Toward the development of a metacognitive intercultural communicative competence in the education of students of interpreting: general theoretical/pragmatic foundations

This paper debates on the importance of the link between theory and practice for the further improvement of metacognitive strategies in the undergraduate education of would-be interpreters. A description of the most important and differentiated mental processes taking place during consecutive and simultaneous interpreting is proposed as well. The basic challenges and problems of making this mental process visual and thoroughly comprehensible before the undergraduate students as part of their in-class and professional practice metacognitive learning process are also debated. The article is presented as the first one of a series of three, ranging from the still insufficient treatment of meta-cognition for bilingual interpreting in both its epistemic and declarative knowledge on the one hand, as well as on the procedural knowledge needed for its performance as well, on the other, down to the case study of a didactic experience (2007-2009) carried out with undergraduate students at the program on English-Spanish Consecutive Interpreting and Sight-Translation, University of Matanzas, Cuba.