Acquiring the Language of Interpreters: A Corpus-based Approach

Abstract

This paper examines some characteristics of interpreter discourse in a corpus of European parliament proceedings, arguing that the language of fluent interpreters relies heavily on recurrent formulaic phraseologies. The use of these formulae arguably reduces the simultaneous interpreter’s effort to negotiate the “tightrope” of balancing competing demands on limited cognitive resources—as well as affective ones. Since formulaic phraseologies are seemingly stored in memory as single lexical units with default prosodies, they can therefore be produced (or indeed slightly modified) with little processing work, providing a resource which facilitates fluent speech production in particularly stressful contexts. The literature however suggests that the formulaic repertoire of second language speakers is generally much smaller than that of first language speakers, hence pointing to the need for interpreters working into their second language to enlarge this repertoire as far as possible. Even where working into their first language, extending their second language repertoire may facilitate the task of the interpreter by reducing the processing load in reception. In consequence it is suggested that the training of simultaneous interpreters should place considerable emphasis on the acquisition and use phraseological units, many of which have default lexicogrammatical and prosodic structures which go beyond the traditional emphases in terminology, both in size and in scope. This need emerges clearly from the analysis of European Parliament interpreting transcripts, where we find such recurrent phraseologies used as give the floor to (linked to turn-taking management) and we need to ensure that (linked to justification).