Interpreting - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2006

Simultaneous interpreting is generally assumed to be particularly demanding with respect to cognitive resources such as attention and working memory, which are thought to gradually increase with professional practice. Experimental data to corroborate this assumption is still rather sparse, however. Here we report an in-depth investigation of working memory capacity among 21 professional interpreters (experts), 18 second-year interpreting students (novices) and two control groups (20 multilinguals and 20 students). Tests involved either short-term retention alone; short-term retention and processing in a recall task with articulatory suppression, a listening span task, and a category and rhyme probe task; or attention alone in a unilingual and bilingual Stroop test. No between-group differences in simple span tasks and the Stroop test were found. Significant group effects were observed in free recall with articulatory suppression, in the category probe task and in the listening span task. The best performance was always produced by the novice interpreters rather than by the experts. These findings are discussed in relation to (a) the novice–expert distinction and the role of working memory in the development of interpreting skills, and (b) the nature of the task and possible strategies involved.

This article describes an empirical study designed to contribute to research into interpreting quality by moving towards a definition of the criterion of ‘fluency’ in the evaluation of simultaneous interpreting. Based on an interdisciplinary review of the literature and preliminary tests of the production and perception of pauses and their effect on speech comprehension, ‘silent pauses’ are investigated as a subparameter of fluency. Following the line of research initiated by Collados (1998), the study analyses the quality expectations of 43 expert users as well as their evaluation of German-Spanish interpretations manipulated by additional silent pauses. Although the differences found in the evaluation study cannot be shown to be statistically significant, there are trends indicating that the principal hypothesis, whereby silent pauses as a subparameter of fluency have a negative effect on fluency evaluation, has received some empirical support. Subjects appear to have detected and responded to the experimental stimulus (two levels of additional silent pauses between 2 and 6 seconds in duration) by giving lower mean ratings for ‘fluency’ to the experimental videos than to the control.

This article reviews recent remote interpreting (RI) experiments carried out at the United Nations and European Union institutions, with emphasis on their salient technical features, which are also summarized in the Appendix. Motivations for remote interpreting with minimum technical requirements for sound and image transmission in compressed form as well as the methods used in recent experiments for image capture in the meeting room and display in the remote room are discussed. The impact of technical conditions upon interpreters’ perception of remote interpreting is also examined using questionnaire data, which seem to suggest that the interpreters’ visual perception of the meeting room, as mediated by image displays, is the determining factor for the “alienation” or absence of a feeling of presence in the meeting room universally experienced by interpreters under RI conditions. The paper also points out the advantages of a more coherent research methodology based upon the notion of presence in a virtual environment as well as possible innovative approaches to providing the interpreter with meeting room views.

The development of telecommunication technologies has created a demand on educational institutions to offer interpreting programs by distance mode. This demand arises from educational needs, financial considerations, and market developments. Although several educational institutions and interpreting service providers have attempted to train interpreters by remote delivery, a commonly expressed concern is whether distance programs can be as effective as on-campus ones. This paper presents an analysis of fundamental features of interpreting and on-campus training, as well as issues associated with the distance mode of interpreter training programs. Three telecommunication technologies that could be used for teaching interpreting — teleconferencing by telephone, videoconferencing through local area networks (LANs) and videoconferencing through the Internet — are analyzed with regard to feasibility, reliability and affordability. The results show that each of these has its advantages and disadvantages. The challenge facing educators is to overcome the technical constraints, maximize the advantages and the potential of current technologies, and adapt pedagogies to best fit the new technologies so as to achieve results comparable to those of on-campus teaching.