ON PHASES AND MODELS: TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY PROPOSAL OF INFORMATION PROCESSING DURING SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETATION

SI is a complex cognitive problem-solving activity. In order to account for how interpreters process information, various explanations have been provided, either in the form of phases or as models of the process. This article includes, firstly, a brief description of previous formulations of phases and models, and, secondly, part of the experimental results of the author's PhD Dissertation, which led to the formulation of a tentative Model of information processing during SI - for the language pair and direction English-Spanish-suggesting the concurrent interplay of three complementary processing systems running in parallel: literalness, automatic responses and meaning construction. It is proposed that interpreters' behaviour is largely dominated by genuine, strategic decision-making in their attempt to obtain maximum communicative efficiency with minimum cognitive effort, and they will therefore preferably apply strategies which are least costly in terms of cognitive resources' expenditure. The Model may have implications for interpreter training.