to skip things” (I-1).
Since any aspect may crop up at a conference, it is better to make a list of the
most important terms (15 according to one interpreter (I-1), 20 (I-9) and 40 (I-
8) according to others – either way “quality instead of quantity”, I-8) than to
get worked up about frantically trying to work one’s way through each and
every detail and to consult yet another dictionary or internet site, only to end
up confusing the details for sheer excitement. It is part of this preparation
competence to pick out the central terms, that is, to separate the wheat from
the chaff as it were. Significant insights need to be gained about the central
facts, the speakers, and interlocutors. To that end, it is often not enough to
look at the presentations received. Instead, the interpreter has to go beyond
customer documents, that is, by looking at the odd Wikipedia entry and
searching for additional information on the internet (e.g., the company web-
site and its annual report) so as to be able to contextualize the information
received. Often there is very little preparation time, so interpreters take a
closer look only at the presentations allocated to them and only quickly
browse through those others assigned to colleagues; or they look more
closely only at one or two out of the five customer documents received and
try to gain a broader understanding of the central terms rather than skim
through all of them. The point is to make the conference listener feel safe by
reliably dealing with the key aspects because he will forgive a gap or small
mistake in secondary points. This includes fast text analysis: quickly browse
through a text, mark the central terms, abbreviations, and key concepts and
pin down the essential information concerning the topic, event title, and
organizational structures.
Individual memo drafting: Finally, the interpreter needs to be able to decide
on the “high priority essentials” (I-3) and to select which ones to keep ready
on the laptop or a printed version as a memory support in the booth. It is
important not only to grasp the relevant terminology quickly, but also to “go
from reception to production and have things ready right before your eyes
so as to simply read them off when under pressure” (I-4).
3.2 Peri-process skills

Peri-process skills are closely linked to the intra- and interpersonal skills in
Kiraly’s translation competence model (cf. Kiraly 2006: 73-74). They are de-
scribed by the interviewees as follows.
a) Teamwork and a cooperative attitude

Most freelance interpreters have their own small-scale businesses, that is,
there is no boss above and no staff below them. Yet, teamwork and coopera-
tion seem to play a fundamental part in the trade. Since many interpreters
are contracted by other interpreters acting as conference organizers and

consultants, and depend on them to get a job, the requirement “to be a good
colleague” (I-9) or simply “to get on with your boothmate” (I-2) is decisive.
For “where but in the booth – or perhaps the cockpit – do you have to work
together in such restricted space” (I-9). To be a “good colleague” means
above all not displaying diva-like attitudes and maintaining pleasant inter-
personal relationships. This relates to the boothmate as well as customer
contacts. Booth manners include sparing “your colleague molestations of an
acoustic, olfactory or any other nature” (I-1), namely, handling one’s per-
fume dose with care during working hours and avoiding typing away at
emails on one’s laptop while a colleague is trying to concentrate.
Teamwork with regard to the colleague also means keeping up a suppor-
tive attitude in the booth (providing missing information – terms, figures,
equivalents) and not to take center-stage, but to let the chef d’équipe do the
talking. The team-player skill includes a certain robustness towards uneasy
situations and the ability to bear with colleagues who are felt to be less
pleasant, less competent, or less forthcoming. This, however, is rarely a
problem because interpreters become familiar with the “arranged marriage”
situation during their university courses.
The more difficult part is cooperation or dialogue with the customer. “It
takes a bit of manners and confidence” (I-1) and one needs to know “when
to shut up in situations where the going gets rough and things become diffi-
cult for the organizers of an event” (I-6). The customer relations skill is said
to be one of the criteria in deciding which colleague to send out to a cus-
tomer. One who lacks social competence or a sense of human interrelations
and insists on having her rights enforced at the event will not be contracted
even if her interpreting performance is of high quality. Interpreters need to
know when to speak up for good working conditions and when to make do
with poor ones. They should not get excited and worked up when the mi-
crophone is not working and certainly need not jump up and let the entire
audience know about their complaint. They need to remain quiet and wait
for an opportune moment to voice their complaint, especially in the case of a
“difficult customer” (I-10).
Finally, interpreters need to be able to withstand criticism (by colleagues,
customers, or the audience). The constant fear of critical judgment will make
each interpreting job a “nail-biter” (I-1) and a source of pure stress. They
therefore have to be able to cope intellectually as well as psychologically.
However, feedback seems to be a tricky business among interpreters. While
positive feedback (especially from the customer) is part and parcel of their
job satisfaction, interpreter colleagues mostly refrain from pointing out mis-
takes, bad performance habits, or other aspects with room for improvement.
There are, however, a number of interpreters who deliberately bring unfa-
vorable whims and performance-related deficits to each other's attention.
They are often the ones for whom “interpreting simply is teamwork” (I-7).
For some of them, teamwork begins before the conference and covers a
whole range of possibilities – exchange of views and information relating to
market segments, customer consulting, presentation of offers and bills,
preparation and exchange of documents and glossaries, feedback to reflect
one’s own performance, and so forth. Others, however, prefer to be loners
and to do their bit in their own independent way.
b) Unimposing extrovertedness
The interpersonal competence described above is matched by the intraper-
sonal skill to display a non-imposing extrovertedness. It is often said that
interpreters need to be extrovert. In fact, their position is a rather paradoxi-
cal one. On the one hand, an interpreter must not be shy. The job is said to
be impossible for people who feel ill at ease when they have to face a certain
degree of “public exposure” (I-10) or are the “bookish type” (I-2) who prefer
to work away alone in their little parlor. On the other hand, the job is simi-
larly unfeasible for “top dogs” (I-9) who need to be in the limelight all of the
time. Interpreting means operating in the background behind the scenes; on
the one hand, interpreters have to want to communicate and actively pro-
mote communication, whereas on the other hand, they have to hold back
and keep quiet. Despite doing an ambitious and demanding job, interpreters
must content themselves with positive feedback on rare occasions and de-
velop a certain immunity towards any wish for recognition, praise, or com-
pliments.
The kind of modesty required is not always easy because interpreters are
well aware of the fact that they do a job only a few people can do. Moreover,
during their qualification time, they often feel under pressure and unsure if
they will ever be up to the goal of becoming what is considered the “crème
de la crème” (I-2) among language professionals. When the goal is finally
reached they find themselves in an absurd situation: Not only are there mo-
ments when they feel they are “trying to do the impossible” (I-2) (e.g.,
“when German speakers read out some of those terrible convoluted sen-
tences and there is no way to anticipate the verb”, I-2), they also find them-
selves engaged in an activity that is very passive and requires working as a
machine. Having been told over and over again that an extrovert mentality
is helpful, they find themselves doing a job for the introvert for “often you
sit there and you just think, well, we’re just parroting what someone else has
to say and no one will give a damn about my opinion” (I-2).
Interpreters develop different strategies to cope with this paradoxical
situation. Some of them say that they virtually merge into the speaker and
become one with him, giving up – in a “quasi-Buddhist sense” (I-3) – their
own will and ego and becoming nonexistent as it were. This makes it easier
for them not to expend any energy on their own concerns, (physical and
psychological) needs, preferences, and reservations. Others take a somewhat
emancipatory stance and adopt the slightly “heretical” (I-8) attitude of high-
lighting the creative aspects of interpreting. When faced with common ex-
pressions of “sympathy” regarding their having to parrot all the time, they
question other professionals’ much acclaimed creativity: “So sorry for those
poor actors, at least we do it in another language, while they have to parrot
prefabricated phrases and do what the director tells them to do” (I-8).
Then again, there are those who opt for a pragmatic approach, which, in
actual fact, is a very general attitude. Interpreters are aware that they are
“service providers in the extreme sense of the word” (I-9) and better keep a
low profile. They believe that it makes good sense to enable communication
in multilingual settings and are confident that they are in a position to make
a valuable contribution, even if this is rarely recognized by the customer.
They put successful communication before personal interest and accept that
part of the game is to be “heard but not seen” (I-2) and to leave behind their
personal self (knowing full well that there are other occasions to expose their
music, teaching, and other talents). Many of them have the rare capability of
holding back their opinion and personal judgment, even swallowing their
complaints and demands, and waiting for the opportune moment to arise
when they can express them.
c) Professionalism between instinct and a sense of realism

In the interviews, the interpreters used words such as “instinct (I-1, I-7),
social and emotional competence (I-7, I-10), sensitiveness (I-5, I-9), empathy
(I-7) or intuitive sense (I-1, I-3)” to describe what is required to do a profes-
sional job. It is difficult to characterize this kind of intuitive competence be-
cause it covers a whole range of different facets. It has to do with an inter-
preter’s deeper understanding of what is going on, what is at stake, and
what things boil down to. In order to sound convincing while using some-
body else’s words, the interpreter has to develop a kind of empathy for the
speaker, a feeling as to who exactly is speaking and the skill to read between
the lines and grasp what he is talking about and what will come next. While
“empathy” (I-7) was the word used by one interpreter, another described
this as virtually entering into the speaker’s head and “being only function
and pure will” (I-3). While not every interpreter will go that far, it seems
that, at least to some extent, such a skill is required. It is what lends credibil-
ity to the interpreter’s performance, which would otherwise remain flat and
somehow incomplete even when all other skills (language, interpreting
techniques, terminology) are fully operating: “like a car that has all the nec-
essary parts and components but doesn’t look or feel nice – you simply do
not feel like listening to such an interpreter” (I-7). The point of this kind of
intuitive sense is that it goes beyond what is generally understood by “pro-

fessional responsibility” (cf. Kiraly 2006: 73) or the faithful rendering of the
speaker without addition or distortion. It is more than the awareness that
one should be a neutral voice; it is the capacity to grasp and even feel exactly
what the speaker is talking about.
In a wider sense, it also encompasses sensitivity to the overall situation, that
is, to know what is adequate in a given context. For instance, the interpreter
should understand when to better content herself with a lower quality per-
formance, because the situation warrants it, and when to intervene and ad-
dress the customer to set the conditions right and enable a high-quality per-
formance. She must develop a very careful sense of the rare occasions when
it is appropriate, helpful, and much appreciated that the interpreter pushes
out of her role as a neutral voice and becomes an autonomous text producer
(cf. Kalina 2009: 176). However, “it takes good intentions and a certain intel-
ligence to be able to gauge the consequences and dangers involved” (I-1).
This deeper sense seems to go hand in hand with a certain amount of self-
confidence. The professional interpreter is confident that nothing will totally
derail her, that she will be able to cope with even terrifying moments of
source speech presentation, and that she will always find ways and means to
save a situation. She will uphold a certain equanimity, groundedness, and
calm relaxedness (or at least not let anything to the contrary show). She will
not waste energy on preoccupations and unrelated meta-aspects, such as
“am I good enough in my boothmate’s ears, did the listeners realize I used
the wrong term, does it go unnoticed that I started sweating, am I over- or
underdressed for the occasion” (I-1).
Being a professional thus also has to do with allaying and overcoming fears which
are irrational most of the time anyway, because people generally have a great deal
of sympathy for unmanageable situations, so even in the rare case of full bank-
ruptcy, when you have to switch off the mike, they will not really mind. (I-1)
This goes hand in hand with taking a professional attitude, that is, not letting
the audience feel one’s discontent.
Even though there are speakers, who make interpretation impossible, it is unac-
ceptable to insist on blaming the incapable speaker all the time, for it is simply
part and parcel of the interpreter’s job to cope with any kind of speaker; it may be
different in a setting like the European Parliament but in the private market the
majority of speakers is simply unacquainted with rhetoric and untrained in giving
a speech. (I-7)
Not getting worked up about insufficient speakers also saves much needed
energy and capacity in the booth. At the same time, it is important to make a
realistic appraisal of one’s performance and to clearly see “which are one’s
own insufficiencies and which are objective factors severely affecting one’s
performance and making it impossible to deliver a good target speech” (I-8).
d) Pressure resistance and frustration tolerance

It is nothing new that to be an interpreter one has to be able to face up to a
considerable amount of pressure and tension. Pressure comes from various
sources and interpreters paint a rather differentiated picture of it. On the
lifestyle level, it involves a lot of travelling at short notice and constant al-
ternation of high-tension phases at work and easy-going ones back home.
On the level of working conditions, it concerns the quality of the technical
equipment, the number of interpreters in the team, negotiations with the
customer, and the fact that plum jobs are few and far between: “there are no
easy conferences any more, as these are all done in English only nowadays”
(I-8). On the on-site-level it involves “public exposure” (I-10), “the slightly
schizophrenic simultaneity of listening and speaking” (I-3), “the perverse
and unbearable uncertainty of not knowing what will happen the very next
second” (I-3), “the at-the-push-of-a-button need for readiness” (I-10), and
Olympic competitiveness where “the here and now counts” (I-10). On some
occasions, interpreters may be taken out of a meeting and thrown into an-
other one without much prior notice or preparation. Or they are frowned at
for being late while in actual fact they were ill-informed about working
times. A lack of resilience will be a problem in that pressure “weakens au-
tomatisms” (I-4) and generates uneasiness and fears that may even result in
psychosomatic troubles (headaches, back problems, etc.) (cf. Mackintosh
2002). To resist pressure and to develop a level of frustration tolerance is
therefore an essential part of the interpreter’s competence.
3.3 In-process skills

Clearly, in-process skills relate to the fundamental translation processes of
comprehension, transfer, and production. Interestingly, the interpreters
interviewed refer to the respective subskills in a highly differentiated and, at
the same time, selective way.
3.3.1 Comprehension skills

Comprehension is paramount and has been addressed in the interviews
extensively.
a) Below-expert scanning, identifying, and matching

While comprehension is crucial in interpreting, the important point is that it
operates on different levels. This is not only a well-known finding from
modern cognitive language processing research (cf. Albl-Mikasa 2007: 60-74,
112-127), but the interpreter’s very practical experience. The ideal case is
when the interpreter fully understands the speaker’s intent and purposes
and the specialized subject matter at hand. However, interpreters agree that
their grasp of a subject is almost always below that of the expert: “delivery-
wise we are often better than the speaker, but in terms of the content matter I
doubt whether we can ever keep up with the experts” (I-8).
The interpreter’s goal is, therefore, not to understand perfectly, but to
know what the speaker is talking about and what fact or event terms refer
to, and thus, to understand well enough in order not “to have to merely
rattle along after the speaker on a superficial level” (I-3); the kind of under-
standing implied is not simply to have learned glossary terms by heart, but
to know what the concepts stand for. This supports the acoustic memory (so
that the most likely option of closely related terms, such as Programm vs
Prozent, can be pinned down), provides a sense of security (“When I hear
Wärmepumpe and I know how it works, I immediately relax”, I-1), and helps
with the identification of abbreviations:
If a software company reports its latest product and I’m not familiar with it, I
have a mumbo-jumbo of terms and abbreviations drummed into my ears which I
somehow reproduce. If, by contrast, I know about those abbreviations, and they
have a deeper meaning for me, I will do a much better job. (I-1)
The interpreters reveal two different “modes” of grasping presented matter.
There are those who rely on their capacity to filter out the central or “key
statements” (I-6) and to make a summary analysis of the core contents that are
often verbosely expressed. Others seem to enter into some kind of synesthetic
understanding:
In a source speech about the FDP, the CDU, and the SPD, for instance, these ab-
breviations will come across in a mumbo-jumbo way to a listener who knows
nothing about the German political parties. For me, by contrast, these abbrevia-
tions have not only a meaning but, for obvious reasons, also a color. However, it
can also be an emotional color which abbreviations and words without objective
coloring assume for me. It is when their meanings have this kind of emotional
value that it becomes easy for me to link them back to their contextual frame and
to immediately recognize and recall them. In fact, it is this kind of “Kompetenz
des Kapierens” that enables you to do a very good job even without preparation.
(I-1)
In both cases, the interpreter’s comprehension is not the expert’s knowledge-
based reception, but a kind of process-related analytical and/or synthetic (or
even synesthetic) understanding.
On a lower level, the “minimum requirement for each conference” is “to
have at least some idea where things belong, how to link them up, and what
the speaker is on about” (I-3). In the worst case, when no understanding is
secured, the “autopilot is activated” (I-1), which may not allow for a good
job, but it is at least sufficient. Interpreter assignments (e.g., in the European
Patent Office) are often extremely technical and confront the interpreter with
rows of technical collocated patterns, in which case interpreting is only pos-
sible on a highly superficial level (this, however, is more of a standard strat-

egy rather than an emergency strategy as described by Kalina 1998: 119).
Clearly, the longer interpreters are working in a field, the deeper the in-
sights they gain; the better they are informed about the goal of an event, or
the function and position of the speakers, the better their understanding will
be. To some extent, however, their knowledge of an area will always remain
somewhat superficial. From a functional perspective, this is more than le-
gitimate, since interpreting is not geared towards an exchange of facts, but
towards facilitating the exchange or communication of these facts. That is,
the interpreter is not interested in in-depth knowledge of the matter at hand,
but in fast and intuitive understanding of how things are interrelated within
the framework of the overall structure. Accordingly, the basic didactic prin-
ciple “it is what you understand that you can interpret” is rephrased by the
professionals as “Dinge schnell und gut und gerne verstehen” (I-3), that is,
the interpreter must be ready and willing to comprehend, quick in the up-
take of complex, orally presented content matters, and able to “emphatically
understand not what the speaker says but what he wants to say” (I-3). It
helps when one is quick witted, mentally alert, and sharp: “people who like
to crack jokes and find it easy to understand punchlines and to memorize
them will definitely have an edge over others” (I-3). It is such general (but
high-level) cognitive and psychological skills that enable the interpreter to
approach the comprehension task without anxieties: “you do not feel terri-
fied, when you miss out a few syllables, but you rely on being saved by the
contextual information provided in the ongoing discourse” (I-3).
b) Contextualization
The foundation on which interpreting-based comprehension rests is having
a general overview or picture, an idea of the overall structure of the matter
at hand. The interpreter is well-advised to inwardly step back every now
and then (in the very process of interpreting) and re-contextualize the source
speech: who exactly is speaking and from what perspective (“never lose
sight of whether it’s the subcontractor or a company member speaking”, I-9),
why and for what purpose, to whom and against which background. This
helps to put things into perspective and supports anticipatory and inferen-
tial processes which in interpreting go far beyond guessing the final verb of
a sentence or filling in a local knowledge gap (cf. Chernov 2004).
c) ELF (English as a lingua franca) compensation

The growing number of non-native English speakers at conferences and
other interpreter-mediated events is clearly felt to be an aggravating factor
for interpreters (cf. Albl-Mikasa 2010). In the interviews, interpreters con-
fessed to their generally purist attitude to language matters (most of them
are annoyed by the common use of Agenda final or finale Version der Agenda
instead of endgültige Tagesordnung or Endfassung), but also emphasized a
pragmatic approach when it comes to using anglicisms as part of a com-
pany’s jargon (see section 3.3.3, d), below). The problem is, however, that
“ELF talk” often undermines comprehension, renders fundamental proc-
esses such as anticipation and drawing inferences more difficult, and ham-
pers the interpreter’s attempt to deliver a high-quality performance. As one
interpreter put it:
It’s much better when people speak their own language, because, if not, you can’t
follow their words very often, the way they think; I know the way a usual Ger-
man thinks, but sometimes you don't even understand the pronunciation which is
wrong. The other day a French was speaking English and he would say ‘merrily’
which you find on a Christmas card: “Ding Dong Merrily on High” and I thought
what the hell is he saying and he said ‘merely’. Or I know an Italian chairman
who doesn’t differentiate between le and les when he speaks French, so you don’t
know whether it’s a singular or a plural. (I-2)
Another interpreter (I-6) reported cases where pronunciation problems ag-
gravated the incorrect use of concepts. In one case, for instance, a non-native
speaker spoke of a ‘beer trap’. What he was actually trying to say was ‘bear
trap’. Not only did he get the pronunciation wrong, he also used the wrong
concept. ‘Bear trap’ is a technical stock market term denoting an undesirable
situation for short sellers (they get trapped and are forced to cover their
positions at high prices). The speaker, however, referred to some kind of
mechanism that should stop large-scale financial transactions beyond a cer-
tain threshold. In the heat of the moment, this confusion made it impossible
for the interpreter to figure out what the speaker was talking about. Only
later did she realize what the speaker had been trying to say.
The continuing spread of English as a global language has another un-
pleasant corollary for the interpreter. A highly popular trend among Ger-
man native speakers is to speak “Denglish”, a “hotchpotch of German and
English words” (Dieter 2004: 141), i.e. a kind of German infiltrated by any
number of more or less correctly used English words, which additionally
taxes the interpreter’s resources in the comprehension phase. The following
examples are chosen from a whole list provided by a colleague of one of the
interpreters (I-5) interviewed; they were (to make matters worse) uttered by
a Swabian-German speaker:
Des zeigt, dass das Business Concept auch in Krisenzeiten doch sehr cash-
generating isch.
Wir ham keine Fire sales gemacht – nicht verkauft, um zu survive. Des isch natür-
lich heavy (gemeint war ungefähr: heftig).
It is not unusual for interpreters to find themselves in a situation where part
of the audience that listens to the original is unable to understand the non-
native English speaker, while they are still “expected to make something out
of it” (I-9). Often they have to think outside the box (“round the corner, or
even around two corners”, I-6), which makes their task more arduous. This
clearly affects the interpreter’s performance quality (cf. Albl-Mikasa 2012),
but it also calls for new skills: interpreters need to know how to redress the
careful balance of their resources and they need to demonstrate the confi-
dence and courage to speak up and somehow let it be known to the audi-
ence over the microphone when “it is not the interpreter’s fault when what
comes out of the earphones does not make much sense, but is due to nothing
coherent or intelligible reaching the interpreter” (I-6).
3.3.2 Transfer skills

In the interviews, transfer skills did not play a significant role. This may
have to do with the professional interpreters’ feeling that this part of their
task is “set and internalized” (I-10) and works without their having to worry
about it. The little that was reported is as follows.
a) Simultaneity
The interpreter’s unique and indispensable skill is, of course, to be able to
“simultaneously listen, transmit, and speak and even monitor what you’re
saying” (I-6). This necessitates a “high level of alertness and concentration”
(I-10). What is extremely helpful in this respect is a great storage capacity.
There seem to be almost “anatomic” differences between interpreters here.
Some interpreters simply have it (interestingly it is not something that in-
creases over the course of time or comes with growing experience and rou-
tine) and they are the ones who are not panting after even fast speakers.
They are also the ones who have less or no reservations about doing con-
secutive interpreting12.
Another point mentioned in the interviews was that there seems to be
some kind of relationship between the simultaneous skill and personality
traits: One should have the “readiness to indulge in a great deal of simulta-
neity” (I-5). For instance, people who do not get annoyed when being talked
to while on the phone, but who can integrate what is being said to them and
come back to it after having finished their call, are in a much better position
to become a simultaneous interpreter. Or as said before, one must have the
very willingness to indulge in this “somewhat schizophrenic act of simulta-
neous listening and speaking” (I-3).
12 In addition to simultaneous listening, speaking/writing, and monitoring, consecutive

interpreting, according to my informants, requires even better memorizing capacities
as well as efficient note-taking skills (cf. also Kutz 2002: 186-187).
b) Capacity relief measures

A major transfer skill of the professional is to take capacity relief measures.
This starts in the preparation phase of an assignment when auxiliary aids are
worked out. With regards to transfer, consensus has it that routine and ex-
perience help more than anything else to approach the task with much more
relaxedness, calm, and equanimity. This sets free capacities not only for all
those interpreting-specific things (e.g., getting the subtle nuances, finding
the most appropriate expressions, etc.) but for the sake of freeing capacities
as there are usually enough unpredictabilities to come (I-10).
Remaining calm is part of the interpreter’s strategic behavior, and even
though the interpreters interviewed briefly touched upon the strategies
known from the specialist literature (cf. e.g., Kalina 1998), their focus was on
remaining calm:
Time and again you are in danger of drowning, because the presentation rate is so
fast and you don’t get everything, and after some time of keeping pace you sim-
ply can’t do it anymore, so you have to learn how to deal with it, and the best way
is to remain calm, shift down, generalize, omit the details, leave out a less impor-
tant sentence, and take a short break in order to get ready to catch up again in full
calm instead of panting along behind the speaker, which will be unpleasant for
the listener and increase the pressure. (I-9)
Concrete strategies, like how to cope with the typical long and convoluted
German sentences, are explicitly mentioned only in the context of interpreter
training. This goes to show that the professionals interviewed have internal-
ized their strategies and apply them in an intuitive, routine, if not automated
way without giving them much thought.
Speaking of speedy and automated processing, an important aspect
seems to be the fast assembly of translation equivalents (cf. Kutz’s “Herstel-
lung von Entsprechungsbeziehungen”, 2010: 203) and activation of transla-
tion routines (cf. Göpferich 2008: 156) to help the interpreter avoid taxing her
limited resources:
We had “first pass rate” the other day. Now the English “rate” is usually “Quote”
in German. However, the German speakers all say “Erstläuferrate”, so why
should I use “Quote”? First of all this is the word they are familiar with and, sec-
ondly, why should I make things more difficult for myself by having to cross over
from “ rate” to “Quote”, when it is so much easier to get from “rate” to “Rate”. So
if they say “Erstläuferrate”, I will follow suit, rather than unnecessarily make an
effort. (I-6)
Important parts of transfer skills are therefore not only increasingly automa-
tized routine operations, but also the establishment of direct and easy links
and paths from source-text items to target-text solutions.
3.3.3 Production skills

In addition to thoroughly understanding the source text and to fast retrieval
of background knowledge and target text items, the interpreter needs to take
decisions in the (re)production part of the task. The production process co-
vers numerous high-level subskills.
a) Synchronicity and décalage modulation

A long décalage (“not to the extent that it gets embarrassing though, when
nothing comes out of the booth”, I-6) has always been thought of as a token
of self-confidence, of having the process under control, of ample storage
capacity, and of being in a better position to express things and not to have
to cling to the speaker. However, the need for synchronicity seems to be just
as important:
Synchronicity is a major problem, especially if you work for television. There you
are told to finish as soon as possible because a second on television is much
longer than what it would be in real life. A lot of colleagues would say, oh, she is
a fantastic interpreter, she’s got a great décalage, but in actual fact this is very often
not what people want. Even in non-televised situations, one finds that a chairman
understands the other languages and will not wait for the interpreters to finish. I
have become very aware of how important this is in the last couple of years. (I-2)
The fact that in televised interpretation the requirements are not complete-
ness, but a quiet, pleasant, and confident performance and, most of all, that
the interpreter finishes her sentence with the speaker and has no delay,
comes as no surprise (cf., for instance, von Mülmann 2002: 280). However, it
is less well-known just how common this requirement has become. It applies
in equal measure to panel discussions, where décalage should be kept as short
as possible because the verbal exchange and taking of turns by the speakers
may be extremely fast and turns are often only single sentences. Interpreters
are aware that it often happens that participants have to wait for them to
finish and are, therefore, unable to cut in and make their contribution. While
interpreters find it difficult not to lag behind in such a situation, they are
keen to enable the interlocutors that depend on interpretation not only to
follow but to participate in the same way as all other participants, that is, to
actually react as if in monolingual communication, to share in the laughter
with no more than a second’s delay, and to immediately join in the discus-
sion. To this end, a very short décalage is indispensable.
Finally, when the going gets rough and the speaker’s presentation rate is
very fast or when the interpreter gets tired, it is necessary to give up all dé-
calage to catch up and keep up with the speaker. For as one interpreter ex-
plains (I-1), when she is fresh and fit, her acoustic memory works like a kind
of replay button, so that she can almost re-listen to and recall whether the
speaker said Programm or Prozent. If she is too tired to rely on her acoustic
memory, she will have to cling to the speaker so as not to lose track of a
source speech word. Thus, modulating décalage, that is, increasing it to gain
room for eloquence and reducing it for a hot on the speaker’s heels produc-
tion, seems to be an important skill.
b) Reduction
Synchronicity goes hand in hand with “reductionist behavior” on the part of
the interpreter. Reducing the speaker’s output is reported to be more than
just one of the many strategies interpreters make use of. It is almost an inte-
gral part of interpreting: “minimum reduction is almost always involved in
simultaneous interpreting” (I-3). It makes the interpreting task easier, frees
capacity for other efforts and compensates for fast presentation rates. For
some interpreters it covers or includes all of the possible options of con-
densing, eliminating, generalizing, approximating, and so forth that are
distinguished in the specialist literature (cf., e.g., Kalina 1998). Some inter-
preters almost make a sport out of it. The challenge is to skip little bits and
pieces and all the repetitions and redundancies, without taking away from
the message or mood of the utterance, that is, “to be complete in meaning
but not in terms of absolute precision” (I-3). Rather than render the source
speech “laboratory-like” (I-3), the goal is to deliver a performance that
sounds “confident, astute, and fresh” (I-3) and to avoid getting worked up
about “trying to be faster than the articulatory organs would allow” (I-3).
Instead of observing the didactic maxim “be as complete as possible” (I-4),
which often leads to spluttering, it is more conducive not to make each
source text item explicit, but “to express it by means of intonation, later inte-
gration, competent phrasing” (I-4), and so forth. It takes courage to do that,
but it supports communication. Experience has it that a message gets across
more efficiently if put in a shortened version and the interpreter’s own
words. Clearly, it also depends on the subject matter at hand. There are
speeches that need to be rendered in great detail. Moreover, there are “pell-
mell speeches” (I-5) where the listener is grateful to have the interpreter add
an explanatory sentence, which summarizes, highlights, or pinpoints what
the speaker is getting at (introduced by a discourse marker like “by that I
mean”, etc.). Yet, reduction is often a key instrument, which helps the inter-
preter to remain quiet and not to fall into the trap of panting behind the
speaker.
c) Balancing act between speaker fidelity and audience design

In the interviews, speaker fidelity turned out to be a fuzzy concept. On the
one hand, interpreters vary in their attitude between “the speaker has abso-
lute priority, for who am I to judge whether he chooses to present himself in
a certain way for particular reasons” (I-8), and “I will always try to take the
addressees into account” (I-9), and “there is the whole range of possibilities,
it all depends on the situation” (I-1, I-10). On the other hand, they all agree
that there is no general panacea and that a great number of factors have to
be taken into account.
The following arguments are provided in favor of giving priority to the
speaker. One is illustrated by an anecdote from an event where the partici-
pants were divided into a “red (morning) group” and “a blue (afternoon)
group”. Towards the end of an afternoon function the presenter said “Ladies
and gentlemen, if you please go along here and find outside the lady with
the red sign, who will take you to the museum tour”. The interpreter real-
ized that the presenter should have said “blue sign”, but refrained from
correcting him, as a correction on the part of the presenter could have fol-
lowed any minute. What is more, it turned out that the hostess had over-
heard the presenter and placed herself at the exit with a red sign. The inter-
preter concluded: “This is what happens if you think you know better, so it
is my contention not to correct a speaker, even if you are a hundred percent
sure that he provided a wrong detail or figure” (I-8). She also pointed to the
fact that “a listener of the original may come forward and inquire about the
wrong information so that the interpreter’s listeners will start wondering,
which will only disrupt the flow of communication” (I-8).
Some interpreters are of the opinion that they should emulate the
speaker’s style if they feel he makes it a point to come across in a certain
way. Similarly, especially on television, they will render a young speaker in
a fresher, livelier way. A highly or even unpleasantly self-confident speaker
will be rendered accordingly, although to a somewhat lesser degree, for “it
should not be a parody, and one must not forget that an interpreter’s bodi-
less voice comes across more strongly, but there is definitely a bit of acting
involved and you do conform with the speaker” (I-1).
A major criterion is speaker intention, that is, whether or not a speaker de-
liberately speaks in a certain fashion or whether he cannot help it. If a CEO
chooses to address the company’s workers in highly sophisticated language,
the interpreter will not feel obliged to “backtranslate” (I-10) this into some-
thing the average assembly worker will be able to understand. Since it is not
always easy to interpret a speaker’s demeanor, interpreters may refrain from
“downtoning” (I-8) the speaker as this might thwart his very goal. There are
situations, however, when the interpreter will intervene and adapt the
source speech, for example, when the interpreter is sure that a speaker
comes across as arrogantly ignoring his addressees while it is clear that he
does not wish to intimidate his listeners, but simply wants to be understood.
Another case in point is cultural or regional characteristics, as in the case of a
Swabian manager who said “ihr Saubande, ihr verfluchte, ihr wollt mich
über den Tisch ziehen” (I-8), and the interpreter knew full well that an
equivalent rendering would be unacceptable to Japanese ears. However, this
again is a critical decision, as target audiences are rarely clearly defined.

Thus, the rendering of a rather rude speech containing the German word
“Scheiß” by using the English word “shit” (I-9) was applauded by the British
listeners, but questioned by the Americans in the audience of the same
event.
An uncontroversial case is when the speaker is simply not in a position to
speak in an appropriate way. The deficient speech of a non-native speaker, for
instance, will always be rendered in the form of full, correct, and well-
formed sentences. This also has to do with the fact that, as one interpreter
put it, “I simply cannot not speak proper German” (I-9). Moreover, it is un-
derstood that the interpreter will add explanatory information, when realia
(e.g., different school or legal systems or concepts like “Stuttgart 21”) are
unknown, on condition that there is enough capacity left for such interven-
tionist measures.
It can thus be noted that the interpreter’s skill when it comes to speaker
fidelity in source text production is one of decision-making as to whether to
lean towards the speaker or to the audience. Again, it involves a certain
emphatic feeling or intuitive sense to decide which of the great number of
influencing factors are pivotal. These factors are situation-, capacity-, or text-
type-related (a sketch or joke that operates on rudimentary language needs
to be rendered accordingly) or of a pragmatic nature (in both senses of the
word, i.e., recognizing speaker intention or simply taking into consideration
“who pays my bill”, I-9).
d) ELF (English as a lingua franca) accommodation

Audience design (cf. Clark/Murphy 1982) or accommodation (cf. Giles et al.
1990) are not only a central part of monolingual communication, but also of
mediated communication. Adjusting to the listener is first and foremost a
question of register for the interpreters. They reported that, when working
in the European Parliament for children, for instance, they would “refrain
from using words such as ‘implement’ or ‘against the backdrop’ simply to
sound good” (I-2), or that they would take visiting groups in the European
Parliament into account and not use abbreviations like CAP but say “Com-
mon Agricultural Policy” (I-4) when students were present; they do so even
when they are supposed to provide their service for delegates. With trade
unionists, interpreters would opt for a “more chatty style” (I-2) and working
in a more formal context, they will be more formal. Accommodation also
includes the above-mentioned addition of culture-specific explanations.
Special accommodation skills are needed, however, due to the ever-
growing number of non-native English speakers at conferences (cf. Albl-
Mikasa 2010). The interpreters interviewed reported that they did take the
low proficiency level of their audiences into account, since “it’s all about
communication” (I-2) (but that there are also colleagues whose attitude is “if
they don’t understand MY English, it’s their problem”, I-2). The accommo-
dation skill involves an additional kind of monitoring, a kind of taking stock
of what one is saying and of asking oneself if what one produces makes
sense for somebody who does not know the language so well. It means not
relying on internalized idiomatic phrases and expressions, but adjusting to
the non-native listener by being less idiomatic, by speaking slowly and
clearly, and even by adding little phrases to make him feel less insecure. One
interpreter compared this to working relay. In the position of a pivot an
interpreter would immediately say “thank you chairman” or “well the first
thing I want to say” or a similar phatic phrase (“instead of waiting for a
Spanish speaker not only to speak but to say something”, I-2) to let the in-
terpreter in the Japanese or other booth know that her pivot is “on”. The
problem is that the downshifting part of accommodation counteracts the
interpreter’s desire to cultivate and develop her language competence and
that the effort as such is capacity consuming. Thus, while it is seen as a token
of quality and “nice to have” (I-10), it is “immediately skipped when re-
sources are scarce” (I-10).
A final aspect of accommodation is the acceptance of anglicisms used by
conference participants. Despite a general (often in private) purist attitude
(cf. Albl-Mikasa 2012), interpreters take a pragmatic stance here. They will
follow suit and use “Event” rather than “Veranstaltung” or “Ereignis” (I-10)
or “Montagsmeeting” instead of “Besprechung” (I-9) and they will even say
“gedownloaded” (I-2), if interlocutors are used to it and keep using these
expressions. They consider it as a jargon, the use of which will keep the cus-
tomer satisfied. A positive side-effect is that this saves energy (see the exam-
ple in section 3.3.2, b above).
e) Performance, Presentation, Prosody

Performance skills or the capability to give a well-received target speech
presentation means regulating different forces in such a way that the cus-
tomer is not constantly reminded of the interposition of an interpreter, and if
he is that he may still enjoy a pleasant delivery. The ingredients are to re-
main quiet and at ease; to keep one’s body at some distance from the booth
desk and in an upright position so as to allow room for breathing; and to
concentrate on a pleasant voice, felicitous prosody, neutral accent, syntactic
and articulatory fluency, and a balanced décalage. Another additive is to
improvise rather than to keep correcting oneself (unless there is a serious
mistake) and to avoid hesitations and breaks. It is seen as indispensable not
to let the listener notice any degree of stress, exhaustion, nervousness, or
other tension on the part of the interpreter and to make things as non-
imposing and untiring as possible for the listener. For some the ideal is “to
lure and take the listener on a voyage”by “using one’s voice to comment on
what is happening out there in the conference setting” (I-7) or to deliver a
“polished” (I-7) target speech. In any case “it takes effort and commitment
for an interpreter to go unnoticed” (I-3).
3.4 Post-process skills

In the interviews, very little was said in terms of post-process operations, so
only two subskills are integrated in the model at this point.
a) Terminology wrap-up
The interviewees did not give any priority to updating glossaries and data-
bases on the basis of new terminological findings and insights from the con-
ference (cf. Kalina 2006: 257) as they did for the preparatory work. In fact, it
seemed to be a much neglected part of the interpreter’s work. Therefore, the
subskills involved and other post-process operations may have to be inves-
tigated further.
b) Quality control
With regards to quality control, the required skill mentioned is a certain self-
critical openness. Even (or especially) after years and years of practice, inter-
preters find it very useful to record their interpreting performance (where
possible) every now and then, and to scan the tapes for bad habits and
quirks that keep creeping in unnoticed. Ten minutes are often enough to
filter out unwanted markers, such as repeated “ums”, an unpleasant voice,
tense articulation, heavy breathing, exaggerated accents, uneven décalage,
disfluencies, and so forth. As mentioned before, some colleagues make ar-
rangements to keep a watchful eye on each other in the booth and to inform
each other later about what they noticed and what needs to be corrected.
They emphasize, however, that boothmates should be corrected only when
they want or ask for feedback, and when it is a colleague with whom one is
familiar. In general, the statements of the professional interpreters on their
quality control practices are in line with findings from research on expertise
in interpreting and deliberate practice (cf. Ericsson 52007; Motta 2011).
3.5 Para-process skills

As mentioned above, talking about interpreting proper paints only half the
picture. An important part of the interpreter’s activity is of an entrepreneu-
rial, customer relations, and deontological nature. Moreover, there are a
number of overarching personal competences typical of a successful inter-
preter, such as autonomy, life-long learning, and meta-reflection (cf. also

Kiraly 2006: 73-74). All of these skills affect the overall process, and thus, all
(pre-, peri-, in-, post-) dimensions and subprocesses of an assignment.
a) Business know-how, customer relations, and professional standards

In the interviews, the interpreters spoke at great length about the wider
business and customer-related skills which are essential to be successful. A
freelance interpreter (whether in the EU or in the private market) is “a one-
person very small-scale enterprise” (I-6). She needs to know how to set up a
business and acquire assignments, how to deal with tax matters and ac-
counting, how to prepare quotes and contracts, how to negotiate agreements
and to go about litigation or non-paying customers, what retirement provi-
sions to take, and so forth.
Customer relations and negotiation know-how are felt to be of particular
importance. It is not enough to acquire a customer. Administering an as-
signment covers customer contact and care from the very beginning right to
the very end. The various steps reported (especially by I-7) are: ask the
“right” questions (so as not to get trapped in an assignment where the work-
ing conditions are inadequate, e.g., number of interpreters and teams, tour
guide system vs. booth, working hours, etc.); provide consulting for the
customers (most of them know little of the prerequisites of successful medi-
ated communication); negotiate the terms of a contract (how early a train to
catch, or when to claim an extra night’s stay in the hotel, etc.); write an offer;
organize travel and decide what to wear; address the on-site organizer or
customer representative (a friendly word of introduction is better than a
grumbling note of dissatisfaction at not finding certain documents in the
booth; know what to say and what not to say, and when to address difficul-
ties, how to intervene, and when to make do with substandard conditions);
write a bill (does one have to sign it?); develop or work on a long-term con-
cept of customer contact.
Observing professional standards and enforcing good working condi-
tions goes hand in hand with thoroughly informing the customer, with ne-
gotiations that satisfy both parties, and especially with having an awareness
of one’s “own value” (I-7, I-8, I-9). An interpreter can professionally act, speak
out, and negotiate only when she is sure of the added value she provides
and when she is convinced that the daily rate is an adequate compensation
and necessary to make a living. Only then will she be able to show the kind
of polite determination required in negotiations with the customer (“and to
resist the procurement manager’s standard attempt at reducing the fees”, I-
9). Especially in times “when everybody ‘can’ English” (I-7) and when “my
secretary could do it, if she weren’t so busy” (I-8), it is not easy to sell one’s
expertise (cf. also Albl-Mikasa 2010).
The hard and soft skills mentioned in this section include the profes-
sional interpreter associations’ standards and codes of ethics (cf. AIIC 2000,
2009), which the interpreter must be fully aware of (e.g., proper [ethical]
handling of [confidential] information, rejection of jobs she is not qualified
for, fidelity towards the speaker, etc.). They touch upon how the interpreter
views herself as a professional and defines her role (cf. Pöchhacker 22007: 44-
45).
Moreover, they include the freelancer’s skill to act autonomously (cf. Ki-
raly 2006: 73). An interpreter needs to be able to work independently with
no superior to tell her what to do, or when and in what order to do it. She
needs to manage her time, get the priorities right, set schedules, decide what
to do, when to have things ready, and how much time to spend on them.
b) Lifelong learning predilection

In the interviews, there was general agreement that lifelong learning is part
and parcel of being an interpreter. It is true that there is hardly any profes-
sion where continuing professional development is not required, but the
need for it applies to interpreting in particular. There, it is not like the odd
seminar a teacher or doctor will attend every now and then. It is more “like
playing an instrument – one has to keep at it” (I-5). The reason is that “any-
thing can crop up any time, it might not happen today, but tomorrow you
might be working for Heidi Klum” (I-2); moreover, it is far from seldom that
one is confronted with the Simpsons, Harry Potter, or Monica Lewinsky in
bon mots, analogies, or innuendoes delivered at conferences.
For some interpreters, lifelong learning is a part of their job, which they
enjoy in particular, for others it is an absolutely fundamental prerequisite.
For the latter, it is a kind of principle attitude an interpreter needs to assume,
some sort of disciplinary poise she has to exhibit. It includes a certain readi-
ness to accept assignments in very complicated fields, which take a lot of
arduous preparation, and to accept them even if there is a chance that the
topic will not recur and to do so for the simple fact that “anything makes
you advance” (I-8). Or as another interviewee pointed out (I-4), students,
even those who are fascinated by the beauty of language and enjoy eloquent
political discourse, but who are reluctant to prepare an assignment on fish-
ery or dairy products, lack the fundamental attitude an interpreter must
take. A true interpreter usually ends up being intrigued by even the driest of
subject matters. But at the very least there must be a general willingness to
work one’s way into any subject matter (content- and terminology-wise) and
to take a minimum interest in it. A corollary attitude is a certain basic mod-
esty; an acceptance that one always knows less than the expert and is capable
only of an approximation.
The willingness to keep learning all the time and the capacity to take an
interest in virtually everything is supported by a fundamental intellectual
curiosity and inquisitiveness, which seem to be characteristic of many inter-
preters. All interviewees report being constantly alert to language matters
and “never really switching off from working mode” (I-1). The reports range
from an insatiable appetite for all linguistic phenomena (I-1) and unquenchable
curiosity and openness (I-4) to resigning oneself to the fact that one is simply into
languages and would rather learn yet another language than pursue any other
hobby (I-5), from an unusually acute awareness for all language-related aspects in
any situation and non-stop preoccupation with language even in one’s leisure
time (I-7) to a playfulness in taking in language and constant awareness of what is
going on in the world (I-5), or a “tolerance” in the sense that nothing will ever be
considered not worth one’s attention (I-8), etc.
More concretely, many interpreters will never tune out, but try to clarify
language-related questions even over a non-work-related dinner; they will
astonish party guests with their inquiries into their professional back-
grounds and subject matters; they will closely look into grammatical struc-
tures (e.g., “the powers that be”, I-1), even if they are not of immediate use
for their work, or ponder about neologisms; they will hardly ever watch a
film without scanning the subtitles and comparing the versions; they will
not infrequently watch television with a notebook in hand to take down
felicitous solutions; they will feel like “a sponge” (I-7) and take in culture-
and language-related phenomena when travelling even to non-work-related
countries; they will read anything they come across; they will immediately
check terminological and pronunciation problems as they arise, and recog-
nize the “intrinsic fascination of industrial floor coverings” (I-8).
c) Meta-reflection
As described above, interpreters always seem to turn at least one ear to-
wards language. As a result there is a great amount of meta-awareness when
it comes to language-related matters: They take in and analyze linguistic,
translation-related, cultural, or other information as they come across it and
think about where and when to follow the trend to use anglicisms and when
not. As one interpreter put it:
It’s a bit pathological; one is constantly on a kind of meta-level thinking about
whom one is talking to and in which way to accommodate. The monitoring mode
is always on stand-by, even if I don’t act on it. (I-10)
This means that accommodation, which, as mentioned above, is a common
feature of all communication, happens in a much more conscious way with
the interpreter.
What interpreters are less inclined to do is to systematically reflect on
what exactly it is they are doing. The theory of interpreting is still frowned
upon. There is little awareness that “meta-knowledge”, that is, a compact

knowledge about one’s knowledge of patterns, operations, and solutions, is
an essential part of interpreting competence (cf. Kutz 2010: 205-206, 227),
because it can be a more efficient pathway for progression than the usual
tedious trial-and-error method.13 When directly addressing this topic with
the interpreters, however, one finds a surprising openness and at least a
feeling that there might by some truth in it.
What interpreters do reflect about is their goals regarding their own per-
formance or the contribution they make to the communicative event for
which they are contracted. Interpreters aim for organizers to realize the
benefit that interpreter services can provide and for giving them “the com-
fort that everything runs smoothly” (I-7). Their agenda is to enter each and
every assignment with the clear “will to communicate and not to see it as an
unpleasant duty” (I-8) or not to approach it as a matter of routine, but “to
give their best on each occasion” (I-3). Whether this is a general attitude, a
personal requirement, or a well-defined goal, the subcompetence to set out
the aims to be achieved and align them with what one is doing is (according
to constructive alignment theory, cf. Biggs and Tang 2007) crucial for suc-
cessful performance.
4 Crossing over to another dimension of interpreter competence
I turned to an adapted version of Kalina’s (2006) pre-, peri-, in-, and post-
process model (extended by the para-process dimension) because it seemed
to be a fitting framework for a detailed process- and experience-based de-
scription of the skills of the ten professional conference interpreters I inter-
viewed. Of the subskills involved, these interpreters paint an intriguingly
differentiated picture, which (not too earnestly) can be summarized by an
adapted version of the “Serenity prayer”: God grant me the serenity to accept
things as they come, the courage to make sense even of the inscrutable and the wis-
dom to know the difference between what is relevant and what is not. Whether in
pre-, peri-, in-, post-, or para-processing, a certain trade-off, weighing-up, or
relativization are always involved. The task would be too complex, the im-
ponderabilia too incalculable, and the subskills too numerous to be too ear-
nest about each of them. Instead, the operational skills are complemented by
an attitudinal openness and a feeling not to burn for one particular thing,
but to want to dig into almost all things up to a certain degree.
13 The way in which such meta-knowledge can be highly effective was convincingly laid
out by Ursula Gross-Dinter (2009) in her talk at the GAL conference in Karlsruhe and is
described in some detail in Kutz (2010: 233-258). Much earlier, it was highlighted by
Kalina (1991).
What struck me is the observation that even in this small and rather ho-
mogenous group of interviewees there is a great deal of individuality and
subjective ways in the views, perceptions, and dealings (see, for instance, the
attitudes regarding speaker fidelity in section 3.3.3 above). From a cognitive
perspective this is to some extent obvious. Whatever cognitive activity peo-
ple engage in (e.g., learning a language), it is matched and carried out
against their own inner requirements (cf. Kohn’s 1990 performance model),
ways of thinking, and styles of experiencing things. Analyzing the interview
corpus, I have been led to think that translation competence cannot be seen
in isolation, that is, separate from the personal requirements translators
(consciously and unconsciously) bring to bear on their work (and which go
beyond what is described by the notion of “self-concept/professional ethos”,
cf. Göpferich 2009: 22).
The interaction of (intersubjective) skills and (subjective) requirements
will be dealt with in a follow-up paper. Suffice it to say at this point that
interpreter subcompetences are manifold and interact in intricate ways and
that I have always stood in some awe of Sylvia Kalina’s triple expertise as a
researcher, teacher/didactics specialist, and professional conference inter-
preter.
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my sincere thanks to each and every one of those 10 inter-
preters who shared their personal experience and granted me these valuable
insights into their métier with such frankness and generosity.
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Michaela Albl-Mikasa: Professor of Interpreting Studies at the Zurich Uni-

versity of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland. Up until 2011 she was a
lecturer and research fellow in Applied English Linguistics at the University
of Tübingen and in Interpreting Studies and Applied Linguistics at the
ZHAW. She holds degrees from the universities of Heidelberg (Dipl.-Dolm.
in Conference Interpreting), Cambridge (MPhil in International Relations),
and Tübingen (Dr Phil in Applied Linguistics). Her dissertation on a cogni-
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ests focus on interpreter competence and the implications of English as a
lingua franca for the interpreting profession.

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In Barbara Ahrens / Michaela Albl-Mikasa / Claudia Sasse (Hg.) (2012).

The importance of being not too earnest:

1 Introducing interpreter competence

The work presented in this chapter on interpreter competence draws on a

1 The work was sponsored by ZHAW-internal IFEF project funds.

competence”, and “social competence” (cf. Kiraly 2006: 72-75).5 Interpreters,

2 Modeling interpreter competence

As mentioned before, the model’s architecture is an adaptation of Kalina’s

This results in the conceptualization shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1: Process- and experienced-based model of interpreter competence

3 Fleshing out abstract notions of interpreter competence

The following presentation of interpreter subskills concentrates on confer-

8 It also applies to consecutive interpreting, where, however, additional skills regarding

3.1 Pre-process skills

a) High-level command of working languages

English A colleague” (I-7). The problem is aggravated by the increase in

b) Low-key computer-assisted terminology management

10 An interpreter-specific terminological database is, for instance, “LookUp”, designed by

most important terms and concepts specifically earmarked in the database

c) A generalist’s informed semi-knowledge

(e.g., an annual general meeting of shareholders (AGM) or a press conference on

d) Streamlined assignment preparation

3.2 Peri-process skills

a) Teamwork and a cooperative attitude

are contracted by other interpreters acting as conference organizers and

c) Professionalism between instinct and a sense of realism

intuitive sense is that it goes beyond what is generally understood by “pro-

d) Pressure resistance and frustration tolerance

3.3 In-process skills

3.3.1 Comprehension skills

a) Below-expert scanning, identifying, and matching

sible on a highly superficial level (this, however, is more of a standard strat-

c) ELF (English as a lingua franca) compensation

3.3.2 Transfer skills

12 In addition to simultaneous listening, speaking/writing, and monitoring, consecutive

b) Capacity relief measures

3.3.3 Production skills

a) Synchronicity and décalage modulation

c) Balancing act between speaker fidelity and audience design

again is a critical decision, as target audiences are rarely clearly defined.

d) ELF (English as a lingua franca) accommodation

e) Performance, Presentation, Prosody

3.4 Post-process skills

3.5 Para-process skills

preter, such as autonomy, life-long learning, and meta-reflection (cf. also

a) Business know-how, customer relations, and professional standards

b) Lifelong learning predilection

upon. There is little awareness that “meta-knowledge”, that is, a compact

4 Crossing over to another dimension of interpreter competence

AIIC – Association Internationale des Interprètes de Conférence (2009). Code of ethics.

Chabasse, Cathérine (2009). Eignungstest für das Simultandolmetschen: Erstellung

Michaela Albl-Mikasa: Professor of Interpreting Studies at the Zurich Uni-

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