Strategic additions in simultaneous interpreting from a signed language into a spoken language

Abstract This quasi-experimental study explored professional Australian Sign Language (Auslan)/English interpreters’ strategic additions when interpreting an Auslan presentation into spoken English in the simultaneous mode. The product analysis involves the researcher and a research assistant identifying and categorizing participants’ strategic additions independently, using a corpus-driven approach. The process analysis entails the researcher analyzing participants’ retrospective interviews to find their motivations for producing strategic additions. The results show that the five most frequent types of strategic additions in this corpus of signed-to-spoken language simultaneous interpretations include explicitation, adding referents to numbers, referring to previous relevant information, adding conjunctions, and elaboration. Striving for optimal relevance appears to be the interpreters’ main motivation for making strategic additions in conference interpreting. The results suggest that professional interpreters are usually user-oriented and make strategic additions, consciously or subconsciously, to enhance the communicative impact of their interpretations.