Acquisition of interpreting strategies by student interpreters

To explore the acquisition of interpreting strategies by student interpreters, the present study first built a framework of 22 strategies based on a thorough literature review, and then identified and compared 21 strategies adopted by 66 student interpreters in a task of B-to-A consecutive interpreting (CI) between two training stages (2nd month and end of an academic year). Quantitative and qualitative analyses of interpreting performance, substantiated by retrospection and interview data, resulted in two major findings. First, as interpreting training proceeded, these students employed more frequently the strategies that interpreting instructors recommended (Type-A strategies, e.g. explicitation), and less frequently the strategies that the instructors advised them to use with caution (Type-B strategies, e.g. approximation) and the strategies that the instructors did not recommend (Type-C strategies, e.g. guessing). Second, the frequency of Type-A strategies positively correlated with interpreting performance, and that of Type-C strategies negatively correlated, especially at Stage 2. In addition, our retrospection and interview data indicated that, for these unbalanced L2 learners, strategy use mostly aimed for better information accuracy and completeness, especially at Stage 2. These results suggest that strategy training is effective, and strategy acquisition is plausible.