Normally in most academic articles attempts to defining the interpreting activity have generally tended to focus on the oral aspect of interpreting. Consider the following definition explained by Anderson: […] interpretation occurs whenever a message originating orally in one language is reformulated and retransmitted orally in a second language (1978: 218, emphasis added). 

Anderson’s definition is not so different, in its theory it still emphasis on the oral aspect, from the following definition by Seleskovitch: Interpretation is, to a great extent, the verbal expression of things and ideas accompanied by the non-deliberate creation of temporary linguistic equivalents (1978a: 87, emphasis in original). 

However, Pöchhacker (2004: 10) argues that a more accurate way of defining interpreting is to disregard the oral-written dichotomy in favor of ‘the feature of immediacy in order to accommodate for other interpreting types in which the oral aspect, though not necessarily entirely absent, is not a distinctive feature as in sign language interpreting, sight translation, live subtitling, etc. Based on Kade’s ideas (1968, quoted in Pöchhacker 2004: 10), Pöchhacker suggests the following definition: Interpreting is a form of translation in which a first and final rendition in another language is produced on the basis of a one-time presentation of an utterance in a source language (Pöchhacker, 2004: 11, emphasis in original).