Anticipation in Simultaneous Interpretation

Anticipation is an important technique of simultaneous interpreting, which becomes possible due to the natural redundancy of speech and its patterned character. Human mind records certain patterns of the past experience, which are "activated" each time a person appears to be in a similar situation. Having been once bitten by a dog, which had suddenly jumped out of the bushes in the park, a jogger would anticipate this unpleasant situation each time he jogs for pleasure and stay on alert running by the bushes with the pattern “beware of dogs!” in his mind. Similarly, knowing the tradition to send Valentine cards on 14 February, it is easy to anticipate that, if a young man says to his girlfriend:" There will be St. Valentine's Day soon and I will send you...", the most probable word to appear is a card. Naturally, one may send roses, a bottle of wine or a computer virus, but the probability of a card in the given "patterned context" is much higher. Therefore, anticipations in oral discourse may rank from the most probable to the least probable ones. The situation may, though, turn the other way round: a person anticipates certain things to happen or to be said, but instead gets something unexpected or totally different.

This frustrated expectancy effect (ефект обманутого очікування) is often used in films and in the popular TV shows to make participants' hearts sank: " Так ви вважаєте свою відповідь вірною? Ви гарно подумали?1все ж таки хочете відповісти саме так? Ну, тоді я маю вам сказати, що ваша відповідь... (pause)... є абсолютно вірною! ”

The frustrated expectancy factor may be used by speakers in telling jokes and anecdotes, e.g. "He плюй у криницю... – * вилетить, не спіймаєш.¹ "; "Чим далі в ліс... – * тим товстіші партизани ". In such "sensitive" cases interpreters should not rely upon their anticipation and never translate a joke until the speaker finishes telling it.

To anticipate further information the interpreter must correctly understand the communicative intent of the speaker (i.e. the effect the speaker might want to achieve by saying something) and also have profound background knowledge and good understanding of the subject field of interpretation.

Anticipation in interpreting maybe achieved at the levels of a syllable, word, phrase, syntagma (a group of words with a common meaning and melody of pronunciation) or a complete message, thus leading to possible anticipation at the level of the whole communicative situation. Most syllables and words are meaningless without the context. However, initial syllables may help to comprehend certain words especially names of people, geographical names, non–equivalent lexical units, brands, trademarks, etc used in a particular discourse (e.g. Tony Blair. Microsoft Win dows, the Nether lands, Pana sonic. Internet, OS CE. GD P, VA T, Дніпро петровськ. Закар патт я. ВВ П, ПД В, etc).

Still, interpreters should be very careful with their anticipation at the syllabic level and never pronounce their TL option before the speaker pronounces the full word, phrase or even syntagma. Syllables may only "tune in" the interpreter's brain to a set of possible options (the set is limited by the probability of occurrence in the context) of the on–going part of the linguistic unit, thus making the final "hearing" and perception of what is being said by the speaker easier. But, obviously, hearing Tony does not guarantee that Blair will appear next (in may be any other name), as well as Microsoft may be followed not by Windows, but by Office or Encarta, Pana – not by – sonic but by – vision and Дніпро – not by –петровськ but by – дзержинськ. etc.

Most often anticipation starts at the level of a syntagma and develops when the speaker goes on with the message, becoming more reliable when set (patterned) expressions (pat phrases) or standard combinations or words (describing standard situations) are used, e.g.

The game is not worth the... (candle);

Protection of human... (rights);

Election of the Secretary... (General) – in the discourse of the Council of Europe, NATO or the United Nations;

Terrorist attacks in Baghdad and situation in... (Iraq);

Баба з воза –... (кобилі легше);

Побудова правової... (держави);

Функціонування у правовому... (полі);

Відмова від використання сили у розв'язанні... (міжнародних конфліктів);

Наприкінці січня наша делегація вирушає на сесію Парламентської Асамблеї Ради Європи у... (Страсбург).

Graphically the process of anticipation in interpreting maybe presented as follows:

These observations make it possible to assert that anticipation in interpreting is a kind of a cataphoric (forward) semantic link, which the interpreter establishes with the future context adjusting his mind and his thesaurus to the semantic patterns that are most likely to appear. It is rather a semantic pattern with a certain sense, but not exact words in this pattern, that is anticipated by the interpreter, because one and the same sense maybe rendered in speech by various words (contextual synonyms). Let us consider the following example:

Ми перебуваємо зараз на історичному для України перевалі, який збігається з рубежем → віків. І треба мати чітке уявлення про стан, завдання, можливості та перспективи розвитку → держави і суспільства.

The probability of appearance of Ukrainian words 1) на перевалі, перехрес ті, етапі. 2) віків, століть, тисячоліть. 3) держави і суспільства, нашої держави. нашої країни. України is equally high because all of them render similar senses for the interpreter and thus represent identical semantic patterns. Therefore, the "operational memory" or thesaurus of the interpreter becomes "tuned" to the following anticipated English options: 1) at the stage, point, span, juncture, 2) centuries, millenniums. 3) of the state and society, of our state, of our country, of Ukraine and whatever option is chosen in simultaneous interpreting under the extreme limit of time (3–7 seconds), the corresponding senses (змісти) will be rendered correctly and, thus, the interpreter's task will be successfully completed.

Anticipation, though, does not take place in a "contextual vacuum". Anaphoric (backward) and exophoric (outward) semantic links are also of great importance. Thus, the message: "During this decade we have created thousands of new jobs. Today there is about a million people in employment in Wales" should be correctly rendered by the interpreter as "Зараз в Уельсі (або у Валлії) близько мільйона людей мають роботу (або працевлаштовані)". Possible confusion of in employment with unemployment, which may occur due to the poor sound or bad pronunciation of the speaker should not be the case due to the following reasons: 1) in the previous utterance the speaker mentioned the fact of creation of the new jobs (anaphoric link) and 2) interpreter must know that there is about 2,9 million of people in Wales altogether, so having 1 million of them unemployed would not be realistic (exophoric link).

Similarly, anticipating of the correct number of population in a phrase Зараз населення України складає біля → 49 мільйонів чоловік is possible because each professional simultaneous interpreter has to know the number of population of his country which is a part of the mandatory interpreter's background knowledge thesaurus.

Anticipation may, however, become difficult or impossible if the speaker uses a great number of numerals, proper names and items of specific national lexicon, which the interpreter cannot relate to any particular denotatum. In such situations interpreter may become "blind" for some time and "gaps" in interpreting are most likely to occur. One of the most typical cases is when Ukrainian or Russian speakers refer to their colleagues by their first names and patronymics (which says nothing to a foreign listener): Як щойно підкреслив Андрій Іванович.... If the interpreter doesn't know what particular family name Андрій Іванович is associated with, it is better to say: As the pr evious speaker/our colleague/the gentlemen in front of me has rightly remarked...". However, to avoid potential problems, interpreters are highly recommended to keep lists of participants of the conference with their first names, patronymics and family names correctly printed, as well as printouts of various diagrams, tables, transparencies or slides for the Microsoft Power Point presentations as reference materials in the simultaneous interpretation booth.

In cases when the speaker uses totally unknown to the interpreter names of people or geographical names, the only reasonable way out is to apply practical transcription, so that the "phonic substance" of the lexical unit is rendered more or less correctly, like in the following cases: Javier Solana – Хав'єр Солана; Chiswick – Чизвік; Newnham – Ньюнем: the town of Seixal near Lisbon – місто Сейшал поблизу Лісабона; Tottenham – Тоттнем. etc.

Make sight translation of the text: