1 - In their first process you can see that both Patrie and Gile mention LISTENING. You have felt that this is a key part of interpreting. If you don't hear the message from the source text, that information will not make it to the target text. It will likely be omitted.

Of course it's not just enough to "hear" it - we can often hear things that we didn't LISTEN to. You've had people talking to you, or sitting in class or a meeting while your focus is pulled to an e-mail or text message that needed your attention -- you still HEAR the person talking, but you might not be LISTENING and UNDERSTANDING the message. Patrie calls this process of listening and understanding, "COMPREHENSION".

Gile has very similar ideas about the first process, but he has labeled his LISTENING and ANALYSIS - which can be part of the comprehension process. He's making the case that as soon as we get the message in the source language, we're instantly beginning to ANALYZE it for meaning.

2 - The second process is all about what happens in your brains as you process the information. This is the part of interpreting that is the most difficult to teach because I can't open my brain to show you what's happening inside, and I can't look in yours to understand what your process looks like. We'll work on exercises this semester to help you find your process.

Patrie calls her second process "TRANSFER" -- the source message is "transferring" to the target message through VISUALIZATION and ANALYSIS. Other theories have labeled this middle process "the formless blob" where we're just analyzing for MEANING, stripping away the FORM of the source message, and not yet deciding on the FORM of the target message. It is meaning in a visual form, with no language attached.

Gile labels his second step MEMORY - recognizing that in order to process the information you're holding it your short term memory while you VISUALIZE and PROCESS the meaning.

3 - The third process focuses on creating a target text. Patrie calls this process REFORMULATION (re-form the message to the form of the target language) -- and in this process we not only reform the message but we SELF-MONITOR and CORRECT. You do this when you realize that you didn't sign the write sign, or you signed it incorrectly - you monitored your message, and then you corrected the message.

Gile calls his third process PRODUCTION - we are "producing" a message in the target text. And you can see that he also includes the processes of SELF-MONITORING and CORRECTION.

The Coordination Effort is part of Gile's model. That stretched out box runs parallel to the 3 processes and oversees the interpreting process. Gile says that we have a finite amount of "effort" available to us (100%).

"Interpretation requires some sort of mental energy that is only available in limited supply... interpretation takes up almost all of this mental energy, and sometimes requires more than is available, at which times performance deteriorates." Gile, 1995

As much as we would like to have 110% to give, we just don't. And this effort to coordinate interpreting has to be balanced, effort has to be given to each process at the same time, or the entire thing breaks down. We can say that ideally we would divide our 100% of effort evenly between the 3 processes and give 33% to Listening, 33% to Processing, and 33% to Producing a message.

But you have felt this interpreting process you know that doesn't happen. Our effort is constantly shifting between the processes. What we have to be careful of is allowing too much effort to go into one of the "boxes", leaving other boxes with no effort left to give.

1 - 100% Effort to Listening: If the source text is English, and you're having difficulty hearing the message or you don't COMPREHEND the meaning of the message - you're likely going to shift 100% of your effort to trying to hear or understand. You may have felt this when the source language is ASL and someone fingerspells to you. 100% of your effort just shifted to those fingers. If you put 100% of effort into listening, what happens to the other 2 boxes? You've likely just dropped whatever you were holding in your short term memory, and you've stopped producing a target message. Everything stops.

2 - 100% Effort to Processing: You've heard the message, you understand it -- but how do you sign it? What was the sign, what expansion technique were you supposed to use for that again? You're thinking really hard, all of your effort is focussed on figuring out how to proccess the meaning of this message. Are you still listening? No. Are you producing a message? No. This is usually when we see you looking up to the ceiling for divine wisdom to come down and intervene. Again, everything stops.

3 - 100% Effort to Reformulation: You heard it, you processed it, and now you are signing the HECK out of it! You caught that name and you are focussing on spelling it perfectly with the right prosody, and BAM! Or you are putting on a master class on how to set up space and role-shift, this is good stuff! But oh wait... are they still talking? I missed what they just said... and that information that was in my short term memory? Yeah, it's gone too. But did you see that fingerspelling? Perfection. Unfortunately, again everything stops until you can start to listen again and figure out how to jump back in.

This is called the EFFORT MODEL -- Balancing the COORDINATION EFFORT so that everything runs smoothly. Maybe you do need to listen more, so you shift 60% of effort there, but leave 20% and 20% for the other two processes so they're still going... or you do need to take a little more effort to retrieve that sign or create that role shift, but don't leave the other two processes with no effort in the tank.

Extra Linguistic Knowledge or "ELK" is knowledge that is "outside knowledge of the language". It is our background knowledge about the situation or the topic that helps enhance our understanding of the source message and interpret accurately into the target message. ELK is another term that comes from Daniel Gile.

ELK helps our processing because it lightens the load of our EFFORT. For example when you taped your baselines I gave you no ELK before you walked into the room. Once you arrived I played a very short part of the text, but even that gave you a little bit of information that allowed your brain to start predicting what may be coming. As the text played, everything you heard added to your ELK and allowed you to make more predictions. You have experience as a college student, you have ELK on the issues of managing your time which may have made it easier for you to understand the situations that were being talked about and allowed you to free up some of your effort so it could be used toward processing.

If you are an experienced home chef and you are asked to interpret instructions for a recipe - you have tons of ELK and you have an advantage going into that job over someone who has never cooked anything before. If you're told to "fold in the cheese", you would know how to demonstrate that process using very little of your processing energy. While the interpreter with no experience may need to wait and look to the demonstration or stop and ask for clarification.

Before we go on a job we'll do research on the topic. If we're interpreting for a specific medical procedure, we should look that up. We ask for copies of the powerpoint, ask for key points in a sermon or verses that will be discussed. We can look up signs, or even just try to predict vocabulary or topics that may come up based on the knowledge we have.

All of this information will help your COORDINATION EFFORT and reduce the amount of effort you might need to interpret. Getting ELK is not "cheating".