Post date: Sep 29, 2014 8:3:3 AM
As a consecutive interpreter, one thing really drives me up the wall (OK, as you may know by now, there are many things that drive me up the wall, but a person's got to stick to just one thing for a blog post, OK?).
I'm talking about the sheer difficulty of rendering meaning precisely (in both transcultural and translingual terms) over a long session, segment after segment after segment. I like to think of the "arc of meaning" in each segment (I literally visualize an arc shape), the aim being to render that "arc of meaning" as precisely and comprehensively as possible. Every phrase, every sentence, every segment, every conversation, and ultimately every "mission", has its own internal arc of meaning, and each of the arcs of meaning at each different level contributes to a cohesive whole.
So where is my theory of interpreting, my toolbox to help me understand this process, and perform as well as I possibly can? I've got the translation textbooks - can somebody tell me where to find the interpreting ones?