The Interpreters' Newsletter n. 28 - 2023

This paper discusses the value of bringing to the fore skills-development for accurate message-transfer in dialogue interpreter training. This is the rationale behind the methodology for creating Situated Dialogues, a collection of materials that support message-transfer practice. After several rounds of action-research (some of them publicly funded) today the collection includes 43 dialogues in 8 language pairs. Strengths, limitations, and opportunities for future development of this collection are discussed under the frame of supporting skills for accuracy. I argue that an emphasis on accuracy should be of co-equal importance with attention to the interactional dimension of dialogue interpreting. While a sophisticated understanding through empirical research of the interactional aspect of dialogue interpreting has successfully highlighted the uniqueness of this kind of interpreting (especially as opposed to conference interpreting), interpreting is still interpreting, and its message-transfer essence is both challenging and defining across modes. A collection of practice materials that helps interpreters develop skills for accuracy in an interactionally relevant way and across settings, also effectively highlights the shared stem of all interpreting.

This article introduces a novel approach to analysing court interpreting interactions by applying a sociological perspective. Using a corpus of transcripts of criminal trials held in Barcelona with interpreting services in English, French, and Romanian, this study develops an instrument to identify situations of distrust between interpreters and judges. It focuses on observing the dynamics of their interactions by analysing the distrust reactions shown by the judge. We rely on Luhmann’s concept of trust, and more specifically on its functional equivalent: distrust. Two variables are used to operationalize distrust: the visibility of the interpreter in the discourse (the interpreter describes what is happening, checks that the defendant or witness understands what is being said, gives indications of behaviour, adds questions or answers or maintains conversations that are not translated for the other participants in the hearing) and the judge’s understanding of the foreign language (the judge’s ability to understand or speak the foreign language). This study examines the reactions of the judge in cases where they exhibit a certain degree of distrust and contributes to a sociological perspective on court interpreting studies, highlighting the power dynamics inherent in the interpreting process and the importance of trust in effective communication mediated by an interpreter.

The digital turn has changed every aspect of our lives, including the media ecosystem, which is today dominated by new digital media (Jensen 2021). In addition, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on both our private and professional lives has been both unexpected and profound. Interpreting services have been no exception. Drawing upon examples of Italian<>English film festival interpreting, the present paper investigates this digital turn. Data are taken from authentic performances provided at Giffoni, one of the most important Italy-based international film festivals. Some of its events are live-streamed and are therefore open to a remote audience made up of online users; moreover, in 2020 because of the pandemic, the Festival used video-mediated interpreting (Braun/Taylor 2012). Consequently, the data sets include onsite streamed events, distance streamed events and onsite non-streamed events. This corpus is analysed qualitatively, focusing in particular on the concept of audience design (Bell 1984, 1991), and more specifically on the renditions of some film scenes. The results show that both the live-streaming and the remoteness features have significant repercussions on the interpreting performances in the three interactional contexts.

Simultaneous interpreting (SI) of numerical elements is a complex task and numbers are widely acknowledged as a problem trigger and a source of errors for interpreters. However, recent advances in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) integrated into Computer-Assisted Interpreting (CAI) tools have shown potential in enhancing accuracy during SI of numerical elements, as well as of other parts of speech, such as specialised terminology. Although many recent studies are focusing on this area, research comparing the impact of CAI tool support during SI against the support provided by human boothmates is scarce. This paper aims to address this gap within this emerging field of research by comparing the performances of interpreting students using the ASR-powered CAI tool InterpretBank with those who worked with the support of a human boothmate while interpreting a source text (ST) with a high density of numbers. The pilot study assesses the accuracy rate of numerical renditions, intelligibility of audio extracts, and interpreters’ self-perception/satisfaction with the CAI tool. The findings show that CAI tools can improve interpretation quality, and the digital boothmate provides equivalent support to a human boothmate in terms of accuracy of numerical rendition, while considering latency limitations.

Research has shown that in video-mediated dialogue interpreting, the multimodal coordination of turn-taking differs from face-to-face interpreting depending on the physical distribution of participants (e.g., Licoppe/Veyrier 2020). In video-remote interpreting in particular, where the interpreter is remote while primary participants are co-located, the function of gaze as a turn-taking device may be constrained (Davitti 2019). However, little is known about gaze and turn-taking in the increasingly common configuration in which all participants are in different physical locations (three-point video interpreting), and, in particular, how this configuration compares to others. Therefore, the aim of the PhD project reported on in this paper is to compare how turn-taking is managed multimodally by participants in (1) three-point video interpreting, (2) video remote interpreting, and (3) face-to-face interpreting. This paper reports on the innovative experimental methodology developed for this comparison, which includes nine interpreter-mediated simulations in an educational setting. The paper demonstrates how the collection of experimental, quantitative data by means of mobile eye tracking can inform a qualitative, multimodal conversation analysis of the simulations, which is triangulated with data from post-hoc interviews. This paper discusses a number of methodological considerations of a mixed-methods design that integrates simulated data and technology.

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.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the use of margins in consecutive interpreting. After exploring the relevant scientific literature, a list of elements that the interpreter is advised to insert in the margins – such as logical connectors, indication of time and place – was drafted. On the basis of the initial hypothesis that interpreters using margins are more likely to correctly report such target elements in their delivery, an experiment was carried out. The same text in Italian was interpreted into their B-language by two groups of five interpreting students each: group 1 used margins, whereas group 2 did not. When taking into account each category of target elements, group 2 sometimes performed equally as well (3 out of 8 categories) or even better (1 out of 8 categories) than group 1. On average, however, the group using margins correctly included more target elements in the delivery (65,5 % vs 48,2 %), thus confirming the initial hypothesis.

The pattern of non-fluencies, often viewed as a major indicator of an interpreter’s fluency, has thus far received considerable attention from interpreting scholars. This exploratory study aims to investigate the effects of directionality on novice interpreters’ control of such features in a Chinese/English consecutive interpreting task. To do so, four main types of non-fluencies including silent pauses, filled pauses, repetitions and false starts were selected for the analysis. Our results confirm plausible directional effects on the novices’ production of non-fluencies, suggesting that interpreting into English produces a far greater number of total and individual non-fluencies than interpreting into Chinese. Furthermore, the study reveals a significant contrast: silent pauses exhibit longer durations in the non-native language compared to the native language. This contradicts the previous conclusions about directional effects on pausing behavior and highlights the influence of language-pair specific differences. The study underscores the importance of silent pauses in facilitating the delivery of interpreting, shedding light on the acquisition of fluency skills during interpreter training.

Although community interpreting has professionalized significantly in the US in recent decades, the depth and effectiveness of training and education in the field has been varied and difficult to measure. This study examines the Community Interpreting Certificate at Viterbo University and its influence on graduates and community stakeholders. Surveys of both alumni of the program and community partners are analyzed via mixed-methods to better understand the impact of this program on regional, national, and immigrant populations. Results reveal that a curriculum that incorporates High-Impact Practices (HIP) and formative assessment has the potential to empower communities to center the voices of the underrepresented in public and private spheres. Thus, trained interpreters are positioned as powerful community agents, instruments of cultural change, and direct contributors to language justice.

This empirical study analyses the impact of a psychological factor, namely implicit theories (IT), on the perception of the quality of a simultaneous interpretation (SI). The study aims to contribute to research into interpreting quality by analysing the interrelationship between recipients’ IT and their evaluation of a SI. Research on IT has focused on the answer to questions such as what makes a success or failure in different domains. Building on a perspective initiated in 2019 in which the study of IT was adapted for interpreting quality research, this study presents a new audio manipulation method that enabled the researchers to change the female voice of a German-Spanish SI (Audio A) into a male voice (Audio B), in order to study the impact of gender on quality assessment in SI. The quality expectations of 63 users (laypersons) and 54 interpreter trainees (semi-experts) are also analysed. The results lend empirical support for the IT hypothesis regarding gender-related professionalism. In addition, in accordance with the IT hypothesis, being a layperson or semi-expert moderates the effect of the evaluation of different aspects measured in both audios on the perceived overall quality of the interpreter’s work.

The recent pandemic has unmistakably changed the way conference interpreters perform their work: the transition from the traditional booth with participants in a conference room to the fully online booth at the interpreter’s home came suddenly and under the pressure of (inter)national health regulations. Although developments in interpreting technology are not novel and have been addressed since the 1990s, with first announcements like “conference interpreters in the electronic age” (Moser-Mercer 1992, 2005, 2015), a real technological turn is only happening now and receives increasing scholarly attention (Fantinuoli 2018, 2021; Corpas Pastor 2021). What still needs more scrutiny, however, is how these solutions are implemented in the daily interpreting business and how interpreters evaluate their use. In this study, funded by AIIC (Association Internationale des Interprètes de Conférence), we report on how interpreters experience the use of RI through video-based interpreting platforms (VIP), including virtual booth setups, in their professional life. Findings show that it is not all for the best, but that VIP solutions, preferably with an online booth, definitely are here to stay and that the pandemic has made interpreters discover at least some advantages of the novel work mode.