THE CIRIN BULLETIN
Conference
Interpreting Research
Information Network
An independent network for the
dissemination of information on
conference interpreting
research (CIR)
__________________________________________________________________
BULLETIN n°32
June 2006
Editor: Daniel Gile
Contributors to
this issue:
Ivana
Čeňková (CI), CAI Xiaohong (CXH), Ingrid Kurz (IK), Xiao Xiaoyan
(XXY)
Editorial address:
D. Gile, 46, rue d'Alembert, 92190 Meudon, France
tel/fax
+33 1 45 34 83 84
e-mail: daniel.gile@laposte.net
Web site: http://cirinandgile.com
This Bulletin
aims at contributing to the dissemination of information on conference
interpreting research (CIR) and at providing useful information to members of
the CIR community worldwide. It is intended to achieve maximum coverage of
research into this sub-field of interpreting, and only occasionally refers to
research and publications in other sub-fields. The Bulletin is published
twice a year, in December and June. For further information and electronic or
paper copies of early issues (the last issue is available on the Web site at
any time), please contact D. Gile.
Note:
the mini-abstracts are followed by the initials of the contributors who sent in
the information, but the text is either written or adapted from the original
text by D.Gile, who takes responsibility for the comments and for potential
errors introduced by him.
* *
*
At this point, we have few reports on MA theses
completed this year. Perhaps more will come in in September and October. Note
the large proportion of contributions from Asia. Japan started producing
publications on interpreting other than books on a regular basis about 15 year
ago, and Korea followed a bit later. It seems that China is becoming very
active in the field as well. Unlike European and North American publications,
which are written mostly in English, these texts are written mostly in Chinese,
Japanese and Korean and are thus difficult to access for the rest of the
community. This is a pity, both because of the content of some of these
publications – which is often original - and because colleagues in the West may
have something to learn from working methods and social organization in these countries.
I am thinking in particular of Japanese colleagues, who have managed to attract
the attention of a number interpreter trainers and scholars in various
universities and motivate them to do research beyond a single work, including
more teamwork research than in the West and the use of corpora – inter alia.
D.G.
CAI Xiaohong. 2005.
On the teaching evaluation of interpreting. (In Chinese). Chinese Translation Journal 2005/6:
58-61.
* Abstract: The teaching evaluation must correspond
with the propositions of the goal of our teaching. Thus the design of a
complete and scientific evaluation system of the teaching of interpreting must
be guided by the real story of the teaching. The training itself is a classroom
teaching and hence bears the feature of progressive growth. The criterion of
the evaluation shall not only be feasible, but also present a profile of the
interpreting capability of students. In application, the evaluation shall be
both a connecting link between different stages of the training and the
moderator of the pace and direction of the training. A complete evaluation
system shall consist of a series of assessments, which can be further broken
down into summative and formative assessments; continual and selective
assessments; in and out of class assessments; intra-school and inter-school co-
assessments and etc. Through a detailed system like this, teachers can learn
the effect of the teaching and modify the schedule accordingly. For the
students, they can also tell the performance, the scope of progress they are
making and the existing problems by themselves.
This essay gives a detailed analysis about the interpreting teaching evaluation
from the aspects of the goal, categorization and periodical assessments of the
training. The author aims to put forward a complete and practical system for
interpreting evaluation. (CXH)
Čeňková, Ivana. 2005.
Sinhrnonnyj perevod v institutah Evropejskog Soûza I na
cesskom rynke (in Russian). In Salevsky, Heidemarie (ed).
105-112.
* This paper describes conference interpreter training
in the
Choi, Jungwha.
* The title is explicit. Statistics
on the demand for conference interpreting from the year 2000 to the year 2004.
Choi, Jung-Yoon. 2005.
Proposing a Performance Assessment Tool for Consecutive Interpretation. Conference
Interpretation and Translation 7:2. 195-215.
* The author presents a matrix for the assessment of
various components of quality in consecutive interpreting, complete with rating
scales and weighting coefficients.
DU
Zhengming & MENG Xiangchun, Workload Studies: An
Interpreter-centered Research Program. (In Chinese). Chinese
Translation Journal 2005/5: 76-79.
* Abstract: Proceeding from a preliminary review of
AIIC’s research program of “Workload Studies”, this paper looks into China’s
current situation of conference interpretation and concludes that the AIIC
program is of particular value to Chinese CI practitioners and researchers in
four areas of their endeavor, namely, the systematization of their research,
the streamlining and regulation of their profession, the positive development
of the CI market, and the organization of their trade. (CXH)
Furuyama, N., Nobe, S., Someya, Y.,
Sekine, K., Hayashi, S.
* An original study, the analysis of a
video-taped corpus of professional and student interpreters’ gestures during
simultaneous interpreting between English and Japanese. The paper starts with a
general characterization of gestures as emblems or spontaneous gestures
(iconics, metaphorics, deictics and beats), but the following analysis is
mostly quantitative (how many gestures of each type are found).Initial results
suggest that professionals make few gestures when interpreting formal,
well-prepared speeches, and produce more in difficult speech segments and
during Question and Answer sessions. It also appears that much variation is
found in the gestures of beginners.
General, Claudia,
Kalina, Sylvia und Kurz, Ingrid. 2004. Multi-Center-Studie zum
mehrfach gemittelten einsprachigen Konsekutivdolmetschen - Ein Beispiel für
datengestützte hochschulübergreifende dolmetschwissenschaftliche Kooperation.
In: House J./Koller W./Schubert K. (Hrsg.) Neue Perspektiven in der
Dolmetschwissenschaft. Festschrift für Heidrnu Gerzymisch-Arbogast zum 60.
Geburtstag. Bochum: AKS. 129-150.
Gile, Daniel. 2005. Conference
Interpreting. In Brown, Keith (ed).
Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd
Edition. Oxford: Elsevier. Vol. 3, p.9-23.
Gile, Daniel. 2006. Interpreting
Studies as an academic discipline : sociological
and scientific aspects (Chinese translation of the English text). In
GU Zhengkun & SHI Zhongyi (eds). 2006. West
and East: Developments in Translation Studies (in Chinese).
* The only paper
on interpreting in this collection of Chinese translations of invited papers,
mostly from Western TS authors (see the Recent Publications, June 2006 page of
the EST website www.est-translationstudies.org)
HUANG Min. 2005. Toward a
More Standardized Large-scale Accreditation Test for Interpreters. (In Chinese). Chinese Translation Journal 2005/6:
62-65.
* Abstract: Four relatively large-scale
accreditation tests for interpreters are currently given in China. Organized
respectively by the Ministry of Personnel, the Ministry of Education, Xiamen
University and the municipality of Shanghai, these tests differ from each other
in many ways. This paper applies the principles of relevant testing theories to
a critical reexamination of the four existing test formats. Taking the unique
characteristics of interpretation into account, it makes a series of proposals
for designing a more standardized and better regularized test of this kind,
covering such aspects as the testing content, the testing structure, the choice
of testing materials, and the organization of the large-scale semi-direct
recording test. (CXH)
Ino, Kinuyo Yoshida & Someya, Yasumasa.
* The authors stress the importance of
intercultural communication skills as a central component of interpreting
skills.
Ito-Bergerot, Hiromi. 2005. The TIT theory of Interpreting and Working Memory (in Japanese). Interpreting
Studies 5. 53-72.
* An attempt to link ESIT’s “interpretive
theory” (AKA “Theory of sense”) to contemporary cognitive psychology through
the concept of working memory.
Ito-Bergerot, Hiromi.
Kim, Dae Jin.
Kondo, Masaomi. 2005. Interpreting into B : The Japanese
Exeperience. Conference Interpretation and
Translation 7:2. 3-28.
* In 2003, Lim Hyang-Ok conducted a survey
on interpreting into B in Korea (in Forum 1:2.151-171). Kondo’s paper is a
replication of the survey in Japan. This replication mode allowed some
interesting comparisons to be made. It turned out that on average, Japanese
respondents were far more experienced than Lim’s Korean respondents, which may
account for some other differences found, for instance the fact that among
respondents who said the mode mattered when working into B, all Koreans
preferred not to work in simultaneous in this direction, whereas over 60% of
the Japanese respondents preferred not to work in consecutive. Particularly
interesting are the Japanese respondents’ “free comments” for which space was
left in the questionnaire. Kondo reports that 35% of his respondents find the
Japanese original too vague and ambiguous to understand and render into
English.14% also cite syntactic and other linguistic differences between
Japanese and English as a source of difficulty. Kondo rightly points out in his
discussion of the respondents’ comments that problems singled out by
respondents exist in any source language and in any pair of languages. Indeed,
examples of a speaker’s vagueness, of differences in word order between two
languages, of missing lexical slots in one language versus the other can be
given for any language combination in the booth. The question is therefore
quantitative rather than qualitative: are there on average markedly more
problems of each kind in given language combinations?
Kondo, Masaomi. 2005. Interpreting into B: The Japanese
Experience (in Japanese). Conference Interpretation
Studies 5. 261-283.
* See above: Kondo’s paper in
Interpretation and Translation.
Köpke,
Barbara & Jean-Luc Nespoulos. 2006.
Working memory performance in expert and novice interpreters. Interpreting 8:1. 1-23.
* A study of working
memory in a large sample of professional interpreters (21), Second year
postgraduate interpreting students (18), multilinguals (20) and
non-interpreting students (20), the last two groups acting as controls.
Subjects were submitted to various tests but to no interpreting task. Results
suggest that professional interpreters seem to resist articulatory suppression
better than other groups, but that as far as working memory is concerned, the
only significant between-group differences are found in favour of interpreting
students. These results seem to challenge the idea that working memory capacity
increases in experts and suggest that perhaps, in line with Minhua Liu’s ideas,
experienced interpreters develop skills which make them less dependent on working
memory storage capacity. The authors are aware of limitations of their
experimental design, including the possible confounding effects of age (the
mean age of experts is 44.4 years and the mean age of the novices being 26.2
years), screening (of students) and motivation.
Kurz, Ingrid.
2002. Interpreting training programs. The benefits of
coordination, cooperation and modern technology. In
Hung E. (ed.) Teaching Translation and Interpreting 4.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 65-72.
Kurz, Ingrid. 2002.
Stressfulness of Live TV Interpreting vs. Conference Interpreting. In: Translation:
New Ideas for a New Century. Proceedings of the XXVI FIT Congress, Vancouver,
BC, Canada, August 7-10, 2002. 202-206.
Kurz, Ingrid. 2002.
Interpreting the WTC Attacks. Language International 14:3. 40-43.
Kurz, Ingrid. 2004. Dolmetschen
beim Tokioter Kriegsverbrecherprozess. In Müller I. (Hrsg.) Und sie
bewegt sich doch … Translationswissenschaft in Ost und West. Festschrift für
Heidemarie Salevsky zum 60. Geburtstag. Frankfurt a. Main: Lang. 197-206.
Kurz, Ingrid. 2004. Dolmetschen
gestern, heute, morgen. In: 50 Jahre Universitas – Perspektiven im 21. Jahrhundert. Sonderausgabe
Universitas, 4/2004. 22-26.
Kurz,
Ingrid & Mikulasek, Brigitta. 2004.
Television as a Source of Information for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired. Captions and Sign Language on Austrian TV.
Kurz, Ingrid. 2005. Akzent
und Dolmetschen – Informationsverlust bei einem nichtmuttersprachlichen Redner.
Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée 81. 55-70.
Kurz, Ingrid. 2005. Was
(tatsächlich) in den Köpfen von Dolmetschern vorgeht. In Salevsky, Heidemarie
(ed). 95-104.
Kuwahata, Minako. 2005. Sink or Swim: Five basic strokes to E-J Consecutive Interpreting. Interpretation Studies 5. 173-181.
* The author advocates a progressive
approach to consecutive interpreting, starting with a sensitization stage with
general reformulation exercises, moving on to speeches with good prior
preparation, then to strategies for coping with names, then to strategies for
coping with numbers of various kinds.
Lee, TaeHyung.
2005. Interpreter Information Processing Strategy and Accuracy of Simultaneous
Interpretation. (in Korean). Conference
Interpretation and Translation 7:2. 139-155.
* The temporal characteristics of two
Korean interpretations of an English speech broadcast on TV. The interpreter
whose output was better spoke faster with a smaller EVS. The author concludes
that the time spent processing segments should be limited and that one of the
most important decisions interpreters have to make is to decide when they
should finish a sentence and move on the next incoming message.
Lim, Hyang-Ok. 2005. Communication skills and
interpretation. Conference Interpretation and Translation 7:2. 157-172.
*A general discussion of communication
skills in interpreting
*
LIU Heping. 2005.
An overview of studies and trends in theoretical research into interpreting. (In Chinese). Chinese Translation Journal 2005/4:
71-74.
Minamitsu, Yoshihiro. 2005. Acceptability assessment on translation of referring expression
in simultaneous interpreting. Conference Interpretation and Translation
7:2. 29-59.
* A theoretical reflection on pragmatic
criteria for the translation of "referring expressions" in
simultaneous interpreting, their focus being on the meaningfulness criterion.
Mizuno,
Makiko. 2005. Contents and philosophy of codes of ethics in
conference interpreting, community interpreting, court interpreting and health
care interpreting (in Japanese). Interpretation Studies
5. 157-172.
Mouzourakis, Panayotis. 2005. Remote
interpreting: A technical perspective on recent experiments. Interpreting
8:1. 45-66.
* An analysis of remote conference interpreting
issues. While sound quality seems to be reaching acceptable levels, visual
problems are more difficult to solve due to mechanisms in the use of vision
when perceiving the conference room environment. Mouzourakis describes and
discusses available experience in international organization, including results
of surveys. Interestingly, the issue of the interpreters' potential reluctance
to lose advantages associated with travel opportunities are not taken up as a
factor in some negative attitudes towards remote interpreting.
MU
Yuanyuan & PAN Jun. 2005. Professionalization as
the New Trend in Interpreting: A review of the Fifth National Conference on
Interpreting practice, Pedagogy, and Research (In Chinese). Chinese
Translation Journal 2005/2: 38-40.
* Abstract: Reviewing the Fifth National Conference
on Interpreting practice, Pedagogy, and Research and comparing it with the
previous sessions, this article identifies three salient features of what
transpired in all five meetings on interpreting and draws attention to three
major changes in the evolving national discourse on the subject. While the
findings point to professionalization as the current trend in the development
of interpreting, many difficulties remain to be addressed before the practice
could turn itself into a full-fledged profession in China.(CXH)
Ochi, Yoshie. 2005. The
efficiency of and prospects for the integration of interpreter training methods
into language training in secondary schools. Interpretation
Studies 5. 203-224.
Pradas Macías, Macarena. 2006. Probing quality
criteria in simultaneous interpreting. The role of silent
pauses in fluency. Interpreting 8:1.
25-43. (Translated from Spanish by Julian Bourne).
* Here is one more study by a member of the research
group set up by Collados Aís at the University of Granada, Spain, probably the
most successful group on the CIR scene in terms of continued, cohesive
empirical investigation into conference interpreting. In this study, Pradas
Macías sums up her doctoral work which focused on silent pauses and their effect
on interpreting quality perception. Two levels of silent pauses were introduced
on a video cassette into a simultaneously interpreted Spanish target speech of
an authentic German Spanish. The three resulting target speeches (one control,
one with one additional level of silent pauses, one with a different level of
silent pauses) were mixed with the original German speech and played back to
three groups of listeners who were asked to rate them, both in terms of overall
quality and for a number of quality components (impression of professionalism,
impression of reliability, accent, voice, logical cohesion, diction,
intonation, fluency etc.) on a 1 to 5 scale. Silent pauses apparently affected
fluency rating, though the differences are small (4.57 versus 4.36 and 4.13),
only mean ratings are indicated and no significance testing seems to have been
carried out, but there seemed to be no consistent effect on other quality
components or on overall quality ratings (4.14 for the control video versus
4.33 and 4.43 for the experimental videos). The author says differences were
not significant, but does not indicate the test(s) used. Interesting finding,
which tends to indicate some tolerance for delivery imperfections from
listeners, at least for short speeches (these were about 10 minutes long).
Regular anecdotal evidence (comments from delegates listening to interpreters
in conferences) suggests that such tolerance may shrink markedly as the
duration of the speeches increases.
Reda, Antonio. 2005. Anforderungen des Auswärtigen
Amts an die Übersetzer- und Dolmetscherausbildung. In Salevsky, Heidemarie (ed).
373-381.
REN Wen.
Schweda-Nicholson, Nancy. 2005. What
makes a good interpreter? A study of interpreter trainees'
personality traits. Conference Interpretation and Translation
7:2. 61-100.
* 68 interpreter trainees were examined using the
Myers-Briggs personality traits indicator (MBTI).This report seems to be a re-publication of the paper by the same
author published in the Interpreters' Newsletter in 2005 (see Bulletin n°31).
Setton, Robin. 2005. So what is so interesting about simultaneous interpreting? SKASE
Journal of Translation and Interpretation 1:1.70-84. (www.skase.sk/Volumes)
* In this paper, Setton explains the role of the pragmatic
dimension in simultaneous interpreting. As in many of his papers, he makes
interesting analyses and points. One of them is that “linguistic productions do
not perfectly express thoughts and communicative intentions, but merely offer
sophisticated evidence for inferring them” (p.70), which is an important
justification of interpretive translation strategies as opposed to
word-for-word-with-necessary-changes-only strategies: “An interpreter's
listeners use inference to derive a message as do those listening directly to
the speaker. The constraints on the interpreter's speech to achieve fidelity
are therefore not that they should show any particular conventional
correspondence to the words or syntax (or phonology or morphology) of the
original, but that it should enable TL hearers to derive the same message as
the SL hearers get it from the original” (p.75). Another claim Setton makes is
that anticipation is not a strategy, because it is unconscious (p.74). This is
true most of the time, but not always. Anticipation can also be a deliberate
strategy or an online tactic, for instance when deciding when or how to start a
sentence in the target speech while the corresponding source-langue sentence is
being uttered. Setton believes that the distinction made by Lederer between
linguistic anticipation and “cognitive” anticipation is neither necessary nor
justified “when we do not know whether words are evoking concepts or
vice-versa” (p.74). Interesting point, but the statement is too categorical.
Some measure of conceptual analysis is probably necessary in order to identify
sounds as linguistic units, but such analysis can be superficial and stop at
identification of the linguistic units without processing their meaning in
context in depth. In other cases, interpreters/listeners may have identified an
idea, a position or a feeling before it is uttered and may therefore be assumed
to be in a better position to identify quickly and reliably the words which
will express it. In this reviewer’s opinion, Lederer’s distinction does make
sense.
One
caricatures in the text is Setton’s reference to people who believe that
conflicting structures must be a source of significant additional load as
people who“stop at syntax and semantics” (p.71). I think such people may not
devote as much attention to pragmatic factors as Setton, but are aware of their
existence, and yet believe that in spite of them, other things being equal,
conflicting structures tend to be a source of additional load. The sentence on
p.73 which says that interpreters complete the sense of an utterance or an idea
before the speaker has quite managed to complete the obligatory conventional
syntactic articulation lacks the adverb “sometimes”. Setton defends the role of
pragmatic factors, but tends to do so with sweeping statements which only
damage the impact of his texts. It would be ironic (and unfortunate) if critics
of his writing responded saying that his approach stops at pragmatics and does
not take into account syntax and semantics.
One last comment:
it would be nice to have some evidence about the phase Setton refers to in his
description of the learning curve of student interpreters confronted with
consecutive (p.79-80) whose renditions “seem to lack ‘cohesive links’ ”.
Setton, Robin. 2006. Context in simultaneous interpretation. Journal of Pragmatics
38:3. 349-389.
Abstract. Translation has recently been analysed in the terms of
modern cognitive-pragmatic theory (relevance theory) as an interlingual
interpretive use of language (Gutt, 1991/2000). But Gutt's account primarily
addresses the principles and processes of text or written translation, where
the displacement in time and place between the original communicator, the
translator and her readers requires the translator to reconstruct the original
informative intention, project the original and target addressees’ cognitive
environment, and craft a stimulus according to the degree of interpretive
resemblance sought. By contrast, oral translation, in particular simultaneous
interpreting (SI), is performed in live situations in which the interpreter
shares most of the manifest cognitive environment with the participants and is
thus better able to project and control the contexts in which her addressees
will process her utterances. Since the condition of simultaneity severely
constrains the simultaneous interpreter's choice of stimulus, she relies
heavily on this access to immediate context and her audience's inferential
abilities. Text translators need time to project context and choose their stimuli,
while in SI, access to live contexts compensates for temporal constraints. The
paper concludes with a discussion on prospects for exploring patterns and
possible biases in interlingual text and oral communication on this basis.
Siebourg, Gisela. 2005. Die
Anforderungen an den Konferenzdolmetscher im Auswärtigen Amt heute. In
Salevsky, Heidemarie (ed). 363-371.
* This paper, which was read in May 1995, deals with
requirements from interpreters working for the German ministry of foreign
affairs. Of particular interest to historians are references from 1921, 1929,
1950 and 1951.
Shinzaki, Ryuko. 2005. Applying
consecutive interpreter training methods to teaching English. Interpretation Research 5. 183-201.
* Like many Japanese authors, Shinzaki looks at
consecutive interpreting as a means for enhancing English skills in Japanese
students.
Someya, Yasumasa.
*A theoretical analysis of note-taking in
consecutive. The author starts with the assumption that notes reflect ST
comprehension and analyzes such comprehension with case grammar, propositional
analysis concepts and the concept of working memory. The reformulation phase is
modeled as composed of note-decoding, followed by linguistic coding and speech
production. The author also discusses the choice of the language of note-taking
(SL or TL) on the basis of maximum efficiency considerations. Cognitive
saturation due to the slowness of note-taking and its practical consequences
are not discussed.
Someya, Yasumasa; Saito, Miwako;
Tsuruta, Chikako; Tanaka, Miyuki; Ino, Kuniyo Yoshida.
*An interesting survey on 105 (!) Japanese universities offering interpreting courses. Here
are some results: 84% of the instructors in charge of the courses are at least
in their forties; 98% (!) of the instructors have had experience in actual
interpreting, and 42% are practicing interpreters; 30% of instructors with
experience in interpreting are conference interpreters, 29% are business
interpreters, 8% are court interpreters and 8% are community interpreters; 34%
use cassette tape recorders, 25% use video tapes and DVDs; with respect to the
main problems in their classes, 19% mention insufficient mastery of English by
their students and 16% mention excessive class size.
This
initiative certainly deserves to be replicated in other countries and its
results could be of interest to colleague interpreters not associated with
training programs. The findings suggest that in Japan, interpreter trainers
know what they are doing. One wonders whether the same can be said in all
countries where “interpreting” is taught by language teachers who have no
professional experience in interpreting (or in professional translation, for
that matter).
Sykes, Carol.
).
BOOKS AND UNPUBLISHED PROCEEDINGS
- Kurz, Ingrid. Das Gelübde der Verschwiegenheit. Suzanne Glass’ The Interpreter.
143-149.
- Weich,
Annie. Synchrondolmetscher ohne Diplom. 95-102.
For Argentina: Silvia Veronica
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tel 42 02 216 195
13 fax
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