Investigating Omission in Simultaneous Interpreting from English into Arabic (original) (raw)

Simultaneous interpreting is the process of oral conversion of a message from the original language into the target language at a real time. Cognitively, it would seem to make considerable demands on the interpreter‖s cognitive processing mechanisms and consequently poses cognitive pressure on interpreters and causes omissions in the target message. In this context, omission seems to better be avoided during the simultaneous interpreting task. However, some omissions are highly recommended to improve the quality of the interpreting and clarify the ambiguous aspects for the audience. In order to study the strategic and nonstrategic omission in simultaneous interpreting, two groups of interpreters conduct a simultaneous interpreting task from English into Arabic. In this study, participants‖ interpretations are qualitatively analysed to identify the omissions made by the interpreters and to determine whether it is strategic or nonstrategic based on the participants‖ post task reports. Moreover, a quantitative analysis is made to count the number of omission type based on Bariks‖ (1971) taxonomy of omission in simultaneous interpreting. The study hypothesized that, due to experience and training, experts strategically make greater omission for unnecessary and redundant structures while students resort to omitting significant information which affect negatively on the interpreter‖s performance and distort the interpreting process.