The Interpreters' Newsletter n. 27 - 2022

This corpus study aims to explore, both qualitatively and quantitatively, how simultaneous interpreters handle face-threatening, face-enhancing and neutral utterances addressed directly at specific individuals or larger groups participating in plenary debates of the European Parliament. The corpus under analysis comprises all English and Polish material from seven debates held between 2016 and 2020. Eleven hours of original speeches and interpretations were manually annotated for second-person deixis and nominal forms of address. Based on previous research, it was expected that interpreters would tend to reduce directness by omitting and transforming addressative forms, and that face-threatening ones would be prone to mitigation. The results of the analysis disprove these initial hypotheses. While the number of addressatives is indeed reduced in the interpretations, this roughly corresponds to the overall text compression rate. Moreover, face-threatening addressatives are transferred and added by interpreters slightly more often than neutral ones, which, in turn, are omitted more often.

This paper focuses on stress management in consecutive interpreting students. In particular, it investigates the effectiveness of a theatre workshop in improving consecutive interpreting students’ skills and reducing their stress levels. The study is based on previous research on stress, stress management, and the idea that some basic theatrical techniques can reduce the stress of student interpreters, as such techniques may improve, among other things, public speaking skills. A didactic experiment was carried out by conducting a theatre workshop with students enrolled in a consecutive interpreting university module. Trainee interpreters’ performances before and after their participation in this workshop were video-recorded and analysed exhaustively according to a series of previously defined research categories. Results show that the students performed better in consecutive interpreting after the workshop, both in terms of stress management and non-verbal communication. Therefore, it can be concluded that theatrical techniques are an effective and creative didactic experience in interpreter training, and that even a crash course can trigger noticeable skills improvements in interpreter trainees.

In this paper, we explore a strategy for teaching undergraduate American Sign Language/English interpreting students about discourse types and genre boundaries. To do so, we describe a project-based learning approach employed with a cohort of second-year students, detail the assessment method, and analyze students’ work. Specifically, the project required students to read a scholarly paper in the field of Interpreting Studies and create an American Sign Language video-recorded reformulation of the paper in a different discourse genre (e.g., a television news broadcast or a product infomercial). The findings indicate that, despite exhibiting a concerning lack of American Sign Language proficiency, students demonstrated remarkable creativity and critical thinking abilities. Students created video-recorded reformulations that incorporated salient points from their assigned articles while also applying principles of discourse analysis learned throughout the semester. Taken together, the findings suggest that applied discourse analysis projects and inter-genre reformulation activities can be used as a part of valuable pre-translation and translation training.

Physiological indicators of stress such as galvanic skin response, cortisol, and heart rate are gathering momentum in cognitive translation and interpreting studies. Heart-rate variability (HRV) is gaining ground as a possibly reliable indicator of stress for tasks that do not involve physical activity. However, using electrocardiography and photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors in research involves following methodological guidelines to prevent negative impacts on data. We performed an observational, exploratory study on HRV in onsite vs. remote interpreting with interpreters (n = 5) with no experience in remote interpreting. Data was collected with Empatica E4 wristbands, which use PPG sensors to measure heart rate variability. We report results, yet our focus is the methodological issues derived from using heart rate (HR) and HRV as indicators of stress that we encountered both at data collection and in the analysis. We will formulate methodological recommendations regarding HR, HRV and (1) the characteristics and size of the sample; (2) the structuring of data collection sessions; (3) the selection of stimuli; (4) its relationship with other variables; (5) the selection of heart-related indicators; and (6) statistical analysis.

This paper explores the perception held by 135 students from two Spanish universities in their third, fourth and fifth years of study, on the conceptualisation, preparation and use of terminology glossaries. Respondents answered a series of questions about their experiences in preparing and using glossaries in their translation and interpreting courses. The methodology consisted of a questionnaire divided into four blocks of open- and closed-ended questions, aimed at identifying the use of glossaries in the interpreting classroom, to define their content and structure, as well as the importance students attach to this tool. The data obtained revealed that while glossaries are regularly addressed in translation, interpreting, documentation and terminology courses, students fail to perceive the full potential of this tool as a way of collecting the information necessary to understand the context in which the interpretation is to take place.

This paper seeks to address the issue of remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) focusing on the rapid spread of this interpreting mode since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. To this end, practising conference interpreters were asked to participate in a survey aimed at exploring their perceptions of several RSI-related issues, from a quantitative and qualitative standpoint. The current paper analyses part of the results of that survey, offering an initial overview of the situation regarding RSI in the freelance conference interpreting market, its implications for the profession, advantages, disadvantages. From these initial results, conclusions can be drawn regarding the relative preference of interpreters for remote or on-site interpreting, the different forms of remote interpreting, the most widely used platforms, the locations from which RSI takes place, their advantages and disadvantages together with the solutions adopted to mitigate the impact of such disadvantages.

Sharing the same physical and visual space with the other two participants in the interaction has traditionally been a standard working condition for Italian “mediators” – a profession that entails community interpreting, interlanguage and intercultural communication, and facilitating migrants’ access to public services. This, however, was clearly impossible during the Covid-19 pandemic, when mediators worked mostly remotely. In order to investigate the impact of Covid-19 and Covid-19-related measures on the profession, an online survey was conducted with mediators working in the Emilia-Romagna region about the perceptions of their work during the pandemic. Respondents reported that during the Covid-19 pandemic mediation became more difficult and stressful than in pre-Covid-19 times. A thematic analysis of responses revealed that the main reasons for this were connected with remote mediation, especially with the lack of non-verbal contact that hindered empathy and limited mediators’ agency.

The Interpreters’ Newsletter of the Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche, del Linguaggio, dell’Interpretazione e della Traduzione, Sezione di Studi in Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori (SSLMIT) is an international journal promoting the dissemination and discussion of research in the field of Interpreting Studies.