The Interpreters' Newsletter n. 15 - 2010
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CONTENTS / SOMMARIO
Kellett Bidoli Cynthia J., Riccardi Alessandra
Setton Robin
From practice to theory and back in interpreting: the pivotal role of training
Fox Brian
EU multilingualism: the looming challenges
Sunnari Marianna, Hild Adelina
A multi-factorial approach to the development and analysis of professional expertise in SI
Boyd Michael S., Monacelli Claudia
Politics, (con)text and genre: applying CDA and DHA to interpreter training
Orlando Marc
Tripepi Winteringham Sarah
The usefulness of ICTs in interpreting practice
Rennert Sylvi
The impact of fluency on the subjective assessment of interpreting quality
Holub Elisabeth
Does Intonation Matter? The impact of monotony on listener comprehension
Zwischenberger Cornelia
Quality criteria in simultaneous interpreting: an international vs. a national view
Reithofer Karin
English as a lingua franca vs. interpreting: battleground or peaceful coexistence?
Ooigawa Tomohiko, Takahashi Kinuko
Kellett Bidoli Cynthia J.
Interpreting from speech to sign: Italian television news reports
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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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- PublicationA multi-factorial approach to the development and analysis of professional expertise in SI(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)
;Sunnari, MariannaHild, AdelinaIn the last decade, attention in interpreting studies has focused on both the issues of expertise and of professionalisation. In view of the substantive changes taking place in the profession today, this article advocates the need for a new type of relationship between the two approaches in which both interact and enrich each other. It examines the interaction between the two dimensions of expertise − cognitive and sociocultural − to shed more light on what professional interpreting means and to gain a better understanding of the complex nature of interpreting expertise today.2618 2117 - PublicationDigital pen technology and consecutive interpreting: another dimension in notetaking training and assessment(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)Orlando, MarcRules of note-taking have been defined and modelled in order to be taught during training of consecutive interpreting. However, not much has been done to find relevant ways of evaluating the progressive acquisition of such systems and of note-taking skills. When instructors want to assess an interpretation, it is generally the quality of the consecutive interpretation and the final notes which allow them to give feedback and evaluate the performance. Such a product evaluation of the interpretation is generally made without being able to clearly distinguish the process of note-taking. Thanks to digital pen technology, trainers have now the possibility to capture simultaneously the video of the notes being taken and the audio of the speech, and therefore can provide better advice and remedial strategies to their students. Such technology is presented in the following article along with pedagogical suggestions for its use and for training in consecutive interpreting.
3307 10322 - PublicationDoes Intonation Matter? The impact of monotony on listener comprehension(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)Holub, ElisabethThe 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.
5120 10132 - PublicationEditorial(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)
;Kellett Bidoli, Cynthia J.Riccardi, Alessandra1831 815 - PublicationEnglish as a lingua franca vs. interpreting: battleground or peaceful coexistence?(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)Reithofer, KarinThe 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.
4152 8289 - PublicationEU multilingualism: the looming challenges(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)Fox, BrianThe European Union’s motto “Unity in Diversity” is the demonstration of the enduring vision of Europe’s different languages and different cultures as a priceless asset. Ensuring that this diversity is not a barrier to understanding is the task of 10% of the European Commission staff, comprising roughly three quarters translators, one quarter interpreters. I shall of course be concentrating on the latter. Danica Seleskovitch very pertinently pointed out that the chain of communication does not stop in the booth. We in the European Commission’s Directorate-general for Interpretation have long taken this to heart, both literally and figuratively. Literally, in the sense that the ultimate destination of the message is of course the customer: I will present some key findings of our latest Customer Satisfaction Survey which has just been finalised. Figuratively, because the looming shortage of good young conference interpreters coming into the profession threatens that the message may only reach an empty booth for some languages. Within those two over-arching themes, there are of course other important interwoven issues which I would like to tease out for your consideration.
1580 1531 - PublicationFrom practice to theory and back in interpreting: the pivotal role of training(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)Setton, RobinInterpreting research (IR) has so far yielded ‘no major discoveries or applications’ for professional practice (Gile 2001). Today, with access to new and larger corpora and advances in analytic techniques, research on authentic data, and in ‘ecovalid’ conditions, is developing fast, but conclusions will necessarily remain tentative for the foreseeable future, and uptake by professionals indirect at best. However, IR has helped to conceptualise and model interpreting to pedagogical effect. Currently, therefore, the most direct route for interpreting research and theory to benefit professional practice is still through training, initial or remedial. Changing markets are posing several new challenges to interpreter training: multilingualism, shifts in language demand and distribution (with more demand for work into B), increased pressure to accept fast, ‘multimedia’, recited and remote input, and the need to rejuvenate an aging profession. An effective pedagogy adapted to contemporary and future conditions must (i) reset objectives by ‘working back’ from a realistic picture of the balance between client expectations, inherent constraints, and the potential of expertise, as derived from research on authentic data and situations; (ii) tap rich seams of relevant theory in cognition and communicative interaction that have been relatively neglected in the past; and (iii) take the pedagogical challenge seriously, with more attention to such aspects as progression, simulation, usable feedback, consistent and credible evaluation and testing, and putting ourselves in the student’s (and later, the client’s) place.
2602 3452 - PublicationIdentification of English words embedded in sentences by Japanese professional inter preters with different language experiences(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)
;Ooigawa, TomohikoTakahashi, KinukoThe 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.1471 1364 - PublicationInterpreting 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.
1586 2290 - PublicationPolitics, (con)text and genre: applying CDA and DHA to interpreter training(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)
;Boyd, Michael S.Monacelli, ClaudiaThis study proposes the application of a number of important tenets from Critical Discourse Analysis, specifically the Discourse-Historical Approach, to interpreter studies and training. It recognizes the crucial distinctions of text, discourse and genre in the sphere of politics and proposes a multi-layered interdisciplinary model of context to analyze source texts. The application of the model is illustrated on three political speeches that share the pro-active discourse of climate change.1868 5895 - PublicationQuality criteria in simultaneous interpreting: an international vs. a national view(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)Zwischenberger, CorneliaEver since the profession became internationally organized in the early 1950s, quality has been a central topic in conference interpreting. In the mid-1980s, members of AIIC (International Association of Conference Interpreters) were first asked what importance they attributed to various quality criteria when sponsoring candidates for membership (Bühler 1986). Follow-up studies, however, were mostly conducted among users of interpretation services. With the exception of Chiaro and Nocella (2004), who conducted a web-based survey among conference interpreters, service providers have had no chance to express their views on the issue of quality. The two studies reported in this paper take the web-based approach pioneered by Chiaro and Nocella (2004) as a starting point for a survey among two well-defined populations, that is, members of AIIC and of the German Association of Conference Interpreters (VKD). This paper presents the findings for conference interpreters’ rating of the relative importance of output-related quality criteria for a simultaneous interpretation. Furthermore, the two associations’ members were also asked to link the importance of the various criteria to concrete assignment types. The main aim of this paper consists in comparing the two groups and finding out whether members of a national and international professional organization attach similar importance to quality criteria or whether they differ in their perceptions of quality.
4155 7571 - PublicationThe impact of fluency on the subjective assessment of interpreting quality(EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010)Rennert, SylviProsodic features such as fluency are key components of natural speech and, thus, also of simultaneous interpreting. Disfluencies, such as hesitations, vowel lengthening and repairs, are particularly significant in the output of simultaneous interpreters, which presents a pattern of pausing and disfluencies that differs from other forms of spontaneous speech. This paper provides an overview of aspects of fluency and a brief introduction to previous research in the area of fluency and user perceptions, and describes a study conducted by the author at the University of Vienna. The results of this experiment indicate that there may be a link between perceived fluency of an interpretation and users’ assessment of the interpreter’s accuracy. There also appears to be a link between self-assessed comprehension and assessment of the interpreter’s performance.
4095 6748 - PublicationThe 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.
789 5292 - PublicationThe usefulness of ICTs in interpreting practice(2011-06-09)Tripepi Winteringham, SarahDrawing from recent developments and studies on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in interpreting practice, this paper is aimed at analysing and discussing the usefulness of Computer-Assisted Interpreting (CAI). The currently available technology will be explored in order to analyse the application of ICTs to interpreting practice, with the objective of assessing which technologies may assist interpreters in their real-life work, which forms of interpreting may benefit from these technological advancements, and to which extent interpreting rendition would benefit from the use of these new technologies. The author will also consider the possible future application of ICTs in interpreting and on the way in which this sector may change in the future, in light of the need for this professional field to look to the future of communication and adapt accordingly to the trends of the Third Millennium.
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