The Routledge Handbook of

Conference Interpreting

Providing comprehensive coverage of both current research and practice in conference

interpreting, The Routledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting covers core areas and
cutting-edge developments, which have sprung up due to the spread of modern technologies
and global English.
Consisting of 40 chapters divided into seven parts—Fundamentals, Settings, Regions,
Professional issues, Training and education, Research perspectives and Recent developments—
the Handbook focuses on the key areas of conference interpreting. This volume is unique in
its approach to the field of conference interpreting as it covers not only research and teaching
practice but also practical issues of the profession on all continents.
Bringing together over 70 researchers in the field from all over the world and with an
introduction by the editors, this is essential reading for all researchers, trainers, students and
professionals of conference interpreting.

Michaela Albl-Mikasa is Professor of Interpreting Studies at ZHAW Zurich University of

Applied Sciences in Switzerland. She is currently a member of the Executive Council of the
International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) and of the Board of
the European Network of Public Service Interpreting (ENPSIT). She is Principal Investigator
of the SNSF Sinergia project CLINT.

Elisabet Tiselius is Associate Professor of Interpreting Studies at Stockholm University,

Sweden, where she teaches public service, conference and signed language interpreting.
Tiselius is a member of AIIC, serving on its research committee, is accredited to the EU
institutions and is a state-authorized public service interpreter. She is a board member of the
European Society for Translation Studies (EST).
Routledge Handbooks in Translation and
Interpreting Studies

Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies provide comprehensive

overviews of the key topics in translation and interpreting studies. All entries for the handbooks
are specially commissioned and written by leading scholars in the field. Clear, accessible and
carefully edited, Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies are the ideal
resource for both advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Education

Edited by Sara Laviosa and Maria González-Davies
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Cognition
Edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt Lykke Jakobsen
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism
Edited by Rebecca Ruth Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian
The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender
Edited by Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization
Edited by Esperança Bielsa and Dionysios Kapsaskis
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics
Edited by Kaisa Koskinen and Nike K. Pokorn
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Health
Edited by Şebnem Susam-Saraeva and Eva Spišiaková
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and the City
Edited by Tong King Lee
The Routledge Handbook of Translation History
Edited by Christopher Rundle
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media
Edited by Esperança Bielsa
The Routledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting
Edited by Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbooks-in-

Translation-and-Interpreting-Studies/book-series/RHTI
 The Routledge Handbook
of Conference Interpreting

Edited by Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius

Cover image: © Getty Images
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius to be identified as the authors
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Albl-Mikasa, Michaela, editor. | Tiselius, Elisabet, editor.
Title: The Routledge handbook of conference interpreting/edited by
Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Taylor and Francis, 2022. |
Series: Routledge handbooks in translation and interpreting studies |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021027164 | ISBN 9780367277895 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781032134642 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429297878 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Congresses and conventions–Translating services. |
Translating and interpreting.
Classification: LCC P306.2 .R663 2022 | DDC 418/.02–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027164
ISBN: 978-0-367-27789-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-13464-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-29787-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429297878
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
 Contents

Contributors ix

Introduction 1
Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius

PART I
Fundamentals 7

1 Historical developments in conference interpreting: an overview 9

Jesús Baigorri-Jalón, María Manuela Fernández-Sánchez
and Gertrudis Payàs

2 Modes of conference interpreting: simultaneous and consecutive 19

Magdalena Bartłomiejczyk and Katarzyna Stachowiak-Szymczak

3 Note-taking for consecutive conference interpreting 34

Barbara Ahrens and Marc Orlando

4 Conference and community interpreting: commonalities and differences 49

Elisabet Tiselius

PART II
Settings 65

5 Diplomatic conference interpreting 67

Barry Slaughter Olsen, Henry Liu and Sergio Viaggio

6 Conference interpreting at press conferences 80

Annalisa Sandrelli

7 Media conference interpreting 90

Caterina Falbo

v
Contents

8 Conference interpreting in the European Union institutions 104

Alison Graves, Marina Pascual Olaguíbel and Cathy Pearson

9 Conference interpreting at the United Nations 115

Lucía Ruiz Rosendo and Marie Diur

PART III
Regions 127

10 Conference interpreting in the United States 129

Renée Jourdenais

11 Conference interpreting in Russia 140

Igor Matyushin and Dmitry Buzadzhi

12 Conference interpreting in Japan 150

Kayoko Takeda and Kayo Matsushita

13 Conference interpreting in South Korea 159

Jieun Lee

14 Conference interpreting in Australia 169

Marc Orlando

15 Conference interpreting in China 182

Andrew C. Dawrant, Binhua Wang and Hong Jiang

16 Conference interpreting in India 197

Chitra Harshvardhan and Anya Malhotra

17 Conference interpreting in Sub-Saharan Africa 216

Kim Wallmach and Nina Okagbue

18 Conference interpreting in Brazil 231

Reynaldo J. Pagura and Jayme Costa Pinto

PART IV
Professional issues 241

19 Quality and norms in conference interpreting 243

E. Macarena Pradas Macías and Cornelia Zwischenberger

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 Contents

20 Testing for professional qualification in conference interpreting 258

Andrew C. Dawrant and Chao Han

21 Status and profession(alization) of conference interpreters 275

Helle V. Dam and Paola Gentile

22 Ethics and codes of ethics in conference interpreting 290

Ildikó Horváth and Małgorzata Tryuk

PART V
Training and education 305

23 Aptitude for conference interpreting 307

Mariachiara Russo

24 Learning and teaching conference interpreting 321

Sylvia Kalina and Rafael Barranco-Droege

25 Theory and training in conference interpreting: initial explorations 337

Daniel Gile and Rafael Barranco-Droege

PART VI
Research perspectives: theoretical and empirical 355

26 Working memory and cognitive processing in conference interpreting 357

Ena Hodzik and John N. Williams

27 Strategies and capacity management in conference interpreting 371

Alessandra Riccardi

28 Conference interpreting and expertise 386

Barbara Moser-Mercer

29 Stress and emotion in conference interpreting 401

Paweł Korpal

30 Sex and gender in conference interpreting 414

Bart Defrancq, Camille Collard, Cédric Magnifico and
Emilia Iglesias Fernández

31 Discourse analysis in conference interpreting 428

Alicja M. Okoniewska and Binhua Wang

vii
Contents

32 Corpus studies in conference interpreting 443

Claudio Bendazzoli

33 Eye-tracking studies in conference interpreting 457

Agnieszka Chmiel

34 Neuroimaging of simultaneous conference interpreters 471

Alexis Hervais-Adelman

PART VII
Recent developments 489

35 Distance conference interpreting 491

Kilian G. Seeber and Brian Fox

36 Conference interpreting and new technologies 508

Claudio Fantinuoli

37 Bridging the gap between conference interpreters and researchers with

online media 523
Sarah Hickey, Jonathan Downie, Alexander Gansmeier and
Alexander Drechsel

38 Sign language conference interpreting 531

Graham Turner, Nadja Grbić, Christopher Stone,
Christopher Tester and Maya de Wit

39 Conference interpreting and English as a lingua franca 546

Michaela Albl-Mikasa

40 Mindfulness training for conference interpreters 564

Julie E. Johnson

Index 581

viii
 Contributors

Barbara Ahrens has been Full Professor for Interpreting (Spanish) at TH Köln—University
of Applied Sciences, Cologne, since 2006, after graduating in conference interpreting at
the University of Heidelberg, completing a PhD on prosody in simultaneous interpreting
and holding a junior professorship for translation studies, both at the University of Mainz/
Germersheim. Her research focuses on note-taking, prosody and cognitive aspects of speech
processing in interpreting. She is a practising conference interpreter and member of AIIC and
the AIIC Research Committee. She is also a board member of CIUTI and Chair of the CIUTI
Admission Commission.

Michaela Albl-Mikasa is Professor of Interpreting Studies at the Institute of Translation and

Interpreting of ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland, where she
teaches on both the BA and MA programmes. Her research and publications focus on ITELF
(interpreting, translation and English as a lingua franca), the cognitive foundations of confer-
ence and community interpreting, note-taking for consecutive interpreting, the development of
interpreting expertise, and medical interpreting. She is currently a member of the Executive
Council of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) and
of the Board of the European Network of Public Service Interpreting (ENPSIT). She is also
a member of the Swiss Research Centre Barrier-free Communication and principal investi-
gator of the interdisciplinary Sinergia project Cognitive Load in Interpreting and Translation
(CLINT) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Jesús Baigorri-Jalón is Associate Professor (emeritus since 2013) in the Department of

Translation and Interpretation at the University of Salamanca, Spain. He is a founding member
of the Alfaqueque Research Group (2008), a former staff verbatim reporter (1989–1992) and
interpreter (1992–1999) at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. He holds a Master’s
degree in History (1975) and PhD in Translation and Interpretation (1998) from the University
of Salamanca. He taught history in Salamanca (1978–1985) and London (1985–1989) and has
authored and edited a dozen books on interpreting and translation as well as numerous articles.
Jesús has been a lecturer and panelist on translation and interpreting issues in several univer-
sities and other institutions.

Rafael Barranco-Droege holds a PhD degree in translation and interpreting. He is a member of

the ECIS research group and the QINV project, both headquartered at the University of Granada,
Spain. He is currently working at the universities of Heidelberg and Mainz, Germany. His research
interests revolve around the impact of source-speech features on cognition in simultaneous
interpreting, with an emphasis on research design and data analysis. Some of his contributions
have been published by Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Gunter Narr and Frank & Timme.
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Contributors

Magdalena Bartłomiejczyk holds a PhD (2004) and a post-doctoral degree (2017) in linguis-
tics. She is a Professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, where she currently teaches
conference interpreting and is responsible for diploma seminars in translation studies. Her
scholarly interests include interpreting studies, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and the newest
developments in the Polish language. Since 2002, she has authored over 30 scholarly articles
(including in highly reputable journals such as Interpreting, The Interpreter and Translator
Trainer, Pragmatics) as well as a book focusing on interpreting face-threatening statements in
the European Parliament.

Claudio Bendazzoli is Assistant Professor of English Language and Translation in the Department
of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Turin,
Italy. Previously (2004–2011), he worked in the Department of Interpreting and Translation of
the University of Bologna at Forlì. He obtained an MA in Conference Interpreting and a PhD in
interpreting studies. His main research interests are corpus-based interpreting studies, theatre
and interpreter training, the ethnography of speaking, English as a lingua franca, and English
medium instruction. He also works as a freelance translator and interpreter.

Dmitry Buzadzhi is a graduate of the School of Translation and Interpretation of Moscow

State Linguistic University with a degree in translation and interpretation (Russian, English,
German). He spent 10 years teaching translation at the English Translation and Interpretation
department of MSLU, where he completed his PhD in 2007. He is currently a Professor of
English-Russian Interpretation, as well as Russian as a foreign language, at the Middlebury
Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California. Dmitry is an active translator
and simultaneous interpreter. He has published over 50 articles on translation and inter-
pretation and co-authored two textbooks. He is a co-founder of YouTube channel Perevod
Zhiv (Translation Lives) dedicated to the theory, practice and teaching of translation and
interpretation.

Agnieszka Chmiel is University Professor and Head of the Department of Translation Studies
at the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Her research
interests include conference interpreting, audio description and audiovisual translation. She
works as an interpreter and translator and has trained conference interpreters at AMU. She
has participated in many national and international research projects on conference interpreter
training, audio description and respeaking. She currently leads an interdisciplinary research
team that examines bilingual control mechanisms in conference interpreting and develops
PINC, the Polish Interpreting Corpus.

Camille Collard obtained her PhD in Translation Studies at Ghent University in 2019. She
is currently a staff lecturer and researcher at Ecole Supérieur d’Interprètes et de Traducteurs
(ESIT) in Paris, a member of the Clesthia research group and co-director of the ESIT research
department. She helped build EPICG (European Parliament interpreting corpus Ghent) and
carries out corpus-based research on sex differences in conference interpreting, as well as on
cognitive processes in simultaneous interpreting (ear-voice span, numbers, disfluencies).

Helle V. Dam, PhD, is Professor of Interpreting and Translation Studies at Aarhus University,
Denmark, where she directs the Master’s programme in conference interpreting and
co-directs the research programme Communication in International Business and the

x
 Contributors

Professions. Her research covers a broad spectrum of topics in both interpreting and translation,
mainly within the sociology of translation. She is the author and editor of numerous publications
in these areas, and her recent publications include The Translation Profession: Centers and
Peripheries (special issue of JoSTrans, 2016) and Moving Boundaries in Translation Studies
(Routledge, 2019).

Andrew C. Dawrant 杜蕴德 was Professor and Chair of the Department of Conference
Interpreting at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation, Shanghai International
Studies University from 2003–2011. His notable publications include Conference Interpreting: A
Complete Course and Conference Interpreting: A Trainer’s Guide (John Benjamins, 2016),
co-authored with Robin Setton. A member of AIIC since 1999 with the language combin-
ation A: English, B: Mandarin Chinese, B: Cantonese Chinese, he has interpreted for G20 and
bilateral summits. He has also served as lecturer at the Graduate School of Translation and
Interpretation, Beijing Foreign Studies University; as adjunct lecturer and/or external exam-
iner for the conference interpreting programmes at the University of International Business
and Economics in Beijing and at Fu Jen University and National Taiwan Normal University
in Taipei; as a trainer for the interpretation services of Chinese government ministries and the
Hong Kong SAR government; and as a juror for national-level interpreting competitions.

Bart Defrancq is an Associate Professor of Interpreting and Legal Translation at Ghent

University, Belgium, where he obtained his PhD in linguistics in 2002. He is president of CIUTI
(Conférence Internationale Permanente d’Instituts Universitaires de Traducteurs et Interprètes).
His research priorities are situated in the areas of conference and police interpreting, with a
focus on interactional and (socio)cognitive aspects, including gender and sex dimensions.

Marie Diur joined the UNOG as Chief of the Interpretation Service in 2017, after nearly ten
years at UNOV, initially as Chief of the French Booth and then as Chief Interpreter. Marie
worked as a freelance interpreter at different UN agencies, the European Union, and the private
market up until 2001 when she joined the UN as a Staff Interpreter. Marie has been an AIIC
member since 1992, and a visiting examiner in interpretation schools in France and Belgium.
She finished her doctoral work at the University Pablo de Olavide in 2015. Marie was the
former chair of the IAMLADP Taskforce on Interpreting Issues and is the UNOG Outreach
Focal Point for Interpretation.

Jonathan Downie is a consultant interpreter, conference, business and church interpreter and
interpreting researcher based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has published two books: Being
a Successful Interpreter: Adding Value and Delivering Excellence (Routledge, 2016) and
Interpreters vs Machines: Can Interpreters Survive in an AI-Dominated World? (Routledge,
2019). In addition to running the Inside Interpreting YouTube channel, he co-hosts, together
with Alexander Drechsel, Alexander Gansmeier and Sarah Hickey, the Troublesome Terps,
a podcast for interpreters by interpreters. On most episodes, they are joined by interpreting
scholars, practitioners, business experts and other guests to discuss everything ‘that keeps
interpreters up at night’.

Alexander Drechsel works as a staff interpreter at the European Commission. He studied at uni-
versities in Germany, Romania and Russia and his working languages are German (A), English
(B), French and Romanian (C). Alexander loves languages and communicating with people

xi
Contributors

and is enthusiastic about technology. When not in an interpreting booth, he shares his passion
and knowledge with fellow interpreters during training sessions and on the web. Together with
Jonathan Downie, Alexander Gansmeier and Sarah Hickey, he hosts the Troublesome Terps,
a podcast for interpreters by interpreters. On most episodes, they are joined by interpreting
scholars, practitioners, business experts and other guests to discuss everything ‘that keeps
interpreters up at night’.

Caterina Falbo is full Professor in French Language and Translation at the Dipartimento di
Scienze Giuridiche, del Linguaggio, dell’Interpretazione e della Traduzione (Department of
Legal, Language, Interpreting and Translation Studies)—IUSLIT, University of Trieste, Italy.
In the last decades, her research interests have been focused on television interpreting and dia-
logue interpreting in legal and healthcare settings. She took part in three EU-funded projects—
Avidicus III, TransLaw and TRAMIG—and various local projects funded by the University
of Trieste, among which is the CorIT project (Corpus of Television Interpreting). This pro-
ject resulted in a volume (Breaking Ground in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies, Peter Lang,
2012) collecting the contributions of scholars working on corpus-based interpreting studies.

Claudio Fantinuoli is a Researcher at the University of Mainz/Germersheim, Germany, with

focus on Natural Language Processing applied to human and machine interpreting (computer-
assisted interpreting, speech recognition, speech-to-speech translation). He is a lecturer of
Language Technologies, Translation and Conference Interpreting at the University of Mainz
and at the Postgraduate Center of the University of Vienna. He is consultant for the European
Parliament and leads the AI innovation at Kudo Inc.

María Manuela Fernández-Sánchez is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Translation

and Interpreting at the University of Granada, Spain. A teacher of Interpreting Techniques and
Translation Theories at both undergraduate and graduate level, she has also taught abroad. Her
main area of research interest is interpreting didactics and history and theory of translation
and interpreting. In the domain of interpreting didactics, her work has been focused on the
development of teaching materials to assist training. In the domain of interpreting history, she
has widely published. She is currently interested in emerging forms of mediation in the field
of professional interpreting. Her work investigates the increasingly active role that academic
scholars and universities have to play in the new scenario of internationalization and that infor-
mation and communication technologies have brought about.

Brian Fox is the former Director of Provision of Interpreting of the European Commission,
and also provider of interpretation for numerous EU bodies. He coordinated interpretation
preparations for the biggest EU enlargement (2004) and promoted cooperation between inter-
national organizations within IAMLADP whose Working Group on Training he chaired for
many years. He has contributed to numerous projects, programmes and initiatives related to
languages and multilingualism. He was actively involved in the EU negotiations concerning
remote interpreting. After retiring from the Commission, he was tasked by the UN to draft a
report on their potential use of remote.

Alexander Gansmeier is a freelance German/English conference and consultant interpreter,

based in Munich, Germany. After graduating from and lecturing at the University of Central
Lancashire, UK, Alexander continued freelance interpreting, specializing in digitalization,
automotive technology, business and marketing and medical and pharmaceutical conferences

xii
 Contributors

and meetings. As of 2020, Alexander is also one of AIIC Germany’s two Technical Officers,
monitoring developments and standards in conference and RSI technology. Together with
Jonathan Downie, Alexander Drechsel and Sarah Hickey, he hosts the Troublesome Terps,
a podcast for interpreters by interpreters. On most episodes, they are joined by interpreting
scholars, practitioners, business experts and other guests to discuss everything ‘that keeps
interpreters up at night’.

Paola Gentile is a postdoctoral researcher and adjunct Professor of Dutch at the University of
Trieste, Italy. She holds a MA in conference interpreting, and in 2016 she obtained her PhD
in Interpreting and Translation at the University of Trieste. Her PhD research investigated the
self-perceived professional status of conference and public service interpreters through a ques-
tionnaire which obtained 1,693 responses worldwide. Her research interests are: the sociology
of translation and interpreting, the reception of Dutch literature in Italy, imagology and trans-
lation policy. She is the review editor of the journal ‘Translation in Society’ (John Benjamins).
She also works as a freelance interpreter and translator with English, Spanish and Dutch.

Daniel Gile is an AIIC conference interpreter and Professor Emeritus at Université Paris 3
Sorbonne Nouvelle. He holds two translation and interpreting-related PhD degrees and one
post-doctoral habilitation degree, has widely published and lectured on interpreting, transla-
tion and research methods and has developed popular models for translation and conference
interpreting. His interests include interpreting and translation cognition, interpreter and trans-
lator training and the training of researchers in translation and interpreting studies.

Alison Graves is a trained conference interpreter (University of Bath). After 20 years in the
English booth of the EP as a staff interpreter, she managed different units working on interpreter
training, testing and succession planning, spent three years working for the translation service
of the EP and is now Director for Interpretation in the DG for Logistics and Interpretation for
Conferences (LINC).

Nadja Grbic’, University of Graz, Austria, completed her postdoctoral thesis (Habilitation) in
2017 on the construction of the profession of sign language interpreting in Austria and was
appointed Associate Professor of Translation Studies. Her research topics include sign lan-
guage interpreting, sociological issues of interpreting, translation and interpreting history, the
history of translation and interpreting studies, including scientometrics. She has conducted
research projects on sign language interpreting and sign language lexicography and developed
a full-time training programme for sign language interpreters at university level, which started
in 2002 in Graz. She is Associate Editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies
(2015) and a member of the editorial board of the Translation Studies Bibliography (John
Benjamins).

Chao Han is currently affiliated with the College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen
University, China. He conducted his PhD research at the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie
University, Sydney, focusing on interpreter certification performance testing. His research
interests include testing and assessment of translation and interpreting (T&I), evidence-
based T&I studies, and research methodology. His recent publications have appeared in such
journals as Interpreting, Perspectives, Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, and
Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the
International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting.

xiii
Contributors

Chitra Harshvardhan is a Professor at the Centre of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru

University, Delhi, where she teaches courses on simultaneous and consecutive interpretation
and translation theory. She has been a conference interpreter since 1980. Her publications
include the book Diplomacy for Conservation or Commercial Gain? A Case Study of German
Environmental Aid to India (1990–2002); and articles, such as: ‘Die Einsetzbarkeit von Romanen
mit Dolmetscherfiguren im Rahmen der Dolmetscherausbildung; Das Übersetzen im Zeichen der
Globalisierung: Dialog der Kulturen und die Entstehung einer transnationalen Zivilgesellschaft,
am Beispiel der politischen Essays von Arundhati Roy in deutscher Übersetzung’; and ‘Translation
as Social Action: The Counter-Discourse on the Literary Representation of Disability’.

Alexis Hervais-Adelman is Assistant Professor of Neurolinguistics in the Psychology

Department at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, where he leads a team focused on
exploring the neural basis of language. He uses non-invasive imaging methods such as func-
tional MRI and magneto- and electro-encephalography to investigate the wider cerebral
networks implicated in language. His over-arching research interest is setting the neural
basis of language into the context of other cognitive processes. His research focuses on
exploring the mechanisms that help to restore intelligibility to acoustically challenging
speech, as well as the broader relationships between language and cognitive processes. He
has also conducted several neuroimaging investigations into the cerebral basis of simultan-
eous interpreting as a model system for extreme multilingual control and highlighted the
relationships between linguistic and domain general cognitive networks in executing chal-
lenging language behaviours.

Sarah Hickey is curious by nature and a linguist at heart. As Nimdzi Insights’ VP of

Research, she leads the company’s global market studies as well as the interpreting research.
Sarah has a background in journalism and translation and completed her MA in conference
interpreting in Galway, Ireland. She is now based in Germany and still works as a freelance
conference interpreter for German (A) and English (B). Together with Jonathan Downie,
Alexander Drechsel and Alexander Gansmeier, she hosts the Troublesome Terps, a podcast
for interpreters by interpreters. On most episodes, they are joined by interpreting scholars,
practitioners, business experts and other guests to discuss everything ‘that keeps interpreters
up at night’.

Ena Hodzik is Assistant Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Boğaziçi

University. For her PhD at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of John
Williams, she employed latency measures to investigate predictive processes during simul-
taneous interpreting from German into English and is currently applying the same method to
an investigation of prediction during SI from Turkish into English. Her research interests also
include bilingual language processing and working memory and simultaneous interpreting.

Ildikó Horváth PhD, habil. holds an MA in English and French language and literature. She is
a Senior Lecturer, Director of the Institute for Language Mediation, and Head of the Interpreter
and Translator Training Department of ELTE University, Budapest. She is an active freelance
conference interpreter and President of the European Masters in Conference Interpreting
(EMCI) Consortium. Her main research interests are Interpreting Studies, which she has
developed in Hungary within the framework of the Translation Studies PhD Programme of the
Linguistic School of Doctoral Studies at ELTE University. She has published several articles,
monographs and edited volumes in English and Hungarian.

xiv
 Contributors

Emilia Iglesias Fernández is Senior Lecturer of Interpreting at the Universidad de Granada,

Spain. She has been involved in several state-funded and European research projects. Her
main interests are related to the role of paralinguistic cues in the interpreter´s vocal behaviour
in various settings: conference interpreting, audio description of feature films for the visually
impaired and telephone interpreting. Her studies have shown the profound impact of prosodic
features in the assessment of quality.

Hong Jiang is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Translation, the Chinese
University of Hong Kong. A graduate of the United Nations Training Programme for Interpreters
and Translators, she is a former UN staff interpreter. She holds a Master of Advanced Studies
in Interpreter Training from the University of Geneva and has won teaching awards for out-
standing teaching performance at multiple higher education institutions. A member of AIIC
since 1997, she has served on AIIC’s Training Committee since 2012. She regularly sits on
juries for professional examinations and interpreting competitions in China. Her research
interests are in interpreter training and professional expertise development.

Julie E. Johnson, EdD, is a Professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in

Monterey, California, where she serves as the Translation and Interpretation Program Chair.
She teaches graduate courses in simultaneous and consecutive interpreting and translation
(French>English) and mindfulness for interpreters—the area of her scholarly research. She
also develops and delivers workshops for fellow trainers and working professionals, particu-
larly court interpreters and government linguists. In her own freelance practice, she interprets
for conferences, parliamentary delegations, corporate seminars, and legal proceedings, and
translates a range of mainly corporate and legal documents.

Renée Jourdenais, PhD, is a Professor in the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation

and Language Education at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey,
California. She served as Dean of the School for over a decade, leading the translation, interpret-
ation, localization, language studies, intercultural studies, and teacher education programmes.
Her areas of specialty include pedagogy, curriculum design, interpreter assessment, language
assessment, research, intercultural competence and language acquisition and use. She has
published and consulted widely on curriculum development, teacher education and assessment
in the areas of language teacher, translator, and interpreter training.

Sylvia Kalina obtained her diploma in Conference Interpreting (1970) from Heidelberg
University (A: German, B: English, C: French) and has worked for European institutions and
the German freelance conference market. From 1980, she taught conference interpreting at
the Institute for Translation and Interpreting of Heidelberg University. She acquired her doc-
toral degree in 1997 (Linguistics and Translation), with a dissertation on strategic processes
in interpreting, published in 1998. In 1999, she was appointed Professor for the Theory and
Practice of Interpreting at Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Institute for Translation
and Multilingual Communication. Her research focus: processes and strategies in interpreting,
interpreting quality, training methodology. Retired as from September 2012, she had subse-
quent teaching assignments for interpreting studies at Heidelberg University (until 2015) and
occasional crash courses for professionals and trainers.

Paweł Korpal is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of English of Adam Mickiewicz

University, Poznań, Poland, a psychologist, and a practising translator and interpreter. He is

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involved in interdisciplinary research combining Interpreting Studies and psychology. His

research interests include: stress and emotion in conference and community interpreting,
cognitive processing in simultaneous interpreting, the use of eye-tracking in Translation and
Interpreting Studies, as well as psychophysiological measures of emotional language processing.

Jieun Lee is Professor and Dean of Interpretation and Translation at Ewha Womans University
Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation, Seoul, Korea. She received her PhD in
Linguistics from Macquarie University in Sydney, and taught there before joining Ewha
Womans University in 2010. Her research interests include legal interpreting and translation,
community interpreting, interpreter and translator training, and discourse analysis. Her research
work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Interpreting, Translation and
Interpreting Studies, Applied Linguistics, Multilingua, Perspectives, Meta, and International
Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, and Police Practice and Research. She has authored
two books on legal interpreting and co-authored two books on community interpreting and
Korean-English translation.

Henry Liu is a consultant interpreter in English, Chinese and French. Experienced at the highest
level of professional interpreting, he has been an interpreter for heads of state and other dig-
nitaries. Henry has been involved in many international conferences and has accompanied
many missions abroad. His specialties are law, diplomacy and international trade. Henry is
also an active interpreting and translation educator locally, regionally and internationally and
a regular keynote speaker around the world. Former FIT President (2014–2017), now one of
its ten Honorary Advisors, Henry was instrumental in gaining United Nations recognition of
30 September as International Translation Day (UNGA A/Res/71/288).

Cédric Magnifico obtained his PhD in Translation Studies at Ghent University in 2020. His
research focused on gender differences in simultaneous interpreting, especially in the fields of
interpersonal relationships and norms. He is now a staff translator at the Belgian Chamber of
Representatives, where he mainly translates parliamentary papers from Dutch into French. He
also works as a freelance conference interpreter and sworn translator.

Anya Malhotra has been a freelance conference interpreter and translator for English, German
and Hindi for close to 30 years. She has interpreted frequently for heads of state and gov-
ernment at bilateral meetings and summits, as well as at diverse international conferences
and multilateral events, such as the G7 and G20. Anya studied interpreting at the JNU in
Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India and the University of Mainz, Germersheim,
Germany, and is an active member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters
(AIIC). A published translator, she has also been a guest lecturer for interpretation at the JNU
and is a regular speaker on translation and interpretation-related topics.

Kayo Matsushita is Associate Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies in the College/
Graduate School of Intercultural Communication at Rikkyo University, Japan. She worked as
a staff writer for Japan’s leading newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, for 14 years, including three
years in New York as a correspondent covering the United Nations. She later became a confer-
ence interpreter and has since interpreted in a variety of fields including media, international
relations, education, law, environment, finance and IT, completing around 250 assignments
in a given year. She has trained interpreters at an agency-owned interpreting school and

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 Contributors

two universities in Japan. As a researcher, she specializes in news translation and authored
When News Travels East: Translation Practices by Japanese Newspapers. She has also led a
government-funded project to compile a parallel corpus between Japanese and English util-
izing authentic data from interpreter-mediated press conferences (2016–2020).

Igor Matyushin is a graduate of the School of Western Languages of the Military University
of the Defence Ministry with a degree in translation and interpretation (Russian, French,
Hungarian). Igor worked as an interpreter in several African countries and taught interpret-
ation at the Military University. In 1996, he completed his PhD. His research interests include
terminology studies, the theory of language contacts, neologisms, translation studies, and inter-
pretation teaching methodology. Since 2000, Igor has been teaching at the French Translation
and Interpretation department of Moscow State Linguistic University. He is a co-author of
four textbooks and the author of 30 research publications. He has been awarded the title of a
distinguished professor at MSLU.

Barbara Moser-Mercer, Professor emerita and founder of InZone (University of Geneva), is

visiting Professor at the University of Nairobi, engaged in strengthening African solutions that
advance higher education in emergencies (HEiE). Following her initial training as a confer-
ence interpreter, she pursued her studies in psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology. Her
research has focused on the development of expertise in complex cognitive skills of bilinguals,
both from a cognitive psychology and a cognitive neuro-science perspective. These findings
have been instrumental in informing the design and the development of student-centred multi-
lingual digital learning environments in fragile contexts, which she has leveraged across sev-
eral refugee camps in Africa and the Middle East.

Nina Okagbue has worked as a conference interpreter in Europe and Africa since 1978, after
obtaining a bilingual Master’s degree in Conference Interpretation (English/French) from
the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France. She also worked for over two decades in multilateral
development banking as a poverty reduction and social development expert. Recruited from
2016–2019 by the United Nations Office at Nairobi as the Coordinator of the Pan African
Masters Consortium in Interpretation and Translation (PAMCIT), she continues to pursue an
active training and research career, notably as a part-time lecturer for the two-year MA in
Interpretation programme at the University of Ghana at Legon.

Alicja M. Okoniewska, PhD, is a Scientific Research Project Advisor in Linguistics at the

European Research Council Executive Agency. Her research interests focus on socio-cognitive
aspects of conference interpreting, computer-assisted conference interpreting, multimodal ana-
lysis of inter-lingual mediated discourse and multilingual political discourse analysis in insti-
tutional settings. She is a member of the Research Committee of the International Association
of Conference Interpreters (AIIC), Associated Member of ISIT Lab, former Academic Director
of Conference Interpreting and Discourse Analysis Department at the Institute of Intercultural
Communication and Management (ISIT) in Paris and an EU-accredited conference interpreter
and trainer.

Marc Orlando, PhD, is Associate Professor and Director of the Translation and Interpreting Program
at Macquarie University, Sydney, where he teaches conference interpreting. Since the completion
of his doctoral thesis (2015), his research and publications have focused on the synergies between

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Contributors

translation & interpreting practice, research, and pedagogy. He has also investigated the use of
digital pen technology or of the hybrid mode simultaneous-consecutive in interpreter training.
He is an active conference interpreter, certified by NAATI (Australia), a full member of AUSIT
(Australia) and of AIIC, and the current coordinator of the AIIC Research Committee.

Reynaldo J. Pagura holds a PhD from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, with a dissertation
on the history of interpreting and interpreter training in Brazil. He taught interpreting and trans-
lation for 14 years at Associação Alumni, a binational Brazil-United States center in Brazil and
at the Pontifical University of São Paulo, where he chaired the English Department for four
terms and was, as such, in charge of the Conference Interpreting Certificate Program, in which
he taught for 18 years. He currently teaches several Interpreting courses at the MA Program in
Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in the
United States.

Marina Pascual Olaguíbel is a trained conference interpreter. She has been working for the
Court of Justice of the European Union as a staff interpreter for the past 18 years. She was part
of the scheme “Insertion jeunes interprètes” run by DGSCIC (2000–2002). Her training in the
field includes a BA in Translation and Interpreting (Universidad de Salamanca) and an MA in
CI from Monterey Institute of International Studies (1997–1999), where she was a Fulbright
Scholar. Currently she is Head of Unit at the Interpretation Directorate where she is also in
charge of training.

Gertrudis Payàs is a professional translator and interpreter, trained at the University of

Geneva and at Westminster (former Polytechnic of Central London) University. She holds a
PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her doctoral dissertation,
published in 2010 (Iberoamericana Vervuert), on colonial translation history in Mexico, has
been followed by a series of publications dealing with the role and cultural functions of trans-
lation, interpretation and linguistic mediation in Mexico and Chile, particularly on the sub-
ject of European-indigenous diplomacy in the Araucanian context (Chile). She teaches at the
Universidad Católica de Temuco in Chile, where she is also current director of the Interethnic
and Intercultural Research Group (NEII). She is also a member of the Alfaqueque Research
Group on Interpretation at the University of Salamanca, in Spain.

Cathy Pearson is a trained conference interpreter (Universities of Oxford and Bath). She began
working first as a freelance interpreter at the EP (1996–2001) and then as a staff interpreter at
the EC (2001–2016). At the time of writing she was the Deputy Head of the Multilingualism
and Knowledge Development Unit in DG Interpretation (EC) and the Project Manager for the
Knowledge Centre on Interpretation. She is currently Head of Unit of the Multilingualism and
Succession Planning unit in DG LINC (EP).

Jayme Costa Pinto is an interpreter and translator based in São Paulo, Brazil. With over
20 years of experience, he has interpreted in different settings and several countries across
the world. A former interpretation student at Associação Alumni, in São Paulo, he also holds a
degree in Geophysics from the University of São Paulo and has taken part in a special training
programme for interpreters of Portuguese at the Monterey Institute of International Studies,
in California. He is a member of the Brazilian Association of Conference Interpreters (APIC),
over which he presided for two terms between 2015 and 2018, and also of AIIC.

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 Contributors

E. Macarena Pradas Macías obtained a PhD degree from the University of Granada, Spain,
in 2003. She taught interpreting for two years in the University Alfonso X El Sabio in Madrid
(1997–1999). Currently, she is working as a tenured Professor at the University of Granada and
is the head of the Department on Translation and Interpreting. She is a senior member of the
ECIS research group, devoted to simultaneous-interpreting quality.

Alessandra Riccardi is Professor of German-Italian Simultaneous and Consecutive Interpretation

at the University of Trieste, Italy, in the Department of Legal Studies, Language, Translation
and Interpretation Studies. She is Coordinator of the Master’s Programme in Specialized
Translation and Conference Interpreting; she is also vice-president and local coordinator of the
Consortium ‘Euromasters in Conference Interpreting’ (EMCI). She has published extensively
on various aspects of interpreting, such as quality and strategies. Since 1999, she has been
editor of The Interpreters’ Newsletter and has lectured in various European universities. She is
a freelance conference interpreter.

Lucía Ruiz Rosendo is an Associate Professor at the University of Geneva’s Interpreting

Department. She is also a conference interpreter working in the institutional market in
Geneva. She finished her doctoral work at the University of Granada in 2006 and worked
at the University Pablo de Olavide from 2004 to 2015. She currently teaches in the MA in
Conference Interpreting and the MAS in Interpreter Training, University of Geneva. Her main
areas of research are interpreting in conflict zones and scenarios, interpreting at international
organizations and interpreter training.

Mariachiara Russo is Professor of Spanish Language and Interpreting at the Department of

Interpreting and Translation of the University of Bologna at Forlì, Italy, and a freelance con-
ference interpreter. She graduated in Conference Interpreting at the SSLMIT of the University
of Trieste, where she taught between 1993 and 2001. In 2001, she moved to Forlì, where
she directed the MA in Interpreting until 2021. She coordinated the European Parliament
Interpreting Corpus (EPIC) project and co-coordinated the EU-funded Project SHIFT in
Orality—Shaping the Interpreters of the Future and of Today on remote interpreting. She
has published extensively on aptitude testing for interpreting, corpus-based interpreting
studies, conference interpreting, liaison interpreting, contrastive linguistics, simultaneous film
interpreting and remote interpreting.

Annalisa Sandrelli is Lecturer in English Interpreting at UNINT University (Rome), where

she teaches Dialogue Interpreting and Interlingual Respeaking. Her research interests include
interpreting studies, audiovisual translation, corpora, legal English and Computer Assisted
Interpreter Training (CAIT). She has taken part in several national (EPIC—European
Parliament Interpreting Corpus) and EU-funded projects on legal interpreting (Building Mutual
Trust, Qualitas, Understanding Justice) and coordinated the DubTalk (2013–2015) and TVTalk
(2016–2019) projects on dubbing and subtitling. She also compiled the FOOTIE (Football in
Europe) corpus and has published widely on football interpreting. Current projects: coord-
inator of the English unit of the Eurolect Observatory, project leader of ¡Sub!: Localisation
Workflows (th)at Work, on computer-assisted subtitling; and International Co-investigator on
SMART (Shaping Multilingual Access with Respeaking Technology, 2020–2022), an ESRC-
funded project on interlingual respeaking.

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Contributors

Kilian G. Seeber is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of the
University of Geneva, Switzerland, where he is the Director of the Interpreting Department
and the Program Director of the MA in Conference Interpreting as well as the Masters of
Advanced Studies in Interpreter Training. Kilian is Principal Investigator at LaborInt, a labora-
tory dedicated to cognitive research into multilingualism and interpreting, as well as InTTech,
a research laboratory dedicated to re-purposing existing or developing new technologies for
interpreter training and practice. His main research interests include cognitive load and inte-
gration during multilingual and multimodal language processing.

Barry Slaughter Olsen is a veteran conference interpreter and technophile with over 25 years
of experience interpreting, training interpreters, and organizing language services. He is a
Professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), California,
and the Vice-President of Client Success at KUDO, a multilingual web conferencing plat-
form. He was co-president of InterpretAmerica from 2009 to 2020. Throughout his career,
he has interpreted for a broad range of public and private-sector clients including the U.S.
Departments of State, Justice and Defense, the Canadian Federal Government, the Inter-
American Development Bank (IDB), the Organization of American States (OAS), the National
Geographic Society, C-SPAN Television, and the International Telecommunication Union
(ITU). He is a member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC).
Barry has been interviewed frequently by international media (CNN, CBC, MSNBC, NPR,
and PBS) about interpreting and translation.

Katarzyna Stachowiak-Szymczak, PhD, MSc, is a researcher and academic teacher at the

University of Warsaw, Poland. Her research interests revolve around interpreting and trans-
lation studies, including the cognitive and practical aspects of conference and community
interpreting and translation. Having authored and co-authored several articles, she has also
written a published PhD thesis on eye movements and gestures in interpreting and a book on
phonological aspects of interpreting. She has been a head/co-researcher in projects on phono-
logical development, eye movements and gestures in interpreting, number processing, and cog-
nitive processes in paraphrasing and translation. She is a member, among other organizations,
of the Polish Committee for Standardization, on behalf of the Polish Association of Conference
Interpreters, which she co-founded.

Christopher Stone, University of Wolverhampton, the UK, is a Reader in Translation and

Interpreting whose research interests include conference interpreting, both between spoken
and signed languages, and between signed languages. He has published journal articles and
book chapters on multimodal interaction in interpreter-mediated events, multimodal enrich-
ment in sign language interpreting and translation in the media, sign language interpreting
history, and the sociology of interpreting (with his colleague Jeremy Brunson). He has co-
authored his most recent book with Cynthia Roy and Jeremy Brunson on the foundations of
interpreting studies. He maintains an interpreting practice and at the time of writing serves on
the Research Committee of the International Association of Conference Interpreters and is the
President of the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters.

Kayoko Takeda is Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies in the College/Graduate

School of Intercultural Communication at Rikkyo University, Japan. Previously, she was the
head of the Japanese translation and interpreting programme at the Middlebury Institute of
International Studies at Monterey, California. Her main research interests lie in the history of

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 Contributors

interpreting, languages and war, interpreter training, audiovisual translation and translation and
interpreting literacy. She is the author of Interpreters and War Crimes, Interpreting the Tokyo
War Crimes Trial and Taiheiyo senso Nihongo choho-sen [Intelligence War in Japanese during
the Pacific War], the editor of Honyaku-tsuyaku kenkyu no shin-chihei [New horizons in transla-
tion and interpreting studies] and a co-editor of New Insights in the History of Interpreting. She
has been a visiting scholar at Monash University, Lingnan University, the Chinese University
of Hong Kong and the University of Cambridge.

Christopher Tester, PhD, CDI, SC:L, is Deaf and is an assistant professor at Gallaudet
University’s department of interpretation and translation. He continues to work as an interpreter
and educator in private practice. As a seasoned presenter, he specialises in workshop and sem-
inar facilitation on topics (not limited to) disability rights and laws, Deaf and hard of hearing
awareness, and interpreting. His recent research focuses on Deaf interpreter’s work within the
court of law, intralingual interpreting and expanding on sign language conference interpreting.
Christopher is an AIIC member and is a WFD-WASLI Accredited International Sign inter-
preter. He is fluent in American Sign Language, British Sign Language, and International Sign.
Chris received his PhD and European Masters in Sign Language Interpreting (EUMASLI)
at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland and received his bachelor’s degree at the
College of the Holy Cross. Additionally, he received his Professional Certificate from CUNY’s
ASL/English Interpreter Education Program. He resides in Washington, D.C.

Elisabet Tiselius is Associate Professor of Interpreting Studies at Stockholm University,

Sweden, where she teaches public service, conference and signed language interpreting. She is
a member of AIIC, is accredited to the EU institutions and is a state-authorized public service
interpreter. Her publications cover conference and public service interpreting, spoken as well
as signed language interpreting. She is head of the research group Stockholm Process Research
in Interpreting and Translation (SPRINT), which focuses on cognitive aspects of interpreting
and translation and is funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR grant 2016-01118). She is
an affiliated researcher to Karolinska Institutet and to Western Norway University of Applied
Sciences, where she is leader of a work-package of a Norwegian research council funded pro-
ject (DEPICT).

Małgorzata Tryuk is Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies and Head of the
Department of Interpreting Studies and Audiovisual Translation at the Institute of Applied
Linguistics, University of Warsaw, Poland. In the years 2005–2020, she was also the local
Coordinator of the European Masters in Conference Interpreting (EMCI) Programme at the
University of Warsaw. She has authored several articles and monographs in Polish, French
and English on conference and community interpreting. In 2015, she published On Ethics and
Interpreters (Peter Lang). Her areas of teaching and research interest include translation and
interpreting ethics, translation and interpreting history, with a particular focus on interpreting
in conflict zones and crisis situations.

Graham Turner was appointed Chair of Translation & Interpreting Studies at Heriot-Watt
University, Scotland, in 2005, the first British Professor in the field to specialize in Sign
Language Studies. He has focused on social and applied sign linguistics since his initial pos-
ition in 1988 as a researcher for the British Deaf Association’s Dictionary of British Sign
Language/English project. Collaborating with a wide range of partners, he has led a number of
innovative teaching and research programmes, including laying the foundations in Edinburgh

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Contributors

for the Signs@HWU team at Heriot-Watt University. This academic work has primed award-
winning social and community impact at national and international levels.

Sergio Viaggio obtained an MA in Russian language and literature at Moscow’s Peoples’

Friendship University (“Patrice Lumumba”), an honorary professorship from the University
of Vic, Spain (2005) and an “honoris causa” PhD from the University of Bath, UK (2008). He
joined the Spanish translation section at the United Nations headquarters in New York in 1974
and a year later he moved to the interpreters’ section. From 1991 until his retirement in 2005,
he served as Head of the Interpretation Section of the United Nations Office at Vienna. He has
published more than 50 papers on translation and interpreting and the book A General Theory
of Interlingual Mediation (Frank & Timme 2005; a first edition in Spanish was published by
the University of Alicante). He has lectured in many universities around the world and was a
member of interpreting examination juries at several universities and institutions. He passed
away in March 2021 due to COVID-19.

Kim Wallmach is the Director of Stellenbosch University’s Language Centre in South Africa.
She holds an MA and PhD in Translation Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand,
South Africa. She has over 25 years’ experience in higher education in the fields of lan-
guage, translation and interpreting in addition to her practical experience in these fields. She
has extensive curriculum design experience in the fields of court interpreting, conference
interpreting and sign language interpreting. Her research interests include interpreting studies,
sign language interpreting, liaison, court and conference interpreting, corpus-based translation/
interpreting studies, multilingualism and blended learning.

Binhua Wang is Chair/Professor of Interpreting and Translation Studies and Director of

the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Leeds, the UK. He serves on the edi-
torial boards of Babel, Forum: International Journal of Interpretation and Translation, and
Chinese Translators Journal. He has published over 40 articles in journals including Chinese
Translators Journal, Meta, Babel, Perspectives, Interpreting, and Translation Review, as well
as peer-reviewed book chapters. He is author of the monographs Theorising Interpreting Studies
(2019) and A Descriptive Study of Norms in Interpreting (2013), and co-editor with Jeremy
Munday of Advances in Discourse Analysis of Translation and Interpreting (Routledge, 2020).
He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIoL).

John N. Williams graduated in psychology from the University of Durham, the UK, and then
went on to do a PhD in psychology at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge. He
is currently a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics,
University of Cambridge. He has published research on second language lexical and syntactic
processing and the cognitive mechanisms of second language learning, with a special emphasis
on implicit learning.

Maya de Wit is a PhD candidate at Radboud University, the Netherlands, and her research
focuses on interpreting to and from International Sign in conference settings. In 2011, she
obtained her Master’s degree in the first European Master of Sign Language Interpreting
(EUMASLI) programme. Maya is a qualified sign language interpreter and consultant. Her
working languages are Dutch Sign Language, International Sign, American Sign Language and
Dutch, English and German. Maya is a member of WFD, WASLI, efsli, NBTG, RID, CIT, and

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Contributors

the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC), as well as the coordinator of

the AIIC Sign Language Network.

Cornelia Zwischenberger is Professor in Transcultural Communication at the Centre for

Translation Studies, University of Vienna, Austria. Prior to her appointment as Professor at the
University of Vienna in March 2020, Cornelia held a professorship in Translation studies at the
University of Graz in Austria. She has published extensively on both translation and interpreting
studies. In the latter field her research focuses on quality, role-theoretical approaches, norms
and ideology. She is co-editor of the scholarly book series ‘Transkulturalität—Translation—
Transfer’ (Frank & Timme).

xxiii
 Introduction
Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius

The Routledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting is designed as a comprehensive reference

work for researchers and practitioners as well as trainers and students. Why a handbook on
conference interpreting readers may ask, when the trend in research has been to bring settings
together (Mikkelson & Jourdenais 2015; Pöchhacker 2015), to cross modes and stress their
hybridity and to accentuate the unifying elements of interpreting and translation (Baker &
Saldhana 2020). Conference interpreting still has a certain ring to it and is associated with the
rise of international organisations and multinational enterprises, having assumed an instru-
mental role as the twentieth century took shape. Moreover, despite having always been and still
being a major focus from a research perspective, to date conference interpreting has not been
addressed in its own dedicated volume. Works focusing solely on conference interpreting tend
to be textbooks (see Gillies 2013, 2019; Jones 2002; Setton & Dawrant 2016a; 2016b), although
the recent proceedings of the conference celebrating 100 years of conference interpreting and
its “collection of scholarly articles and opinion pieces illustrating what different stakeholders
make of this profession” (Seeber 2021: xiii) covers more ground. Thus, our aim has been to
produce a state-of-the-art compilation on the body of conference interpreting knowledge, with
a systematised approach to all the different facets of its foundations, its different geographical
bases, its professional issues, its applied research, and its current developments.
The Handbook aims to cover conference interpreting in its depth and breadth. Bringing
together 71 researchers (and practitioners) in the field and consisting of 40 chapters, it
addresses both research aspects and professional issues, history and pedagogy. Spread across
seven Parts––Fundamentals; Settings; Regions; Professional issues; Training and education;
Research perspectives; and Recent developments––it discusses all the major aspects relating
to conference interpreting. In particular, it includes entirely novel features, such as mindfulness
training for conference interpreters, conference interpreting in India, or the commonalities of
and differences between conference and community interpreting.
Nonetheless, it cannot claim to be exhaustive. It was not possible to cover all countries
and regions in which conference interpreters are at play, nor have all aspects of conference
interpreting thus far been subjected to substantial research. Business conference interpreting
is a case in point, as it simply does not provide enough substance for a chapter. This may be
due to the fact that many assignments are confidential, but much more so that conference

DOI: 10.4324/9780429297878-1 1
Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius

interpreting seems to be taking a more uniform approach than, say, community interpreting,
which labels and distinctly addresses its settings (e.g. medical/educational/court interpreting).
While highly varied in appearance, with conference interpreting taking place at events as
varied as bidirectional business meetings, monological lecture-like medical conferences,
legal depositions, trade union meetings, press conferences, talk shows in the media, technical
seminars, diplomatic exchanges, refugee and asylum-related negotiations or human rights
debates, research seems rarely geared towards distinct settings. The multi-faceted nature of
conference interpreting did, however, reveal itself in the course of compiling the volume. This
is showcased in the regional chapters, in particular, with their rich and fascinating tailored
country- and culture-specific insights set against the different historical, cultural and political
background conditions that have shaped the emerging conference interpreting profession in
different corners of the world.
Perhaps this uniform approach stems from a certain self-image, taking for granted that
conference interpreting is conference interpreting is conference interpreting. The need for
differentiation, labelling and demarcating explanations has therefore been less pronounced,
and people tend to fall back on cursory definitions, such as the one put forward by the AIIC
(Association Internationale des Interpr tes de Conference) stating that a conference inter-
preter is:

a person who by profession acts as a responsible linguistic intermediary (alone or more

often as a member of a team) in a formal or informal conference or conference-like situ-
ation, thanks to his or her ability to provide simultaneous or consecutive oral interpretation
of participants’ speeches, regardless of their length and complexity.
(AIIC 1984: 21)

The newsletter in which this definition is found gives credit to Christophe Thiéry for the initial
wording, but also states that other members have contributed to it. The newsletter also stresses
that “it is still not perfect but has the merit of brevity” (AIIC 1984: 21). AIIC’s definition is
echoed in the more recent definition by NAATI, the Australian national standards and certi-
fying authority for translators and interpreters.

Conference interpreters transfer highly complex, specialised messages from a source lan-
guage into a target language. They interpret in situations such as speeches and presentations
at high-level international exchanges, like international conferences, summits, meetings
and negotiations (e.g. UN summits, bilateral treaty negotiations), across a broad range of
domains.
(NAATI n.d.)

What emerges from these task specifications and is widely accepted is the fact that, espe-
cially simultaneous, but also consecutive, interpreting is one of, if not the most complex, lan-
guage processing tasks. This holds true especially in view of its duration, intricate nature and
immediacy. Executing this challenging task relies upon a unique skill set and a certain dispos-
ition. It is against this backdrop that the Handbook chapters look into the respective cogni-
tive and processing dimensions, aspects of learning and training, expertise and aptitude-based
requirements, setting-, mode- and technology-related manifestations, etc. At the same time, the
cognitive, communicative, situative and cultural factors are bound to be major determinants
of any type of interpreting. Consequently, we strongly believe the insights presented in this
Handbook serve to inform and strengthen other fields of interpreting, too.

2
 Introduction

The approach chosen for the Handbook was to have as many chapters as possible be
co-authored. By collaborating on a chapter, contributors combined their areas of expertise,
developing innovative and novel approaches to traditional topics, avoiding overlap with pre-
vious publications, introducing different angles and ensuring comprehensive coverage of the
chapters’ themes. Another central feature was a two-step review process. All manuscripts were
double-peer-reviewed by either contributing authors of other chapters or external reviewers.
The revised drafts were then subjected to another double review by the two editors of the
volume, thus undergoing a second revision process. We are grateful to all contributors both
for being open-minded and willing to collaborate even with new colleagues and for dedicating
such extensive time to the dual revision process. Putting together a volume like this is no small
undertaking, and many tough decisions had to be made along the way. Yet, we had the pleasure
of receiving the full support of all of the contributors throughout. We would also like to extend
a special thank you to the external reviewers, in alphabetical order: Ian Andersen, Martina
Behr, Karen Bontempo, Ivana e kov , Caterine Chabasse, Carmen Delgado Luchner, Adolfo
Gentile, Anne Catherine Gieshoff, Josh Goldsmith, Ewa Gumul, Michael Jin, Sandra Hale, Jim
Hlavac, Severine Hubscher-Davidson, Paule Kekeh, Min-Hua Liu, Gabriele Mack, Ricardo
Munoz Martin, Kim Nam Hui, Ekaterina Pokolkova, Karin Reithofer, Debra Russell, Robin
Setton, Yasumasa Someya and Lori Whynot.
With the bulk of the work on the volume having been carried out in 2020, the impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic was felt. Many of our contributors were affected by its repercussions
in one way or another, in some cases being unfortunate enough to contract the virus. We are
immensely appreciative of our contributors having made it possible to keep to our original time-
line despite the evident challenges, as well as updating their chapters to include a note on the
latest relevant COVID-related developments. At the same time, we are deeply saddened by the
passing in March 2021 due to COVID-19 of one of the finest and most well-known members
of our community and co-author of the chapter on diplomatic conference interpreting, Sergio
Viaggio. Having served from 1991 until his retirement in 2005 as Head of the Interpretation
Section at the United Nations Office in Vienna, published more than 50 papers on translation
and interpreting and lectured in many universities around the world, he was looked up to as a
most senior interpreter and interpreting scholar by many of us. His good-humoured and easy-
going demeanour in dealing with all matters relating to the Handbook chapter will be happily
remembered by us editors.
Despite the challenging circumstances, working on the volume has been a fascinating
experience. Getting in touch with the major players in the conference interpreting community
and exchanging views on so many aspects of the field has been a real treat. Their swiftness
and sharp, to-the-point responses and submissions seemed to reflect the interpreters behind the
contributors.
On a more personal note, serving as editors has been enriching in further respects. For the
German editor, Michaela Albl-Mikasa, it was interesting to learn that Jean Herbert, whom we
all know through his 1952 classic Interpreter’s Handbook/Manuel de l’interprète, held a Chair
in Eastern Mythologies at the University of Geneva and translated the Indian yogic classics,
including works by Sri Aurobindo, whom he had the privilege of meeting in person and of
whom he considered himself a disciple. After more than 30 years of admiring and following
Sri Aurobindo, this has been a true revelation for her. The Swedish editor, Elisabet Tiselius,
was particularly taken by the different country chapters, which brought to life just how con-
ference interpreting is indeed a global practice, and how, because it is locally anchored, it is
differently shaped with regional specificities. She also had not anticipated the intriguing and
thought-provoking character of the mindfulness chapter.

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Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius

Another gratifying part of the work on the volume was the coming together of the two
editors. When one embarks on a journey like this, it is impossible to predict the nature of
the collaboration. It was quite fascinating to find we made a perfectly complementary team,
incredibly attuned in our discussions and evaluations of chapters and topics, and providing
invaluable feedback on our respective chapters. This left the work feeling entirely unburdened
throughout, also thanks to the straight, prompt, easy-natured and mutually supportive initiative
taken wherever necessary.

Overview of the book

Our first thematic section, Part I, the Fundamentals, starts with a historical overview focusing
on conference interpreting in particular (Chapter 1). The novelty of this chapter lies not only
in its exclusive focus on the history of conference interpreting, but also in the fact that it is
enriched by the collective knowledge of three historians of interpreting studies. The next two
chapters take an almost exhaustive view of the basics of conference interpreting with respect to
the two different modes (simultaneous and consecutive, Chapter 2) and the unique note-taking
technique used in conference interpreting (Chapter 3). These chapters address fundamental
aspects from a performance perspective as well as discussing pertinent research studies, thus
rendering the content accessible to all possible readers of the volume. The final chapter in Part
I deals with the issue that has become in vogue in the past couple of years: the commonalities
of and differences between conference interpreting and community interpreting (Chapter 4).
Considering that the (cognitive) basis for the task is very similar, the chapter contributes to the
discussion of whether they should really be considered two different professions or not.
As the heading suggests, the second thematic section, Part II, Settings, focuses on the
different settings that are usually included in conference interpreting, namely, diplomatic con-
ference interpreting (Chapter 5), conference interpreting at press conferences (Chapter 6),
media conference interpreting (Chapter 7) and conference interpreting at the two major insti-
tutional employers of conference interpreters, the EU (Chapter 8) and the UN (Chapter 9).
Conference interpreting, as pointed out above, is generally understood as all-encompassing,
but Part II, and specifically the chapter on diplomatic interpreting, make it clear that settings
can be very different within conference interpreting, too.
Since conference interpreting, while international by definition, is rarely approached from
a global perspective, we aimed to include descriptions of conference interpreting from six
continents in our third thematic section, Part III, on the Regions. Our contributors describe con-
ference interpreting in the United States (Chapter 10), Russia (Chapter 11), Japan (Chapter 12),
South Korea (Chapter 13), Australia (Chapter 14), China (Chapter 15), India (Chapter 16),
Sub-Saharan Africa (Chapter 17) and Brazil (Chapter 18), respectively. We are particularly
enthusiastic about this Part as we are not aware of any previous publications with such a broad
coverage. Conference interpreting in India (Chapter 16), above all, sees its world premiere.
Part IV is devoted to Professional issues, with areas which have been thoroughly researched
in conference interpreting. The section covers quality and norms in conference interpreting
(Chapter 19), testing for professional qualification in conference interpreting (Chapter 20), the
status and profession as well as the professionalisation of conference interpreters (Chapter 21),
and, finally, ethics and codes of ethics in conference interpreting (Chapter 22). These topics
are tightly interwoven in conference interpreting and, as the reader will discover, not as easily
accessible as other topics. At the same time, quality, testing and ethics are important points of
departure for driving further professionalisation of interpreting.

4
 Introduction

In the fifth section, Part V, we approach Training and education. The section starts with
aptitude for conference interpreting (Chapter 23), followed by learning and teaching confer-
ence interpreting (Chapter 24), and finishes with theory and training in conference interpreting
(Chapter 25). While the two first chapters give a comprehensive overview of the research into
aptitude and teaching, the last chapter proposes to investigate which theories of conference
interpreting have permeated into teaching and to what extent. As conference interpreting is a
very practical topic and was in many cases in the early days taught in the style of ‘learning-
by-doing’, with students still preferring mileage in the booth over theoretical studies, it is very
interesting to see what type of theories and research results have been taken up in teaching.
Our sixth thematic section, Part VI, devoted to Research, reflects the cognitive processes
research focus in conference interpreting, but also shows that novel approaches have been
introduced to the field. The Part covers traditional research areas, such as working memory and
cognitive processes (Chapter 26), strategies and capacity management (Chapter 27), expertise
(Chapter 28) and discourse studies (Chapter 31). It also takes on newer alleys of research, such
as stress and emotion (Chapter 29), sex and gender (Chapter 30), corpus studies (Chapter 32),
eye-tracking studies (Chapter 33) and neuroimaging (Chapter 34).
The final thematic section, Part VII, brings together chapters on Recent developments in
conference interpreting. It covers distance conference interpreting (Chapter 35), so it is very
appropriate at the time of writing the volume at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The
other chapters discuss new technologies in conference interpreting (Chapter 36), the relation-
ship between conference interpreters and researchers (Chapter 37), sign language conference
interpreting (Chapter 38), which is rarely addressed with a conference interpreting focus, the
impact of English as a lingua franca (Chapter 39), and our most novel approach, namely, mind-
fulness training for conference interpreters (Chapter 40).
We hope that the readers will feel as enriched in reading this book as we have felt compiling
it and hope to see the book become a fundamental synopsis and guide for all those interested
in conference interpreting research and training. We also hope to inspire new research and new
professional ambitions and to ignite practitioners’ interest in interpreting studies.

Acknowledgements
The Swedish editor is very grateful to the Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies at
Stockholm University for granting her leave of absence, which very much contributed to the
smooth completion of the volume.
The German editor would like to extend special thanks to her CLINT project team at the
Institute of Translation and Interpreting of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW),
Anne Catherine Gieshoff, Katrin Andermatt and Romy Thommen, for handling project work
with the utmost sovereignty, ingenuity and diligence so that she could focus more time on the
Handbook, and to her assistant Livia Bartels for bringing the 40 chapters into the shape of a
maximally clean and uniform manuscript ready for submission to Routledge.

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