Coping With Embedded Structures in Simultaneous Interpreting: a Case Study of Students Interpreting From English to French

Abstract

Conference interpreting deals exclusively with oral communication: rendering a message from one language into another, naturally and fluently, adopting the delivery, tone and convictions of the speaker and speaking in the first person. This is very demanding depending on the speaker and the language in use. The difficulties are not the same for example when one is interpreting into the first language as to when interpreting into the second language. It may get more complex if the speaker uses embedded structures such as idiomatic expressions or phrasal verbs in the speech. This study aims at establishing the extent to which embedded structures such as idiomatic expressions pose a challenge to interpreters and how this challenge may be handled.