Interpreting as Immediate Bilingual Information Processing

This chapter begins with an overview of the long-term focus on cognitive operations and their management in interpreting studies. Proceeding from the multidimensional model for the epistemology of interpreting studies, the necessity to go beyond the cognitive perspective is discussed. Through a stock-taking of relevant literature, it identifies the pivotal role of information processing in interpreting. Based on the distinctive features of interpreting, it proposes a framework for research into information processing in interpreting, which highlights the mechanism of information processing in three aspects: (a) how information is processed cognitively in the immediate transfer across languages; (b) how information is processed multimodally as a hyper-discourse in interpreting; (c) how information is processed strategically under the conditions of immediacy and singular presentation in interpreting. It also summarises methods for analysing information processing in interpreting.