SELECTED TOPICS
IN INTERPRETING STUDIES
(From Introducing Interpreting Studies by Franz
Pchhacker)
WORD TRANSLATION
Some subjects translating faster into their
acquired (non-dominant) language. (Lambert
1959)
This may be due to an individuals active vs
passive approach to second language acquisition.
(de Bot 2000) Reaction time were found to be
consistently longer for translation from the
dominant into the weaker language and the effect
of direction of translation diminished with
increasing proficiency in the acquired language.
TIME LAG
In SI many researchers found average values of
lag times between 2 and 4 seconds.
In shadowing, Anderson (1994) found an average
lag time of 1.4 seconds.
In CI, Dorte Andres (2002) found that average
lag times in note-taking for professional subjects
working from French into German are between 3
and 6 seconds and may reach as much as 10
seconds.
COMPREHENSION
Cloze technique is based on a knowledge-based
conception of comprehension: confronted with
gaps in verbal structures, subjects will use their
lexical and grammatical knowledge to fill in what
is missing by a process of anticipatory
reconstruction or pattern-based closure.
Prior knowledge serves to generate expectations
which guide the comprehension process.
COMPREHENSION
Chernov (1979/2002) had 11 professional
interpreters work on a speech that had been
manipulated to include meaningless sentences
and unpredictable turns of phrase.
Most subjects omitted or mistranslated the
anomalous sentences and rendered the
unpredictable utterances according to the
contextually prompted expectation.
ATTENTION IN NOTE-TAKING
Seleskovitch (1975) stresses the nature of notes
as minimal cues for retrieving a maximum of
conceptual content.
Interpreters need to divide their attention
between the conceptual processing of input and
the taking of notes; the latter must not detract
from the attention needed for comprehension
process.
ATTENTIONAL RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
Andres (2002) found that the note-taking
behavior of student interpreters was often
insufficiently automatic and made substantial
demands on attention.
Students tended to fall behind in their notetaking by more than 6 seconds and to catch up by
leaving gaps in their notes which showed up
directly as omissions in their renditions.
EFFECTS OF WORKING
ENVIRONMENT
Sound quality
More
errors and omissions were recorded for both
shadowing and SI in noisy vs no-noise conditions.
(Gerver 1974)
Visual access
Although
conference interpreters have long insisted
on the need for a direct view of the conference room,
several attempts at experimentally validating the
need for visual access to ensure adequate
performance have failed to produce clear-cut results.
(Pochhacker 2004)
EFFECT OF VISUAL INPUTS
Balzani (12 final year students, with audio- or
videotape): significantly better performance in
the video condition for extemporaneous texts but
not for read speeches.
Anderson (1994) (12 professionals, with or w/o
video image) and Tommola and Lindholm (1995)
no significant difference in propositional accuracy
between SI with or without the video image.
EFFECT OF VISUAL INPUTS
Bacigalupe (1999) - 8 final-year students, with or
w/o distinct kinesics (hand movements & facial
expressions)- no differential impact of kinesic
reinforcements in the oral presentation.
EFFECT OF ACCENT AND
INTONATION
In surveys on job stress among conference
interpreters, unfamiliar accent is cited by a
majority of respondents as a frequent and serious
problem.
Mazetti (1999): speech with a large number of
phonemic and prosodic deviations impaired the
performance of student interpreters whose native
language is different from that of the speech
more than that of the ones whose mother tongue
is the language of the speech.
EFFECT OF ACCENT AND
INTONATION
Such research points to the possible advantage of
working from ones A- into ones B-language, at
least in difficult perceptual conditions.
Some evidence suggests that a speech delivered
with a non-native accent may be less difficult to
interpret if the speakers native language is
among the interpreters working language.
EFFECT OF INTONATION
Gerver (1971) found that monotonously read
passages impaired the performance of the (10
professional) interpreters and were also
associated with significantly more errors of
substitution.
Prosodic cues like pauses, stress and intonation
assist interpreters in segmenting and processing
the source-language message.
EFFECT OF SPEED
Alpbach (1968): The input rate (speed of delivery)
is all-important. Slow input can disrupt
processing as much as fast input.
Gervers experiment (1969) confirmed the
suggestion that a rate of 100 to 120 words per
minute is comfortable for SI.
At speeds above the range of 95-120 words per
minute, subjects showed a decrease in the
proportion of text correctly interpreted and an
increase in lag time and pausing.
EFFECT OF SPEED AND MODE
A source speech with monotonous intonation and
short pauses was perceived as faster and more
difficult to interpret than a speech with marked
intonation contours. (Dejean le Feal 1982)
Balzini (1990): the student interpreters in the
experiment performed significantly better on
improvised rather than read input material.
STRATEGIES IN INTERPRETING
Waiting/stalling (slowing down delivery or using
neutral padding expression or fillers)
Anticipation (top-down processing)- the
simultaneous interpreters production of a
sentence constituent before the corresponding
constituent has appeared in the source-language
input.
Compression or abstracting in response to
high input speed and/or information density in
SI.
STRATEGIES
Herbert (1952): full consecutive interpretation
should only take up 75% of the time taken by the
speaker, which is achieved by speaking at a faster
pace and avoiding repetition, hesitation and
redundancy.
Helle Dam (1993): Text condensing, achieved by
various types of substitutions and omissions, was a
necessary and usually good interpreting strategy.
Viaggio (1991: 51): Saying it all that is,
reproducing the sense of the message with all
stylistic and semantic nuances was not always
necessary for the interpreter to convey all the
senses.
STRATEGIES
Implicitation what needs to be said or remain
unstated depends on the language and culture in
question.
Explicitation more elaboration may be needed
to circumvent linguistic and socio-cultural
differences.
Adaptation in case where there is cultural
difference or difference in discourse conventions.
FIDELITY
Glmet (1958: 106): interpreters should transfer
speech with the same faithfulness as soundamplifications.
Herbert (1952: 4): fully and faithfully conveys
the original speakers idea.
Gile (1992: 189) demands fidelity to the message
and style of the original, with priority given to
the informational content rather than the
linguistic package of the text.
DEVIATION FROM THE ORIGINAL
Omissions
Additions
Substitutions (errors of translation)
Sandra Hale (1997: 211): linguistic omissions
and additions are often required to ensure
accuracy.
Clare Donovan-Cagigos (1990: 400): Fidelity is
not a fixed quantity but relative to a concrete
communicative situation.
INTONATION IN SI
Shlesinger (1994): Fifteen subjects listened to
three passages either as interpretations recorded
in authentic conditions or as transcriptions of the
interpreted output read on tape by the
interpreter. Comprehension scores based on three
content questions on each passage were twice as
high for the group receiving the read versions
than for the group listening to authentic output
with interpretational intonation.
POLITENESS AND REGISTER
Berk-Seligson (1988/2002, 1990): Mock jurors
gave a significantly more favorable assessment of
the Spanish witness when they had listened to
the version of the English interpretation with
politeness markers.
A similar effect was observed with the same
experimental design for interpretation in
hyperformal style, that is, an upward shift in
register by the non-use of contracted forms in
English.
INTERPRETERS ROLE
Anne-Marie Mesa (2000): The expectation of
community service providers in Canada that the
cultural interpreter should explain cultural
values ranked rather low.
Even fewer respondents considered it very
important to receive cultural explanations from the
interpreter after the mediated exchange.
IN CONTRAST, most interpreters considered it
very important to be able to provide such
explanations.
Angelelli (2001): Interpreters perceived, enacted
and described their role as visible agents in the
interaction.
INTERPRETERS ROLE
Kadric (2001): Court judges in Vienna were rather
accepting of tasks such as simplifying the judges
utterances and explaining legal language for the
clients.
85% of judges expected the interpreter to explain
cultural references for the court.
IN CONTRAST
Kelly (2000): Most legal professionals in the survey
were against a cultural mediator role of the
interpreter.
Kopczynski (1994): Users of conference interpreters
generally preferred the ghost role of the
interpreter.
QUALITY EXPECTATION
Interpreter-related
Thorough
qualities
preparation
Endurance
Poise
Pleasant appearance
Conference
interpreters output qualities
Quality Expectation
Sense consistency
Logical cohesion
Correct terminology
Completeness
Fluency of delivery
Correct grammar
Bhler
Kurz
1986
1989
% users
interpreter
96
s
83
49
47
49
48
81
72
45
36
28
11
QUALITY EXPECTATION
Kurz (1993/ 2002): Average ratings by end-users
were consistently lower than those of the
interpreters in Buhlers study.
Users expectation profiles differed according to
their professional background.
Kurz and Pochhacker (1995): Users of SI in
media settings put considerably less emphasis on
completeness while giving special importance to
such criteria as pleasant voice, native accent,
and fluency of delivery.
QUALITY EXPECTATION
Peter Moser (1996)s interviewees ratings:
Faithfulness
Content
to the original
Synchronicity
Rhetorical
skills
Voice quality
Expectations tended to vary considerably
depending on meeting type (large vs. small,
general vs. technical), age, gender, and previous
experience with SI.
QUALITY PERCEPTION
Findings from user expectation surveys indicated
preference for essentials rather than a complete
rendition. (Vuorikoski 1993: 321, P. Moser 1996:
163f).
Collados Ais (1998/ 2002): Subjects who had
given less importance to delivery features in the
expectation survey were nevertheless distinctly
affected by monotonous intonation, as reflected in
lower ratings for overall quality and several other
criteria.
QUALITY PERCEPTION
Content errors in the melodic interpretation did not
result in lower scores.
The criterion valued most highly by the users (fidelity)
is the one that they fail to appreciate and are likely to
judge by such secondary criteria as fluency and lively
delivery.
Giuliana Garzone (2003): Poor delivery (i.e. hesitation
and erratic prosody) had a marked impact on quality
assessments (i.e. delivery, voice quality, fidelity,
coherence).
Cheung (2003): Subjects gave lower ratings to the nonnative version for criteria like clarity, pacing,
completeness, interference (code-mixing), fluency and
coherence.
EXPECTATION IN COMMUNITY
INTERPRETING
Anne-Marie Mesa (2000): Canadian community
service providers ratings of interpreter qualities
and behaviors:
Proficiency
in the clients language
Pointing out a clients lack of understanding
Kadric (2001): Court judges in Vienna rated
interpreting skills and linguistic and cultural
competence as more important in a good
courtroom interpreter than basic legal
knowledge and knowledge of court organization
and procedure.
HIRING CRITERIA
COMMUNITY INTERPRETING
Kadric (2001): Court judges re-hiring criteria
include smooth facilitation of communication
and costs.
CONFERENCE INTERPRETING
Moser-Mercer (1996: 50):
Team
discipline
Adaptability
Flexible scheduling
Availability
STRESS
AIIC (2002): Most important stressors include
difficult source texts and speaker delivery, poor
booth conditions and insufficient preparation.
The feeling that work-related stress causes a drop
in performance quality was not substantiated by
an assessment of interpretation samples for
meaning correspondence, linguistic correctness,
and delivery.
However, there is experimental evidence that the
fatigue resulting from excessively long SI turn (up
to 60 minutes) has a significant detrimental effect
on performance (see Moser-Mercer et al. 1998,
Zeier 1997.
STRESS
Videoconferencing resulted in higher stress levels
but there is little evidence of lower output quality
as judged from the perspective of interpretation
users. (p. 172)
Media interpreting also resulted in higher stress
levels. (Kurz 2002)
POSSIBLE RESERACH TOPICS
(FROM A CONFERENCE WEBSITE)
What training is available for interpreters?
What is the attitude of interpreters and
interpreting businesses toward such training?
What interpretation services are available in
Thai hospitals? Are special training programs
needed for hospital translators/interpreters to
help improve this business?
POSSIBLE RESERACH TOPICS
What translation/interpretation services are
needed in local hospitals to service ethnic people,
foreign visitors, and refugees who have limited
Thai abilities?
What translation/interpretation services are
needed by local government to service ethnic
people, foreign visitors, and refugees who have
limited Thai abilities?
What translation/interpretation services are
needed by the justice system for efficiency in the
courts and justice for ethnic people, foreign
visitors, and refugees?
