Interpreting and translation are two of the oldest activities in the annals of human
history. Records of translation activities date back over 2000 years, and since ancient
times, translation has been studied by numerous scholars. Interpreting, on the other
hand, had no theory of its own, so to speak, until modern times. Although the activity
of interpreting dates back to ancient times, it did not begin to take shape in its modern
form until 1917 at the negotiation table of the Versailles Treaty. Consecutive
interpreting, in which the interpreter begins only after the speaker has finished, came
about after the Versailles Treaty. In contrast, simultaneous interpreting, which has
become the preferred mode, had its debut at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II.
The Interpretive Theory of Translation (aka, the Theory of Sense) was developed by
Danica Seleskovitch and Marianne Lederer (researchers at the Ecole Superieure
d’Interprètes et de Traducteurs (ESIT) at the University of Paris III ― the so-called
Paris School). The following is a brief outline of this theory.