Sense is a key concept in the Interpretative Theory. In A New Concise Course in Linguistics for Students of English, the author points out: Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of a linguistic form, the collection of all its features; it is abstract and de-contextualized (Dai Weidong, He Zhaoxiong, 2010:66). The core of Interpretative Theory is to separate linguistic meaning from non-verbal sense. The target of interpreting is the non-verbal sense expressed in the speech rather than the meaning of the linguistic symbols.

According to Lederer (2001:189), sense is the combination of linguistic meanings and cognitive complements in a certain section of a speech or a text. Sense appears when linguistic knowledge and extra-linguistic knowledge are merged.

Danica Seleskovitch holds that the target of interpretation is not the linguistic symbols but the sense carried by those symbols (c.f. Danica Seleskovitch, 1979:39). What the interpreters should pursue is the equivalence of communicative sense on the whole in the source language and the target language.

Based on the previous information, the objective of interpreting should be the delivery of communicative meaning; what the interpreter interprets should be parole instead of langue. When interpreting, the interpreter shall not focus on the linguistic pattern or the diction of the very corresponding words in the target language. Instead, he/she needs to analyze immediately and fully re-express what he/she heard previously in order to deliver the complete meaning of the original speech. 从释意学理论看中英口译(4):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_7761.html