The Interpreters' Newsletter n. 15 - 2010

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The Interpreters' Newsletter of the Dipartimento di Scienze del Linguaggio, dell'Interpretazione e della Traduzione and the Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori, University of Trieste, is an international journal promoting the dissemination and discussion of research in the field of interpreting studies.

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 9
  • Publication
    The Interpreters' Newsletter n. 15/2010
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)
    Founded in 1988 as the first journal on Interpreting Studies, The Interpreters’ Newsletter publishes contributions covering theoretical and practical aspects of interpreting.
      774  4479
  • Publication
    Interpreting from speech to sign: Italian television news reports
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)
    Kellett Bidoli, Cynthia J.
    The profoundly deaf and hard-of-hearing live and work like their fellow citizens, but constantly have to adjust to sound deprivation in order to communicate in mainstream society. How do they cope with international communication? This paper focuses on one aspect of international communication: global news coverage through simultaneous Italian Sign Language (LIS) interpreting on television. A comparative linguistic analysis of a small multimodal corpus obtained from the transcriptions of video recorded television news bulletins in spoken Italian and a simultaneously interpreted version in LIS, has revealed insights into how and to what extent news related specifically to global conflicts crosses the international ‘sound barrier’ and has highlighted some of the problems encountered by professional sign language interpreters. This analysis of professional interpreting in a real life working environment (the television studio) has led to findings that can be turned to good use in sign language interpreter training classes.
      1541  2088
  • Publication
    Identification of English words embedded in sentences by Japanese professional inter preters with different language experiences
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)
    Ooigawa, Tomohiko
    ;
    Takahashi, Kinuko
    The present study aims to examine perceptual differences in the identification of English words between Japanese professional interpreters educated in English in childhood in a foreign country (returnee interpreters) and Japanese professional interpreters educated in Japanese in childhood in Japan (non-returnee interpreters). We conducted an identification test of English words in sentences with returnee interpreters and non-returnee interpreters. In the test, the participants were asked to listen to recordings including English words and to identify the words. The results showed that the returnee interpreters identified the English words significantly better than the non-returnee interpreters. Also, we found some commonalities in phonetic perception (listening skills) between the returnee and non-returnee interpreters.
      1455  1299
  • Publication
    English as a lingua franca vs. interpreting: battleground or peaceful coexistence?
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)
    Reithofer, Karin
    The article addresses the contentious issue of the spread of English as a lingua franca in a number of domains – a trend that is not viewed very favourably by many interpreting professionals. After reviewing the development of English as a lingua franca (ELF) and its unique position in different domains, the advantages and disadvantages of ELF are discussed on a general level before approaching the topic from the interpreters’ perspective. The negative stance taken by many interpreters towards ELF is viewed as a result of work-related as well as economic and psychosocial reasons. Against this backdrop the paper reports the first results of a study on the communicative effectiveness of English as a lingua franca vs. simultaneous interpreting. The findings indicate that under appropriate working conditions, in a given setting of technical communication, professional simultaneous interpreting can ensure a higher level of audience comprehension than the use of non-native English.
      4079  7919
  • Publication
    Does Intonation Matter? The impact of monotony on listener comprehension
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)
    Holub, Elisabeth
    The study described in this paper aims to investigate whether monotony has a negative impact on audience comprehension. Whereas in previous research intonational deviations were produced mainly through voice acting, the present study employs digital audio editing to produce two versions of one and the same simultaneous interpretation. This method allows the researcher to modify intonation leaving other speech parameters unchanged. The material thus produced was validated by a pool of experts and submitted to several randomised groups of listeners in a simulated conference setting. Analysis showed that monotony can have a negative impact on both comprehension and the assessment of the interpreter’s performance. These findings have major implications for both interpreting theory and practice.
      4955  8986