Parallel visual records of the 'input' speech and the interpreter's rendition were used to investigate the length and nature of the language segment the interpreter needs to begin the encoding process in his second language. Translation segments from English, French, and German were studied. Significantly longer 'chunks' of speech were necessary in translating from German into French or English than either English-French or French-English translations. The author concludes that the verb is the main determinant of meaning. She quotes another study to the effect that 'the verb defines the plot, the subject of the sentence merely indicates one of the actors'. The results also suggest that the lexical and grammatical aspects of the text as well as the interpreter's subjective organization of the material interplayed with the linguistic factors in a systematic fashion.