UNIT 2

PERCEPTION AND UNDERSTANDING OF MESSAGES IN INTERPRETING

Main points

2.1 Perception and understanding of the sense of oral messages

2.2 The “inner speech” of the interpreter

2.3 Is interpreting possible without “understanding” the sense?

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1. Perception and understanding of the sense of oral messages First of all it is necessary to define the terms of “perception” and “understanding”

as instruments inherent in the process of interpreting, as we assume that there is a certain difference between these two notions.

By the term “perception” we will label the mental interpretation (here the term “interpretation” means сприйняття, “ментальна обробка”, перцепція повідомлення but not “усний переклад”) of physical sensations produced by the stimuli from the external world or, to put it differently, – recognition of language signs using interpreter’s sensations, such as “hearing” the phonic substance of the source language (SL) sign and ability to find a substitute for it in the target language (TL).

By the term “understanding” we will label the mental grasp or comprehension of the source language sign, which presumes that interpreter has some knowledge of what the sign means, what the nature of the notion or process denoted by the sign is, what its “sense” is, i.e. what actually stands behind this sign.

Consecutive and simultaneous interpreting (in the “ideal” situation) is a process of continuous perceiving and comprehending the semantic structure of messages, of “unpacking” their sense. This is conditioned by the fact that the interpreter seeks to render the sense of “complete” thoughts of the speaker [Чернов 1987: 132]. In real-life verbal communication phonemes (sounds) make up words, words make up the syntagmatic structure (syntax) of speech messages from which the whole of the orally produced text is constructed. Thus efforts of the interpreter are aimed at looking for sense of the messages perceived, which enables the interpreter to comprehend the communicative intent of the message and to convey it correctly. Interpreters do not render the “dictionary meanings” of language signs, but select from a variety of these meanings the sense which is appropriate for the particular utterance and which is generated in speech in a particular discourse, in the communicative situation of the interpretation session.

Thus “sense” of a language sign is a meaning conveyed, i.e. selected from a range of meanings of a sign (a word, a phrase or a complete utterance) with reference to the subject field of interpreting. An interpreter, having comprehended senses of signs, transforms them into objects of real world, thus creating in his mind the “picture of the world” reflected in the oral message – an indispensable element of oral communication (see more on the mechanisms of understanding sense in oral discourse in Жинкин 1982: 76-116) and, consequently, starts interpreting. Comprehension of the sense of the utterance is the stage, which “triggers” the start of translation and if comprehension of the sense is inadequate, the operational memory of interpreter becomes overloaded and translation is performed in a word-for-word mode, which is far from being perfect [Чернов 1987: 225; Ширяев 1979: 19-20].