The “Inner Speech” of the Interpreter

In the process of perception and understanding the sense of the SL messages there is another mechanism – the so–called “inner speech” of the interpreter, which functions as an intermediary language between the SL message and its rendering into the TL.

Practice shows that this mechanism is subconsciously always “present” in interpreting and is confined first to “translation” of the SL message into the inner speech of the interpreter and only then – to rendering the message by the appropriate means of the TL. In other words, it means that, having perceived the SL message, the interpreter “unpacks” its sense by “translating” the message first from the source language into the source language (“what did the speaker have in mind?”) by “browsing” through a set of synonyms and choosing the appropriate one and selecting the necessary translation transformation. Having done that, the interpreter “fills in” his inner speech by the material of the TL (“what and how I would say this as an interpreter”).

It means that interpreting undergoes three stages before the translated message is actually pronounced by the interpreter:

Let's illustrate the above considerations by example of the speech of Mr B.Oliynyk at the Plenary Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg (1999):

І все ж змушений зазначити, щo y висновках шановних доповідачів та в Резолюції та Рекомендаціях відчувається певна незбалансованість у позитивах та негативах. Останнім надається, як на мене, перевага за рахунок перших.

These utterances, if converted into the “inner speech” of the interpreter and then “materialized” in Ukrainian, may obtain the following form:

Я все ж змушений зазначити, що у висновках шановних доповідачів та в Резолюції та Рекомендаціях Асамблеї відчувається брак збалансованості між позитивними та негативними оцінками ситуації в Україні. Негативні оцінки, як на мене, переважають над позитивними.

After such conversion the interpreter finally understands the sense of all message and is in a position to start interpreting which may result in the following product:

And still I have to underscore that there is a certain imbalance between positive and negative assessments of the situation in Ukraine in the conclusion by highly esteemed Reporters and in the Resolution and Recommendations of the Assembly. To my mind, negative assessments prevail over the positive ones.

It's worth mentioning that in interpreting the Ukrainian message into English certain expansion of semantic content is observed, i.e. a number of additional words (marked by underlining) is used for the listener (recipient) to understand the message better.