The Role of Consecutive in Interpreter Training: a Cognitive View Daniel Gile Published in Communicate 14 (electronic). (www.aiic.net/ViewPage.cfm). 2001. 1. Introduction A question which comes up again and again among interpreters is whether it should be taught systematically in all interpreter training programs. One point made forcefully in favor of discontinuing training in consecutive is that it is gradually disappearing from the market. This claim is made mostly in Western Europe. In other markets, and in particular in Asia and in Eastern Europe, consecutive seems to be as lively as ever, due to its distinct advantages over simultaneous (less costly, less cumbersome in terms of equipment, more flexible over time and space). A further claim is that in programs whose marketplaces do not require consecutive, it takes up much time and efforts for the acquisition of skills not relevant to the market, whereas the time and energy would be best devoted to simultaneous. One counter-argument found in the literature is that simultaneous is just an "accelerated consecutive"; the skills of consecutive are therefore relevant to simultaneous. This paper looks more closely at the nature of consecutive in cognitive terms, and brings this information into the debate. 2. Is simultaneous an "accelerated consecutive"? In cognitive terms, the most fundamental problem in interpreting is that it is composed of several concurrent operations which require processing capacity (PC) , and often as much PC as is available, or even more than the interpreter has at the time it is needed. In simultaneous, such operations can be pooled together into "Efforts", such as: - the Listening Effort (listening to and analyzing the source speech) - the Production Effort (producing a target-language version of the speech) - a short-term Memory Effort (storing information just received from the speaker until it can be rendered in the target speech). All three "Efforts" include operations that require PC, as is well known to psycholinguists. Seemingly "effortless" speech production does require attentional resources, as evidenced inter alia by hesitation pauses which reflect intensive efforts to find an appropriate word and/or an appropriate syntactic structure to start, continue or end a sentence. This is true even in one's native language. Similarly, the seemingly "spontaneous" and automatic comprehension effort also requires attentional resources. If these are not invested into listening, words can be heard and forgotten without leaving meaningful traces in the listener's mind, as can be seen in consecutive, when too much attention is devoted to note-taking and not enough to listening. In consecutive, during the listening phase, operations can be pooled together into: - the Listening Effort, the same as in simultaneous - the Production Effort (producing notes, not a target-language version of the speech)