The impact of fluency on the subjective assessment of interpreting quality

Abstract

Prosodic 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.