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Article published In:
Babel
Vol. 61:2 (2015) ► pp.170–192

Putting interpreting strategies in their place

Justifications for teaching strategies in interpreter training

The term strategy is increasingly mentioned in the interpreting literature. Individual strategies have been approached from various perspectives by a number of interpreting research scholars. Those strategies are used by interpreters to cope with cognitive constraints, interpreting mode-specific difficulties, and language- and culture-specific constraints. Given its importance, the author argues to include strategy training in interpreter education based on a synthesis of evidence from the current literature. This article firstly presents a state-of-theart review of research on the defining features of strategies and their varieties. It then validates the contribution of strategy training to interpreter education in terms of overcoming cognitive constraints, combating interpreting mode-specific constraints, coping with language- and culture-specific constraints, conforming to interpreting norms, revealing problem-solution relations in the interpreting process, highlighting novice-expert differences for pedagogical use, and leading to interpreter competence development. The article also provides a brief demonstration of how to teach strategies to trainees. Hopefully, this article can inspire interpreter trainers to recognize the importance of strategies and include strategy training in their teaching.

Keywords: justification, strategy training, interpreter training, constraints, norms
Published online: 29 October 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.61.2.02li
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