The Strategic Behavior of Undergraduate Students in Simultaneous Interpreting

Abstract

This paper aimed at identifying and describing strategies employed by senior students in Simultaneous Interpreting (SI) in the translation program, University of Science and Technology, Sana’a – Yemen. It also attempted to establish a correlation between students’ use of interpreting strategies and their results in summative assessment. To achieve these objectives, 21 senior students were selected to interpret an English audio into Arabic. Their interpreting performance was analyzed in order to investigate the frequency of using interpreting strategies and explain reasons for strategy selection. The total frequency of strategy use of each student was compared with his/her final SI result. The study findings suggested that students’ strategy use was highly governed by their aim to minimize processing capacity requirements and to recover the source text message. There was also evidence that the use of interpreting strategies could positively affect students’ interpreting quality. The paper concluded by providing some useful recommendations for interpreter training.