interpreting

Pluralinterpretings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of interpret.

   The guide was interpreting the carved symbols for the tour group.

   Interpreting between the two teams took most of the meeting.

   Note

   Every use of interpret passes through this form, from reading dreams and signs to running a program by reading each instruction as it is reached. In the language sense it often needs no object: she was interpreting for the delegation. As a gerund it takes a direct object (interpreting the symbols), which is the quickest way to tell it from the noun for a single act, which needs of.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The discipline or study of translating one spoken or signed language into another.

   Conference interpreting demands intense concentration and rapid recall.

   Sign language interpreting is provided at every public event in the city.

   Similarinterpretation

   Note

   The name of a field of study, often paired with its sister discipline, as in translation and interpreting education or a theory of interpreting. Its modes are named by a word in front: consecutive interpreting, conference interpreting, sign language interpreting. Unlike the single act of explaining, it is uncountable and concerns only spoken or signed language. Written work belongs to translation.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An act of interpreting or explaining something obscure or unclear.

   The lawyer's interpreting of the ambiguous clause shaped the entire case.

   Scholars disagreed over the correct interpreting of the cryptic inscription.

   Similarinterpretation

   Note

   A noun for the single act, and so one that can be counted. Stephen A. Erickson's Human Presence (1984) writes of "a plurality of interpretings when interpretation takes place," putting the -ing noun for each separate act beside interpretation for the process as a whole. When a plural is needed, interpretings is the form. When something follows, it takes of, as in the interpreting of a clause.

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