THE APPLICATION OF SKOPOS THEORY ON SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETING DIE ANWENDBARKEIT DER SKOPOSTHEORIE AUF DAS SILMULTANDOLMETSCHEN

With the advent of the Skopos theory as developed by Katharina Reiß and Hans J. Vermeer, a shift in paradigm took place in the 1980s in the course of which the linguistically oriented translation studies morphed into an action and function focussed translation science which explicitly includes the cultural aspects of the transfer. Since that time translation is no longer regarded mainly as a language transfer concerned predominantly with the equivalence at the word level, but a targeted transfer into another culture whereby adequacy is the main focus. In “Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie” (1984) Katharina Reiß and Hans J. Vermeer repeatedly stressed that their explications are applicable in the field of translation as well as interpretation. Numerous examples, however, show that the authors have mainly been investigating the process of translating with regard to its cultural targetedness thereby neglecting the area of interpreting. Simultaneous interpreting executed in real time is largely marked by factors such as time pressures and the fact that it cannot be corrected, it is thus subject to a completely different set of conditions compared to the translation of written texts on which Reiß/Vermeer mainly focus. The aim of this text is to firstly evaluate critically some of the incisive assertions made in “Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie” with regard to interpretation, only then to discuss with the help of works published subsequently whether the Skopos theory as developed by Reiß/Vermeer is applicable to the process of interpreting ? specifically simultaneous interpreting. In so doing works published in the 1990s as well as more recent publications in the field of interpretation research will be taken into account for the purpose of this inquiry.