This book focuses on simultaneous interpreting from a signed language into a spoken language at a conference setting, an area that I do not work in but have research expertise. Signed language interpreting is somewhat similar to spoken language (e.g., Mandarin/English) simultaneous interpreting, a skill that I was trained in, use in my interpreting career, and teach to interpreting students. This book reports on new findings from my in-depth analysis of Auslan (Australian Sign Language)-to-English simultaneous interpretation data in my PhD research. I hope that the findings can broaden our understanding of the complexity and creativity in both spoken and signed language simultaneous interpreting. In addition to the people I particularly acknowledge here, I would like to thank all my family members, friends, and colleagues for their encouragement, support, and interest in my work. First and foremost, I would like to thank Mr Colin Allen for giving the Auslan presentation, which served as the source text for the signed-to-spoken language simultaneous interpreting task in this research project. I am also deeply grateful to the 31 professional Auslan/English interpreters for participating in my PhD research, for agreeing to be filmed and interviewed, and for allowing their Auslan-to-English simultaneous interpreting performance to be scrutinised by external raters, research assistants, and myself. It is the analysis of their Auslan-to-English simultaneous interpretation data and qualitative interview data that revealed so many interesting results in this book. I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Jemina Napier, my principal supervisor during the PhD study (2009–2013), for her inspiration, ideas, guidance, research training, enthusiasm, positive attitude, and enormous support. My secondary supervisor, Dr Helen Slatyer, also made useful contributions to the development of assessment rubrics for evaluating the participants’ interpreting performance and provided tremendous support throughout my research. They have significantly influenced my academic journeys in numerous ways. I am also forever grateful to the three external raters – Professor Jemina Napier, Dr Della Goswell, and Andy Carmichael – for independently assessing the interpreters’ Auslan-to-English interpreting performance and agreeing to be recorded during the assessment process. Their scores and oral comments for the participants enabled me to have a good understanding of the participants’ interpreting performance and interpreting process. I also extend my deep appreciation for Professor Brenda Nicodemus, who invited me to Gallaudet University to work as a visiting scholar during August and December 2019, when I worked intensely on key chapters of this book. I would like to give special thanks to Brenda for mentoring me, sharing wisdom and brilliant ideas, providing detailed useful feedback on the whole book except for Chapters 2 and 8, inspiring me to persevere to achieve my goals, being my role model in so many ways, and for being a close friend. Many particular thanks go to Dr Lori Whynot, Neil Ray, Dr Danielle Hunt, Dr Emily Shaw, Dr Pamela Collins, Dr Paul Harrelson, Professor Paul Dudis, Dr Steven Collins, and Ms Stephanie Roche at Gallaudet University for their strong support, friendship, and interest in my research. I would also like to give special thanks to Ms Phyllis Rogers, an experienced American Sign Language (ASL)/English interpreter, for sharing her insights on simultaneous interpreting from a signed language into a spoken language at formal settings. In addition, I am grateful to Professor Xiaoyan Xiao for igniting my interest in exploring spoken and signed language interpreting when I was a postgraduate student. I also very much appreciate Professor Daniel Gile’s useful comments on my Chapter 6 regarding analysis of failure sequence in simultaneous interpreting. Moreover, I would like to thank Teresa Cumpston-Bird, an experienced Auslan/English interpreter, for being my research assistant, enhancing my understanding of the Auslan source text, assisting me in evaluating the sentence level accuracy of the interpreters’ Auslan-to-English simultaneous interpretations, and encouraging me throughout my research project. Sincere thanks also go to Dr Jing Fang for her unswerving friendship and encouragement, especially in difficult times. I am extremely grateful to the anonymous reviewers for providing constructive feedback on my book proposal and manuscript. A big thanks to Elysee Preposi and Helena Parkinson, two editors of Routledge, for editing and producing my book. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my parents Shuguo Wang and Taoxiu Li, my husband Baohong (Frankie) Zhang, son Leo Zhang, daughter Emily Zhang, and my parents in law Shilian Zhang and Yuezhao Huang for their love, understanding, patience, and support
