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Sylvia Kalina. Strategische Prozesse beim Dolmetschen: theoretische Grundlagen,

empirische Fallstudien, didaktische Konsequenzen. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag 1998,
304 pp. ISBN 3-8233-4941-4. DM 78.00.

This thesis, the second on interpreting in Gunter Narr’s Language in Performance series,
bears the familiar hallmarks of German-language interpreting research: a text-linguistics
approach and the concern to stay linked to Translation Studies. Here the emphasis is on
training: deploring that the existing literature rarely shows how to translate
theory/experiments into training goals or validate training principles by theory, the author
aims to construct a systematic interpreter training programme with clearly defined goals,
grounded in observational and experimental research and a theory of speech communication.
The first two chapters provide an overview of the history, modalities and conditions
of interpreting and its relationship with ordinary communication and written translation
followed by extensive reviews and discussion of T & I research and theory (particularly
German-language writing) and some more selective highlights from psychology,
psycholinguistics and discourse analysis. Chapter 3 presents the author’s model of
interpreting as a strategic process of mediated communication, based on van Dijk and
Kintsch (1983) and a definition of ‘strategic’ processes. Diagrams show how ‘text worlds’
and texts—mental models and productions—are constructed in successive steps by the
participants in ordinary and mediated communication. Numerous interpreting strategies are
postulated: for comprehension (preparation, inferencing, anticipation, chunking); production
(e.g. syntactic transformation); ‘emergency’ strategies to reduce load or recover
communication goals (generalisation, selection, compression, deletion, repair); and more,
classified as target-text oriented (retrieval, lag adjustment, stylistic), ‘global’ and/or partly
automated (self-monitoring).
Chapter 4 begins with a gloomy review of the current state of IR methodology and
proposes a new, auxiliary type of (introspective) data, the Retrospective Interpreter Protocols
(RDPs) - comments prompted by playing a dual-track recording back to the interpreter
within 10 minutes of the end of the task - to generate and reinforce hypotheses about
interpreting processes. Experiments and observations are reported on a fairly wide range of
real and simulated corpora, interviews and questionnaires, and are conveniently summarised
with findings in a table (pp. 178-181). Strategies recognised in the corpora and problems
encountered by interpreters are described, and the methodological contribution of RDPs is
discussed. A short interlinear SI transcript is given to illustrate the phenomena.
Chapter 5 sets out the author’s proposals for systematic interpreter training, conceived
of as ‘learner-based’ acquisition of strategic behaviours according to carefully defined
incremental learning goals. This includes ingenious and well-motivated suggestions for
training exercises, some new, some variations on existing techniques: code-switching (not
transcodage, but practice in switching from one language to another); clozing (particularly
its dynamic, oral adaptations); sight translation (with variants such as scrolling, polishing in
successive passes, or adding constraints incrementally); paraphrasing transformation (starting
monolingually); and shadowing (but only in forms involving some element of cognitive
processing, e.g. combined with clozing or allowing spontaneous paraphrase).
The main contribution of this book is undoubtedly in the wealth of useful and well-
motivated variants of exercises proposed, with the welcome call for systematic training based
on a progression of clear learning goals for the students. Readers of German will also find
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this a valuable guide to the existing literature: each section begins (and is often intertwined)
with a conscientious review showing an impressive range of reading: theoretical and training
contributions are cited from as far afield as Mexico and Taiwan (but not Japan), and reports
of work in Russia and Eastern Europe which will be new and useful to many readers. The
even-handed reviewing and due credit given to rival theories are particularly welcome.
For the more specialised researcher, however, there is perhaps too much review
material. This consists of digests of various authors in which promising suggestions
(particularly those in a functional or text-linguistic vein) are flagged for later use, provided
they show due recognition of the ‘whole matrix of conditions (Gefüge)’ an interpreter must
contend with. These ‘adverse conditions’ (passim) underpin the theory of interpretation-
specific strategies, and will subsequently be invoked as conditioning variables for error
analysis, quality assessment, and performance evaluation generally. Much of the translation
theory is of limited relevance and might have been cut; while the excursions into promising
fields like psycholinguistics, pragmatics or discourse analysis (terms which seem to be used
almost interchangeably) do not really go anywhere. On controversial or highly polarised
issues (teaching note-taking for consecutive, or shadowing as an introduction to SI) Kalina
takes a sensible middle path.
The application of theory to corpus analysis is not the book’s strong suit, and readers
looking for any empirically-based hardening of the discipline will be disappointed. The
source model for (unmediated) ‘on-line’ discourse processing is based on monolingual recall
tasks (van Dijk & Kintsch 1983), and the derived mediated communication model
(apparently for both consecutive and SI) seems rather simple in view of the frequent
admonishments about complexity. Texts and text-worlds are said to be constructed in parallel
and to interact, accompanied and informed by ‘text-relevant linguistic and world knowledge’
(pp. 107-108), but nothing much is said about constraints, interpretation-specific or
otherwise. The definition of strategic processes (under intentional control but not necessarily
planned) is so broad as to include virtually everything, from listening to ‘inference’ to voice
modulation in production, and becomes still fuzzier with the (acknowledged) difficulty of
distinguishing deliberate from automatic processes (p. 128).
The method of analysis is essentially to define strategic behaviours, recognise them in
interpretation products, and corroborate this by means of interviews, questionnaires and
RDPs (retrospective interpreter protocols). One novelty, however, is the most extensive use
made so far of these protocols. The author is aware that they involve an additional recall task,
and that the drawbacks are numerous: large inter-subject variations in verbalising, under-
verbalisation of intermediate phases and of processing steps deemed unsuccessful, and the
risk of post-hoc rationalisation, reduction or elaboration, or of false or excessive
verbalisation to satisfy the researcher. To get at the truth about strategic processes, raw data
must be sorted out from the subject’s post-rationalisations; but no details or examples of this
procedure are given (pp. 146-148). Such introspective data may be helpful, as the author
modestly suggests, as an additional, complementary source for hypothesis formation, but not
verification. The discussion of the validity of RDPs is not very reassuring: apart from being
biased towards conscious processes, ‘incomplete’ and ‘not to be seen as verbal descriptions
of actual operations’, they are in fact ‘neither reliable nor objective’ (p. 154). Not least, the
technique is only effective for pilot studies with students, but not for professional SI, where a
high degree of automaticity is assumed. The reader can be forgiven for some scepticism at
this point.
The author is more than honest about the validity of her observational findings: she
wonders aloud whether interpreting lends itself to empirical study; points out that any
transcription is subjective; believes, indeed, that recordings of all types (including dual-track
and audiovisual) are unreliable, and certainly not accurate enough to study, for example,
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anticipation. RDPs also failed to provide the expected insights into anticipation and
inference. The findings summarised in Chapter 4 remain speculative, particularly when they
take the form that observed behaviour A is an illustration of strategy/cognitive phenomenon
X, and rather meagre, for instance that contextual knowledge is important for filling in gaps,
that preparation helps in difficult conditions, or that students make more speech errors than in
ordinary speech. The sheer weight of caveats, doubts and reservations has already shaken our
faith, and in the end the author admits that ‘no reliable findings’ emerge from these
investigations, which serve essentially to ‘clarify goals for future research’ (p. 217).
This is a shame, since some observations are intriguing—for instance, that
anticipation appears to be enabled by a complex of factors, not classifiable into ‘linguistic’
and ‘sense’ based (Lederer 1978) or ‘syntactic’ vs. ‘lexical’ (Wilss 1978); or that
restructuring or ‘free transformations’ are widespread in professional SI, even in difficult
conditions, suggesting they are ‘apparently not cognitively costly [...] or that interpreters
willingly undertake them for whatever reason’ (p. 193). But possible conclusions we might
draw are blocked by assumptions declared earlier, such as the rejection of any intermediate
non-linguistic representation, or the assumed (but unspecified) correlation between discourse
features and ‘cognitive load’. Linguists and anthropologists will be puzzled to read that
interpreters sometimes have to interpret from a ‘high-redundancy language or culture [sic]
into a denser one...’ (p. 114, p. 119).
The impression of rigour conveyed by the caveats about methodology and
uncontrolled variables is sometimes marred by loose or indulgent writing: ‘[we] also took
into account the Speaker’s potential intention and assumed audience requirements’ (p. 194).
Sections where nothing could be discovered (such as the brief discussion of Addressee
expectations) might have been left out, since the temptation to say something regardless leads
to empty and sometimes contradictory statements: ‘our corpora show effective use of
intonation’ and ‘interpreters use more tonic stress than normal speakers...in order to make the
target text as communicatively effective as possible...’ (p. 200), but ‘prosodic features [...]
such as intonation contours and pauses ‘are mostly non-strategic signs of uncertainty, stress
or capacity overload [...] or failures in strategic competence (ability to reduce load)’ (p. 200).
This obscures some more interesting observations, e.g. ‘heavy stress by the interpreter may
help [her] to clarify information structure and content to herself and keep the phonic trace
accessible to self-monitoring for as long as possible’ (p. 200). Again, we are interested to
hear that Kalina has evidence to refute Anderson’s (1994) finding that advance preparation
has relatively little impact on performance, but no details are given (p. 203).

Any attempt to bring theory and empirical findings together to motivate training
recommendations must be ambitious. Ultimately, the three components announced in the
sub-title (theory, empirical studies and training proposals) are more adjacent than articulated;
no real link is established between the theoretical exposition (and model) and the subsequent
corpus analysis and observations; the ideas gleaned from ‘psycholinguistics’ literature are not
visibly applied, apart from recognising some CI notes as ‘macrostructural’ à la van Dijk and
Kintsch (1983). The corpus analysis amounts to posthoc recognition of the postulated
strategic behaviours as defined and classified a priori, rather than any attempt to decide
between alternative explanations. Conclusions are reached by selective accumulation.

All this serves as a reminder that interpreting research—as indeed its source disciplines—is
still in the pre-paradigm stage of ‘interschool debate and the constant reiteration of
fundamentals’, when ‘all the facts...are likely to seem equally relevant’ (Kuhn (1962) 1996:
15-17). But more evidence from real corpora is always welcome; the experimental use of
introspective data is interesting, and the best documented so far, and the work has definite
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reference value for readers of German as a fairly comprehensive review of the training
literature. The main contribution, however, is in the substantial and well-thought-out
blueprint for interpreter training, which this reviewer might be forgiven for attributing to the
more valid empirical basis (and no apologies are necessary) of the author’s twenty years’
experience of practice and training. It should certainly be made available, through journal
articles, to a non-German readership.
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References

Anderson, Linda (1994). Simultaneous Interpretation. Contextual and Translation Aspects. In

Sylvie Lambert and Barbara Moser-Mercer (eds.) Bridging the Gap: Empirical Research on
Simultaneous Interpretation (pp. 101-120). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.

Lederer, Marianne. (1978). Simultaneous Interpretation - Units of Meaning and other

Features. In David Gerver and Wallace H. Sinaiko (eds.), Language Interpretation and
Communication. (pp. 323-332). New York: Plenum Press.

Wilss, Wolfram. (1978). Syntactic anticipation in German-English simultaneous

interpretation. In David Gerver and Wallace H. Sinaiko (eds.), Language Interpretation and
Communication. (pp. 335-43). New York: Plenum Press.

Van Dijk, Teun & Kintsch, Walter. (1983). Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New
York: Academic Press.