The phenomenon of cryptic interference: some remarks concerning the process of translation on the basis of an empirical study of sight translation.

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to explore the nature of certain types of interaction between the source and the target language in the process of translation basing on the notion of language interference in the sense of any violation of the target language form or norm under the influence of the source language form or norm. It is suggested that apart from 'overt' manifestations of interference, that can be easily traced back to the source language, there also exists another type of interference, or 'cryptic' interference. Its mechanism consists in switching between the source and the target language, which affects the mental processing and results in producing instances of interference which can be traced back to the source language, however, not to the source language phrases, formulations, and lexical items found in the actual source language text; these phenomena are due to the process of re-analysis (or reformulation) of the source language message occurring before the actual translation is performed.

1. Introduction

The aim of this paper is to present the findings of an empirical study of the process of sight translation, based on an experiment during which eight translators with varying professional experience were asked to perform the same translational task. The goal of the experiment was to inspect the issues connected with language interference during interpreting. (1) Naturally, language interference can be a significantly variable factor and it is reasonable to assume that both its scope and amount change relative to interpreting conditions, e.g. whether a translation task is performed from or into one's native language.

The case in point here was to provide some insights into the mechanism of Foreign Language (FL) interference and the influence it exerts over the Native Language (NL) interpreting performance, as well as into the interpreters' shortcomings in their mother tongue.

After inspection of the results of the experiment it turned out that a number of translation errors (2) could not be ascribed to language interference as it is understood in foreign language teaching. (3) The subjects had certain problems also with the use of their native language, a phenomenon of large significance, since all of the experiment participants had Polish as their mother tongue. Most importantly, however, the experiment revealed that regardless of their professional experience, all translators produced instances of interference of a particular character, given the working name cryptic interference.

This paper is devoted to the description of its mechanism and the implications it may have for the mental aspects of the process of translation.

2. The experiment

The subjects of the experiment were two groups of four. The first group featured active interpreters with professional experience varying from 18 to 3 years in the trade. The second group featured individuals with little (or no) professional experience in interpreting, but with two years' training in interpreting. It was hoped that inclusion of interpreters with varying professional experience would broaden the research spectrum and thus help render more comprehensive results. The experiment was made up of two sight-translation exercises: two attempts at interpreting one text, the first one after a careful perusal of the Second Language (SL) text, the second one after studying a text used as a prompt for the second performance--a model translation of the original SL text. For this purpose an experienced professional translator (c. 20 years in the trade) had been asked to produce a model translation.

The text used in the experiment was carefully selected as it had to meet a number of requirements. It was to contain a selection of idiomatic phrases, stylistically specific for English and thus assumed to be difficult to render in a foreign language. The text selected was an authentic text, a news report from The Guardian Weekly of 25 April 1999.

The translator asked to produce a model Target Language (TL) text herself established the criteria of a model translation along the lines of an appropriate cultural transfer which would make the text understandable for the TL text reader, and use of good Polish at the same time. The third criterion was exactness of translation.

During the experiment the subjects were seated in interpreting booths. The SL text they were supposed to sight-translate was handed out and the experiment participants were asked to study it carefully for a maximum of 5 minutes, and subsequently to sight-translate it. On completion of this task they were handed in the TL (model) text and asked to study that text carefully for a maximum of 10 minutes. Afterwards the sheets with the TL text were taken away from them, they were given the SL text again and asked to re-perform their first task. All the translations were recorded, and subsequently transcribed and analysed.

3. The phenomenon of cryptic interference

3.1. Transfer, language interference and cryptic interference

The notion of linguistic transfer is pivotal for linguists dealing with contrastive studies and, more specifically, contrastive analysis of two (or more) languages, as well as foreign language teaching. It can be defined, e.g. along the following lines:

   W gramatyce kontrastywnej i w teorii nauczania jezykow obcych
   przenoszenie wzorow z jezyka ojczystego na jezyk obcy w procesie
   jego opanowywania. Zjawisko to wystepuje zarowno w fonetyce, jak i w
   gramatyce i slownictwie. (Polanski 1995: 559)

[In contrastive grammar and foreign language teaching theory, the process of transferring native language patterns onto the foreign language in the learning process. The phenomenon occurs in both phonetics and in grammar and lexis. (my translation)]

With more advanced learners, as will be demonstrated below, this phenomenon works in both directions. The ramifications seem to be of a particular significance for translators and interpreters: not only is (are) their foreign language(s) affected by transfer from their native language, but also the FL structure, phonetics and lexis infringe on the native language.

Odlin (1989) differentiates between positive and negative transfer; the latter is also referred to as 'interference'. Considering the fact that the object of this study were texts sight-translated into the subjects' native language, however, definitions of transfer used in contrastive studies centred on second language acquisition seemed of little use here (e.g. Krashen 1983: 148; Odlin 1989: 27), since they tackle the problem only from the point of view of L1 exerting influence over L2. It therefore seemed more appropriate to adopt a broader (and at the same time translation-centred) definition of interference, e.g. the following:

   Naruszenie formy jezyka docelowego pod wplywem formy jezyka
   wyjsciowego. (Lukszyn 1998: 123)

   [A violation of the target language form under the influence of
   the source language form. (my translation)]

It is in this sense that the term (language) interference is used throughout this paper, as it more appropriately reflects the process of one language 'infringing' on (so interfering with) another than the term 'language transfer'.

The phenomenon referred to in this study as cryptic interference is an example of a certain activation of some foreign language structures in the brain of a bilingual conducting an interpreting activity and of the fact that the SL, despite being used for input processing only, is nevertheless 'participating' in the production of the interpreting output. During the experiment, the source language was the foreign language, and since it was the native language that was used both for production and monitoring of the sight-translation performance, the source (foreign) language was 'inhibited' as far as production is concerned (cf. Grosjean 1997). In the light of the above, there were surprisingly many instances of FL interference. The mechanism of some of them was rather puzzling: a preliminary inspection of the results of the experiment revealed a considerable number of lexical and syntactic calques. On closer inspection it turned out, however, that in the SL texts there were no syntactic patterns or lexical items that could account for the use of certain syntactic patterns/lexical items in the target language. This set of phenomena (though admittedly internally diversified) was given the working name of cryptic interference.

3.2. The mechanism of cryptic interference

Cryptic interference may be viewed as a particular type of language interference encountered during interpreting (and most likely also translation) activities. During such type of activities, the languages involved are naturally in close contact: both languages are in an 'on' mode, the SL being used for decoding of the incoming information and the TL being used for production (the translation itself). The target language is dominant in relation to the source language, since the output must also be monitored and filtered for potential mistakes concerning the linguistic form and the factual content of the message. Thus, the TL is more active than the SL, since both production and control are conducted in the TL. However, as Grosjean (1997: 175) notes, during interpreting "the interpreter sometimes code-switches to the source language for a word or phrase. How this takes place in processing terms remains an unanswered question as the source language output mechanism is normally inhibited. A momentary release of inhibition probably has to occur for a source language utterance to be output". In the experiment described here, two types of switching to the source language were encountered: the first, during which English words or phrases appeared in the Polish translation explicitly (e.g. mister Sha pan Szarif--self-corrected), and the second, when they appeared implicitly, under 'disguise' of Polish, or as instances of cryptic interference.

Considering the fact that the instances of this type of interference were quite numerous (amounting to 19.49% of all instances of interference), one may claim that, contrary to Grosjean's postulates, in the process of interpreting the source language is not inhibited in the production stage. Rather, it is (partially) active in the sense that at least some parts of the original message are 'pre-processed' in the SL, and only then interpreted. Thus, for instance, upon encountering a word or phrase that the interpreter is not well acquainted with, the first step is seeking a synonym, with the TL rendition following only afterwards. Another hypothesis may be that some lexical items have easily available (retrievable) TL equivalents in the internal lexicon of an (interpreter) bilingual, while other not, and translation occurs only when these equivalents have been found and are ready to be provided.

In his 1991 study, Lorscher (1991a: 272ff; 1991b: 6-7) presents two types of approaches to translation that the subjects of his experiment applied: sign-/form-oriented and sense-oriented. In the former one, "subjects transfer source-language text segments by focussing on their forms and by replacing them by target language forms" (Lorscher 1991b: 6). The reason, according to Lorscher, is that many lexical items are acquired in the process of second language learning in a purely decontextualised manner, and as a result "a large number of purely surface-structure lexeme equations" are formed (1991b: 6). (4) During translation, a TL text segment may become available to the subject "as the second part of the lexeme equation ... through an automatic association" (1991b: 6), where the first part of the equation is an SL lexeme stored in the subject's memory.

In the sense-oriented translation, "the sense combined with an SL text segment is made explicit by the translator and thus "separated" from it" (Lorscher 1991b: 7). Only then follows the search for a TL equivalent and subsequently the translation.

The mechanism of cryptic interference, as tentatively outlined above, seems to be well in line with Lorscher's findings: the first hypothesis, i.e. that of searching for a synonym of an unfamiliar word or phrase (whose meaning may nevertheless be worked out from the overall context of the message), may be an instance of sense-oriented translation, while the claim that some lexical items have easily retrievable equivalents may be an example of sign-/form-oriented translation process in which the translation occurs only after the TL lexeme equation lexical item has been found.

The mechanism of cryptic interference, as understood here, is a process of a pre-translation analysis of the source text, with the analysis most likely conducted in the source language, (5) which subsequently leads to covert, or 'cryptic', language interference. Numerous phenomena that can be explained along this line of reasoning were found in the experiment described here.

Let us consider the following example:

1) SL: a senior member of the ruling party

rendered as

TL: wysoki czlonek partii rzadzatcej.

None of the Polish equivalents of the quoted English phrase produced by the translators during the experiment retains the idea of 'seniority', and it would probably be impossible to find such an equivalent in any conditions (in the model translation it was rendered as wysoki ranga czlonek partii rzatdzacej). Thus, the interpreter must look for a different concept. A synonymous English phrase in this case would be, e.g. a high-ranking member of the ruling party, and indeed, this seems to be the solution adopted by the interpreter in this case. The original English phrase a senior member was reanalysed as a high-ranking member and only then interpreted. It must of course be noted that only the first element of the English phrase (after the reanalysis) made its way into the Polish translation. At this point, it does not seem possible to establish why rank disappeared, but at the same time the explanation given above seems to be a plausible justification of why wysoki czlonek was used, a phrase that evokes a notion of 'tallness' for a native speaker of Polish, and a concept that does not appear anywhere in the English text.

In the course of their training translators and interpreters are usually made aware of the existence of language interference; in the case of the interpreters and interpreting students who participated in the experiment this issue is an important part of the curriculum. This element of schooling, however, may easily lead to what Kussmaul (1995: 17) calls "fear of interferences", which "seems indeed to be part of the mental make-up of semi-professionals" (Kussmaul 1995: 19). The reason behind the fear of interferences is the fact that "there is a long tradition in foreign language and also in translation teaching to warn students of false friends and ensuing interferences" (1995: 19). In the light of the above, let us consider the phrase:

2) SL: (allegations of) economic incompetence 

rendered as

TL: (zarzuty) niekompetencji w dziedzinie prowadzenia gospodarki.

Incidentally, the Polish equivalent of the English phrase economic incompetence most likely to crop up during interpreting, niekompetencja gospodarcza, is also probably one of the closest equivalents. The Polish rendition in this case introduces prowadzenie (not mentioned in the English text), a word that neither exists in the register of Polish connected with economy nor is an acceptable collocate of gospodarka. In English, however, it is acceptable to say incompetence in running the economy and it seems to be precisely the case here: the interpreter dismissed the first choice equivalent, niekompetencja gospodarcza, and replaced it with niekompetencja w dziedzinie prowadzenia gospodarki, a calque of the English phrase with running.

Another example here may be the following:

3) SL: at appeal hearings

rendered as

TL: podczas przesluchan odwolawczych.

the most 'instinctive' Polish equivalent would naturally be apelacyjny, also dismissed, probably as too close to the SL original (cf. the remarks on "fear of interferences" above), whereas in the legal context in Polish the word apelacyjny is very commonly used and it is a good translation equivalent in this case (though of course procedura odwolawcza is also a common Polish phrase in its own right). The adjective odwolawczy is not, however, a 'natural' collocate of przesluchanie in Polish; indeed, this error appeared only during the first sight-translation attempt and the interpreter, having studied the model translation, corrected it at the second attempt.

Thus, cryptic interference appears as a rather complex phenomenon occurring where the source and target languages interact closely. The source language, though 'dormant', is activated enough to interfere with the target language output. Also, it appears that in some cases at least some part of thepre-translation analysis is conducted on the level of the SL. (6)

It may be suggested, then, that the mechanism of cryptic interference is as follows:

Stage 1: A chunk of the text 'comes at' the interpreter:

SL: (found) guilty of receiving kick-backs on a government contract;

Stage 2: The interpreter analyses the chunk and looks for proper translation equivalents. In the present case, the problem area is the compound kick-backs. It seems safe to assume that, even if not familiar with the phrase, an interpreter with some training and/or experience will not have serious problems with understanding its meaning (and, according to Lorscher's terminology, will 'separate' it in this case), especially given the broader context of the whole sentence and the text;

Stage 3: As there is no straightforward equivalent of kick-backs in Polish (the phrase originates from a relatively colloquial register; a possible Polish equivalent here, obrywy, is definitely too colloquial to be used during translation of a news item, as the subjects were instructed to do, while the stylistically acceptable lapowka does not mean the same), a synonymous word or phrase is sought. This, however, is done in the source language;

Stage 4: Synonym is found (in this case profits);

Stage 5: Translation of the chunk is performed:

TL: (uznal za) winna (silence) czerpania profitow z kontraktow rzadowych.

Because both finding an SL synonym and its TL equivalent requires an increased amount of mental processing (according to Lorscher's data, "subjects try to keep the cognitive load as light as possible during their translations" and "generally do not proceed to a deeper level of cognitive processing ... before processing on the higher level has turned out to be unsuccessful or unsatisfactory" (1991a: 8)), as a result the interpreter ends up with profity in the TL, (7) being the translation of the English word profits that kick-backs had been replaced with in the stage of reanalysis.

It does not seem possible to establish where one stage of the process ends and another begins; indeed, neighbouring stages may even overlap one another. Translation of a chunk, for instance, may well begin before analysis starts (it may, e.g., occur during the period of silence between winna and czerpania profitow in the example above). Moreover, there are most likely different types of problems that cause cryptic interference.

A similar phenomenon, one that cannot be called 'interference' in the sense of the definition provided above (Lukszyn 1998:123), where the working of the interpreter's output monitoring mechanism is very conspicuous, can be observed in the example below. The phenomenon is a sort of an interpreting performance monitor, triggering the reanalysis; its mechanism appears similar to the mechanism of cryptic interference, though in this case the reanalysis is most likely conducted in the TL.

The source text phrase:

4) SL: But many people sympathise with Bhutto 's claims that the allegations of corruption against her were ...

was rendered as

TL: Jednakze wiele osob sympatyzuje s (silence) Bhutto? oraz z jej twierdzeniami popiera twierdzenia Bhutto ze (silence) oskarzenia o korupcje zlozone przeciw niej sq ...

In this case, the problem is the word sympathise. Again, there seems to be no reason to dismiss the Polish word sympatyzowac (used, for example, in the model translation) in relation to an inanimate noun such as twierdzenia. It seems, however, that for the interpreter who had provided the above translation in Polish one can sympatyzowac with a person, Mrs Bhutto in this case, but not with a thing (twierdzenia). (8) This example provides additional insights into the mental processes involved in the translation of this fragment. Thus:

Stage 1: most likely occurred during translation of the previous fragment;

Stage 2: concurrent with the end of stage 1 (may have started before the whole chunk was taken in);

Stage 3: the first choice equivalent of sympathise is sympatyzowac, and after an analysis (here, during the period of silence) it is adopted;

Stage 4: translation begins, whereupon comes the reanalysis (in a manner similar to a think aloud protocol, cf. Kussmaul 1995)--the noun phrase is reanalysed and split into two (sympathise with Mrs Bhutto and her claims for sympathise with Bhutto 's claims), and another equivalent of sympatyzowac is found for the inanimate noun twierdzenia;

Stage 5: final translation.

The figure below is a graphic representation of the process of cryptic interference (only stages 3-5 are presented).

[MATHEMATICAL EXPRESSION NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

The processes responsible for the occurrence of cryptic interference, as presented in the first example, may in some cases lead to serious errors of translation. Let us consider another example:

5) SL: Despite winning a huge majority in the elections, the prime minister, Mr Sharif, has systematically removed anyone he believes threatens his grip on political power.

rendered as

TL: Pan premier Szarif, mimo ze zdobyl znaczna wiekszosc glosow w ostatnich wyborach, systematycznie likwidowal wszystkich, ktorzy jego zdaniem stanowili zagrozenie jego politycznej wladzy.

The word remove, whose first choice Polish equivalent would be usuwac, was dismissed (for reasons rather unclear; a possible if unverifiable explanation may be an attempt to avoid too close formal (verbal) correspondence between the SL and the TL message, cf. the above remarks on interpreters' fear of interferences). It is also hard to establish in which language the synonym was sought--the reason may be confusion of liquidate and eliminate (or likwidowac and eliminowac if the reanalysis had been conducted in Polish). Possibly, the mechanism here is the same as the one underlying cryptic interference.

3.3. Evidence for cryptic interference

The examples presented below serve to confirm the existence of the phenomenon of cryptic interference and other, related phenomena. The analysis presented in this paper is only indicative of a more general problem of the nature of the mental processes inherent to the activity of translating and, at present, any hypotheses or conclusions can be merely tentative. However, already at this stage, it is possible to present some evidence in favour of the existence of the phenomenon of cryptic interference.

The most noteworthy piece of evidence is connected with the phrase:

6) SL: It was not clear if she had been stripped of her membership of the national assembly.

rendered as

TL: Nie jest (silence) jasne czy pozbawiono ja jej czlonkostwa w zgromadzeniu narodowym.

and

TL: Nie jest jasne, czy pozbawiono jej rowniez czlonkostwa w zgromadzeniu narodowym.

The above renditions come from two different interpreters.

The mechanism of cryptic interference in this case is precisely the same as described above: after the preliminary analysis (the first choice equivalent, stripped of her membership of the national assembly is odebrano jej czlonkostwo w zgromadzeniu narodowym) comes the reanalysis (the collocation most frequently used in Polish in this context is different--the interpreters duly dismissed the first solution to use pozbawiono jet czlonkostwa w zgromadzeniu narodowym, probably the most common and natural way of expressing the SL information in the TL, or, as Nida (1964) put it, 'the closest natural equivalent' of the original phrase).

The interpreters who participated in the experiment were all adult natives of Polish, thus there is no doubt that they are all familiar with the verb--pronoun case agreement. The verb odebrac requires an object in dative, whereas pozbawic one in accusative. In the examples above, although both verbs used in translation are forms of pozbawic, they are followed by objects in dative.

A possible explanation may be the mechanism of cryptic interference: upon reanalysis, the first choice translation equivalent was dismissed and another one adopted. Incidentally, the change of the verb entailed also a change of the grammatical case of the following object. The fact that the case was not changed is an evidence that what surfaced in the translation was not what the subjects selected as their original choice after the first analysis.

The above example may thus serve as a confirmation of the existence of a reanalysis stage in the course of the interpreting process. As can be seen above, though, this stage must not necessarily he only connected with a search for an equivalent in the source language: it also is possible that interpreters look for different equivalents in the target language, too (naturally, it is not claimed here that this stage always occurs in the process of interpreting). There is, however, also some evidence that cryptic interference of the first type--processing in the SL--occurs, too.

To confirm this, let us consider the following example:

7) SL: during her second term of office

rendered as

TL: w czasie jej drugiej kadencji jako premiera.

Although the information that Mrs Bhutto was Pakistan's prime minister appears in the text on a number of occasions (also, quite likely most, if not all, subjects had known it before the experiment), it does not (overtly) appear in this particular passage. Since language economy requires of the interpreter to be as brief as possible and not to include any additional, especially redundant, information, it seems justifiable to propose that the reason for the above translation was that the phrase her second term of office was reanalysed as her second term as prime minister. The resultant Polish phrase is an instance of a syntactic caique whose appearance here may be easily accounted for if we assume that the original phrase had been reanalysed before translation. This claim may be further corroborated by the example of:

8) SL: Bhutto's second government

rendered as

TL: Dru-ggi rzad uformowany przez pania Bhutto

where, similarly, the original SL phrase may have been reanalysed and replaced as the second government formed by Bhutto (NB. the Polish stworzyc rzad along with uformowac rzad; while the former phrase is natural in Polish, the latter may be an instance of interference based on the English phrase form a government).

Finally, in the last example, where:

9) SL: So far the chief justice of the supreme court, the president and the chief of the army staff have all been forced to resign and have been replaced by candidates believed sympathetic to the regime.

was rendered as

TL: Jak na razie e (silence) to dote te dzialania dotyczyly sttd sedziego sadu najwyzszego, e a takze sluzb zwierzchnich armii. Ktore wszystkie te osoby zmuszone byly do zrezygnowania z zajmowanych pozycji a i zastapione zostaly przez kandydatow y ktore uwazane sa bardziej wlasciwe przez mist przez p przez premiera Szarifa.

here forced to resign was most likely replaced by forced to resign from their posts after the reanalysis and only then interpreted (NB. pozycje, an instance of lexical interference of a lexical item not found in the SL text; if so, it appeared in the TL text because it occurred during the reanalysis stage).

Wilss (1982: 211) noted that "... in L2/L1 transfer, errors can be observable which are ... not due to lack of interlingual competence, but to a momentary inability of the translator fully to activate his native-tongue competence." Such inability could, as stated above, be also observed in the subjects of the experiment described in this paper, cf. e.g. the rendition of the phrase It was not clear if she had been stripped of her membership ... --it does not seem plausible to claim that this error was caused by a factor any other than a certain inhibition of the NL performance monitor. Green (1993: 262) observes that "a basic notion is that normal speakers make slips because of temporary problems of control". These control, or monitor (cf. Lorscher 1991 a) problems can perhaps be to some extent attributable to the processes which surface as cryptic interference: if subjects conduct reanalyses, most likely both in the SL and the TL, they are incapable of proper activation of regular performance monitoring mechanisms. All subjects of the experiment may be termed proficient speakers of English (though surely not balanced bilinguals), thus English, the FL, though used for input processing only, may well be active enough to influence the TL (here NL) output.

Naturally, one should not exclude other explanation(s) of the phenomena described in this paper. For instance, it seems reasonable to claim that one could account for the above presented phenomena on the grounds of the subjects' incompetence in the source or the target language, miscomprehension or lack of comprehension of certain passages of the SL text. It must be remembered, though, that the analysed text was studied by the subjects before the experiment, that the student subjects were advanced learners of English with two years' practice in both oral and written translation, while the remaining subjects were all practicing interpreters (though admittedly with varying experience). As far as certain deficiencies in the subjects' use of their native language are concerned, one must bear in mind that some of their language skills were probably in a sense inhibited: English was their language of schooling and Polish was rarely used during formal occasions in real life situations. Moreover, during translation often "relative instability of native tongue competence" (Wilss 1982: 209) occurs that can be attributable to such factors as stress; most likely also the interaction between the two languages, an evidence of which are the ensuing interferences, is such a performance disrupting factor. Nevertheless, in the light of the evidence presented above, the general pattern of cryptic interference seems to entail a stage of reanalysis. This process is particularly conspicuous in the instances of verb--pronoun agreement problems (such as pozbawiono jej czlonkostwa). Even assuming that (some) subjects did have problems with using their native language, it does not seem plausible to claim that adults who acquired Polish as a native language have problems with verb--object case agreement.

4. Conclusions

The findings of the experiment described in this paper suggest that there exists a set of phenomena that entail a stage of pre-translation reanalysis, causing occurrences of language interferences. It is even plausible to claim that it can be subdivided into reanalysis in the SL followed by one in the TL. One cannot rule out a hypothesis that reanalysis is not a permanent element of the interpreting/translation process and is triggered only when needed by the interpreters' monitoring mechanisms. It is also possible, however, that it occurs always, but sometimes (more often than not) its side effects simply do not surface because the translation provided is interference-free, so the reanalysis itself is not traceable. Also even if the suggestion that there are two stages (the SL and the TL stage) of the reanalysis seems plausible, it is also possible that they are mutually exclusive and that interpreting is filtered only in one language (most likely the currently dominant one). There is, however, little doubt that at least sometimes the interpreted or translated text is analysed and filtered in the source/target language before being produced as a translation.

(1) The term 'translation' in this paper is taken to indicate 'translation proper', or any activity involving the rendition of a message in one language into another language (cf. e.g. Kopczynski 1980: 7-8). Thus, 'interpreting' is treated as a sub-type of translation, or oral translation, while 'sight-translation' as a sub-type of interpreting, based on a written text.

(2) For a description of criteria of translation errors, e.g. Kopczynski (1980: 74-76), Wilss (1982), as well as Kopczynski (1994), Moser (1995: C-4), Moser-Mercer (1996) and Schjoldager (1996) for general guidelines concerning interpreting quality assessment.

(3) Cf. the definitions of interference below.

(4) Examples of these given by Lorscher are Entwicklung--development and country--Land.

(5) Cf. Chen's (1992: 259) remarks: "... proficient bilinguals can selectively concentrate on processing words in the nonnative language even when the simultaneously presented, distracting stimuli are words in their native language." In the present experiment, and in translation/interpreting in general, the factors disturbing processing are stimuli in the language in which (part of) the processing is conducted; thus it seems plausible that during interpreting interpreters are fully capable of conducting an analysis in the SL (here the foreign, 'nonnative', language).

(6) It would also seem reasonable to carry out some research into what happens on the level of message deverbalisation in such cases; possibly, this stage of the interpreting process may be significantly reduced.

(7) Rather than, e.g. korzysci, cf. the model translation, or the note under profit in Nowy slownik poprawnej polszczyzny (Markowski 1999: 750): "naduzywane, lepiej: dochody, zyski".

(8) Cf. Doroszewski (1958-1969), who provides the following definition of sympatyzowac: "odczuwac sympatie do kogo lub czego, sprzyjac komu, czemu (...)".

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MACIEJ MACHNIEWSKI

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan