Rethinking anticipation: an experimental study of negation in German to English simultaneous interpreting

The present research investigates how simultaneous interpreters tackle head-final negation when interpreting from German into English. To analyse the strategies used, specifically anticipation, the study engages with the concept of ‘strategy’ in simultaneous interpreting. Strategies are here defined and described as multifactorial phenomena.
The investigation required an experimental approach. The data was collected during an online task of simultaneous interpreting from German into English carried out by 9 professional interpreters. The experiment design included two independent variables (speed and redundancy) in order to assess their influence on interpreters’ approaches. In order to test both variables, the material used were two German speeches, both containing high- and low-redundancy sentences. One of the speeches was read at a slower rate (100wpm) while the other at a faster speech rate (140wpm).
Two pilot studies were carried out to test the methodology. All sessions with participants were entirely carried out remotely using Zoom. In this regard, this study engages with remote simultaneous interpreting as a research tool (rather than as a research subject).
The analysis of results ultimately revealed that anticipation was not the most used strategy. Participants used waiting and other strategies more often, and this result has been contextualized in a discussion on risks in simultaneous interpreting. As for speed and redundancy, it appeared that the former had a significant impact, causing a decrease of waiting and an increase of omissions in the faster speech. Instead, redundancy appeared to have an influence more evident on strategies used in the slower speech.
The use of anticipation was thoroughly analysed, and a new form of anticipation was identified and labelled as pragmatic anticipation. Along with the forms of anticipation already described in previous literature, pragmatic anticipation provides a better understanding of this strategy and will need to be considered in interpreting studies.