Marianne Lederer

Marianne Lederer (1934 – 10 April 2026) was a French translation scholar. Lederer further developed the Interpretive Theory of Translation together with Danica Seleskovitch, who first proposed the theory. Lederer also published several works on translation and interpreting pedagogy. Her works have greatly influenced interpreting and translation research and teaching internationally.

Background Marianne Lederer was born in Paris in 1934.

As a fresh interpreter graduate in 1958, she got the opportunity to interpret for a three-month-long American mission to Tunisia with the OCEC (the predecessor to OECD), the other interpreter for the mission was Danica Seleskovitch.

University career In 1978, Lederer obtained a doctorate from the University of Paris 4-Sorbonne on Simultaneous translation: Theoretical foundations (La traduction simultanée - Experience et Théorie). She was appointed professor at the University of Paris XII-Val de Marne in 1979, where she founded the department of foreign languages and headed that same department until 1985. In 1985, she took up a position at the Ecole Supérieure d'Interprètes et de Traducteurs (ESIT) at the University of Paris 3, where she had been teaching since 1969. in the 1970s promoted translation as a triangular process rather than a linear coding. The theory has heavily influenced translation and interpretation pedagogy throughout the world. Marianne Lederer's work on the Interpretive Theory has been widely used in teaching of interpreting, and her works have been translated into English, Chinese, Georgian, Arabic, Serbian, Korean, Hungarian, Dutch, Spanish and Persian.

Together with Danica Seleskovitch, she was one of the first translators to break away from the structural linguistics, which still dominated in the 1970s. She was also one of the founders and promotors of the so called Paris-school of interpreting which promotes interpreting into a mother tongue or L1.

Lederer was co-editor of Forum, an international journal of interpretation and translation, published by John Benjamins Publishing Company, member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC), and the European Society of Translation Studies (EST). In 2002, she received The Danica Seleskovitch Prize for prominent work for interpreters and research into interpreting.

Lederer retired in 2002, at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University. In November 2011, she was awarded the Joseph Zaarour medal at the Saint Joseph University of Beirut for her contributions to Translation and Interpreting Studies.

Main publications 1978: Simultaneous Interpretation — Units of Meaning and other Features. In: Gerver D., Sinaiko H.W. (eds) Language Interpretation and Communication. NATO Conference Series, vol 6. Boston, MA: Springer. 1981: La traduction simultanée - Experience et Théorie, [Simultaneous translation: Experience and Theory]. Paris: Minard Lettres Modernes. 1984: Interpréter pour traduire, [Interpreting to translate] with D. Seleskovitch, Paris: Didier Erudition. 5th edition by Les Belles Lettres in 2014 1990: The role of cognitive complements in interpreting. In Bowen, D. and Bowen, M.(eds) Interpreting–Yesterday. Today, and Tomorrow. Binghamton: American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series, 4, 53-60. 1995: A Systematic Approach to Teaching Interpretation, with D. Seleskovitch, (translated by Jacolyn Harmer). Washington: RID. 2003: Translation – The Interpretive Model, (translated by Ninon Larché). London: Routledge. 2007: Can Theory Help Translator and Interpreter Trainers and Trainees? The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 1 (1), 15-35.