Abstract
This paper examined how sign-language interpreters translate Japanese to sign language in terms of interpreting strategies they use in their performance. The results showed, among other things, that “Intended Omission” occurred about thirty to sixty times in each interpreter’s performance and that the amount of intended omission tends to increase when interpreters work under constraints. It was also found that less experienced interpreters tend to replace difficult lexical items with easier ones. The rewording to a subordinate concept usually led to lucid translation, but the rewording to a superordinate concept easily resulted in ambiguous translation. The “Addition” strategy was mostly used to make clear and visible what are not uttered but implied in the source language. Experienced interpreters usually borrowed terms from Japanese to make clear which word was used in the original sentence, but less experienced interpreters borrowed Japanese when they didn’t know how they could express a certain word or concept in sign language. The study also showed that sign-language interpreters can be classified into three types in terms of their dominant interpreting strategy; i.e. the Omission type, the Rewording type, and the Compression type.
