Note-taking is critical in helping interpreters memorize detailed information both quickly and accurately. Therefore, the present study was conducted as a questionnaire survey at a university in the ...Mekong Delta of Vietnam to investigate how students, specifically student interpreters, perceive note-taking in consecutive interpreting assignments. In detail, this study explores the students’ perceptions of the benefits and the challenges of using note-taking in consecutive interpreting assignments. The participants in this study comprised 160 students majoring in English Interpretation and Translation. Furthermore, they have taken consecutive interpreting courses and experienced taking notes in consecutive interpreting tasks. The findings of this study indicated that most students had good perceptions about note-taking used in consecutive interpretation and perceived its benefits and challenges. Moreover, some pedagogical implications for both students and teachers are made. Specifically, the study suggests that students should frequently practice it to acquire good note-taking skills. Teachers should make effective lecture designs to help students improve their note-taking skills and consecutive interpreting performance.
Findings from conference interpreting research in the Chinese context have suggested that interpreters barely produce extra-textual additions in rigidly structured press conferences, and that adding ...connectives and intensifiers is only required to help the English-speaking audience capture the logic embedded in implicit Chinese interclausal relations. Previous research in the Chinese context has tended to draw data almost exclusively from the Chinese Premier's Press Conference interpreting, which features interpreting from Chinese into English. In order to enrich conference interpreting corpora in Asia and to examine additions in the opposite interpreting direction for the same language pair, this study drew on authentic materials of six interpreted press conferences held at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Contrary to previous research, our results showed that conference interpreters exhibited a certain degree of "visibility" through producing extra-textual additions, which is typical of interpreting in various community-based settings. Moreover, the addition of extra connectives and intensifiers that are common in Chinese-to-English interpreting was also identified. It is proposed that the interpreters' production of extra-textual additions is connected with the specific context of the AIT, whereas the connective and emphasizing additions are to a large extent caused by the grammaticalization process wherein particular linguistic devices change into discourse markers to fulfill the communicative needs in both English and Chinese.
Abstract
This study employs four purpose-built corpora to assess the frequency of the disfluency marker
uh (emm)
in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting (CI) renditions as a proxy measure of ...interpreters’ cognitive load. Based on Plevoets and Defrancq (
2016
,
2018
), the frequencies are compared across four informational load indicators: delivery rate, lexical density, proportion of numbers, and sentence length. The analysis also probes the potential influence of interpreting directionality on disfluencies. Results reveal differential effects of the four informational load indicators on disfluencies and, by extension, interpreters’ cognitive load, while Chinese-to-English CI is associated with an increase in disfluencies compared to English-to-Chinese for interpreters with Chinese as their A language.
This study examines the parallel translation process of 30 beginning and 30 advanced consecutive interpreting students (BISs and AISs). It investigates the characteristics and efficiency of parallel ...translation processing employed during the comprehension phase across proficiency levels. Quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal AISs demonstrated superior information reformulation capabilities, particularly for high-density content, along with more efficient note-taking and utilization compared to BISs. A key finding is that AISs interpreted more propositions than they recorded in their notes, reflecting stronger encoding and memory retention. In contrast, BISs relied heavily on external notation instead of internal memory retrieval, only interpreting a portion of their notes while failing to decipher the rest. These findings uncover complex yet differentiated parallel processing approaches across skill levels, with more successful comprehension-to-production strategies utilized by AISs. Enhancing students’ metacognitive awareness regarding parallel processing techniques may improve information processing efficiency during source language comprehension, ultimately enhancing target language reformulation accuracy and completeness.
This study investigates the use of modal verbs in Chinese–English government press conference (GPC) interpretation. Modal verbs mark the speaker’s opinion of or attitude toward the event described in ...a sentence. Interpreters also use modal verbs to indicate the stances of the source language speakers. The use of modal verbs has been examined in such contexts as research papers, textbooks, and second language learners’ output; however, studies that compare differences in modal verbs between source and target languages in the context of interpreting are sparse. The investigation being reported is based on a comparable corpus—an original Chinese GPC and its English-translated version—and a parallel corpus—a translated English GPC and the original English version from the US. The results of the comparable corpus analysis indicate that the frequency of modal verbs in translated English is significantly higher than in original Chinese, in which only 40% of the modal verbs in translated English are consistent with their Chinese counterparts, while others are employed through amplification and value variation. The results of the parallel corpus analysis suggest that the increase of modal verbs in the target texts may help to achieve certain types of pragmatic functions in English.
Different areas within interpreting are now beginning to make specific use of generic information and communication technologies (ICT) to provide help and support for interpreters. Consecutive ...interpreting is one of the modalities in which ICT can have a major impact, and so this article deals with introducing digital devices as a note-taking tool. In more specific terms, it presents a pedagogical pilot study with students and teachers in the Conference Interpreting MA Degree programme at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (MUIC). After this trial, the views of students and lecturers alike were collected via a questionnaire. It concludes with a proposal related to the teaching and pedagogical aspects which should be taken into account before introducing the use of these devices in consecutive interpreting training.
Introduction
Previous research on performance in interpreting has focused primarily on the influence of interpreting experience on executive functions, such as shifting, updating, and inhibition. ...However, limited research has explored the effects of executive functions on performance. Understanding how different executive functions affect interpreting performance can provide valuable insights for teaching methods. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the effects of executive functions on comprehension and output performance during bidirectional consecutive interpreting between Chinese and Japanese.
Methods
This study involved 48 Chinese advanced Japanese language learners. Self-assessment results indicated that all participants were unbalanced bilingual individuals. All participants took part in consecutive interpreting, completed comprehension tests, and underwent executive function tests. Executive functions were assessed using the color–shape switching task, 1–back task, and Stroop task.
Results
Analysis using Bayesian linear regression revealed the following. (1) Updating exhibited a significant impact on both Japanese-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-Japanese interpreting, indicating that higher updating ability was associated with better interpreting performance. (2) Inhibition showed a significant effect on Japanese-to-Chinese interpreting performance, whereas the effect was not significant in Chinese-to-Japanese interpreting. (3) No significant effects of shifting were observed in either Japanese-to-Chinese or Chinese-to-Japanese interpreting.
Discussion
The results indicate that executive functions have different effects on the interpreting performance of unbalanced bilinguals, while these effects are also influenced by the direction of the source language. Based on these findings, it is recommended that executive function training should be included in interpreter teaching and training programs, with a specific focus on the updating and inhibition functions.
With an intention to contribute to the issue of how language experience may influence working memory (WM), we focused on consecutive interpreting (CI), analyzed its potential links with WM functions ...and tested these links in a longitudinal experiment, trying to answer the specific question of how CI training may influence WM. Two comparable groups of Chinese learners of English received either CI or general second language (L2) training for one semester, and were tested before and after the training with the tasks of n-back (non-verbal updating), L2 listening span, and letter running span (verbal spans). CI performance was tested in the posttest. The results showed that (1) updating efficiency in both the pretest and posttest predicted CI performance, and CI training enhanced updating efficiency while general L2 training did not; (2) the relationship between verbal spans and CI performance was weaker (i.e., only pretest L2 listening span correlated with CI performance and predicted CI performance with marginal significance), and CI training did not make a unique contribution to these spans (i.e., no group differences). The results indicated an "interpreter advantage" in updating, which was probably due to that updating was more central in the CI task than WM spans. Theoretically, we believe that updating and CI are closely related because they share the same underlying mechanism, or more specifically updating and the recalling process in the CI task share the same attentional control process, a unique link between updating and the CI task. Methodological implications are discussed.
Interpreters can either interpret from the first language (L1) to the second language (L), or in the other direction. Understanding translation and interpreting as a direction-dependent process ...contributes to a wider and more critical view regarding the role of both languages in the process, as well as the identity, perspectives, and preferences of translators. The effect of directionality primarily weighs on stimulus and individual factors. This study explores the impact of directionality on the performance of trainee interpreters by examining four critical aspects of quality in target speeches, namely: speech rate, information completeness, delivery, and quality of expression. We observed an advantage for L2-L1 over L1-L2 interpreting in the form of interpreting quality (i.e., delivery and quality of expression) but not in content (i.e., the level of information retained in the target language). These effects of interpreting directionality suggest an important role of L2 proficiency in interpreting. Moreover, L1-L2 interpreting is cognitively demanding compared to L2-L1 interpreting for trainee interpreters. This research sheds light on the cognitive mechanisms of interpreting in different directions and provides pedagogical recommendations for training interpreters.
The link between the different types and components of mental imagery and efficiency in tasks involving memory storage and processing is not clear. The direction of the effect ...(facilitation/deterioration) usually depends on the task in question and the cognitive processes involved. Here, we investigate the possible contribution of visual and auditory imagery components to performance in a verbal working memory task (i.e. consecutive interpreting) in which accuracy is not dependent on mental imagery yet with high individual variability due to exacting memory and cognitive control demands. The mental imagery of 38 translation-interpreting undergraduates was measured on four self-reported scales with the vividness, control, and preference components and with a mental rotation test. Participants were then asked to consecutively interpret 10 speeches from English into Turkish. Mixed-effects models revealed that only control of visual mental imagery measured with Gordon's Test of Visual Imagery Control predicts verbal transfer accuracy in consecutive interpreting.
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