Quality in Simultaneous Interpreting

Ever since the technique of simultaneous interpreting (SI) became widely adopted some 50 years ago as an efficient means of overcoming language barriers, interpreters have been admired and trusted for `getting the message across` fully and faithfully in real time, their claim to quality performance resting on special academic training and adequate working conditions. It was not until the 1980s that the notion of quality in interpreting came under scrutiny, with subsequent empirical studies revealing discrepancies between ideal professional standards, service users` expectations and actual audience response. While it is now accepted that quality in SI encompasses all of these stakeholder perspectives as well as the nature of the interpreter`s textual product, the complex interrelations between professional performance standards, user satisfaction and communicative effect remain largely unexplored. Indeed, there has been no systematic empirical research on the most fundamental question of quality in interpreting, that is, whether the interpreter`s listeners understand the speech as well as those who heard it directly from the speaker. This is of particular relevance given the increasing use of international English in conference-like settings, with and without SI. In addition to the cognitive end-result, it remains to be established to what extent paralinguistic features of the interpreter`s output, such as intonation and voice quality, contribute to the communicative effectiveness of interpreted speech and to the audience`s satisfaction with the service received. The present research project seeks to close some of these gaps in our understanding of quality in SI by addressing three interrelated dimensions of quality - criteria, assessment, and effect - from complementary perspectives: 1) the professional standards and performance norms of international conference interpreters; 2) audience expectations and assessment of interpreters` performance with regard to voice quality and related paralinguistic features; and 3) the cognitive effect of simultaneously interpreted speeches in relation to paralinguistic features such as accent and intonation. The overall goal of the project is to study the communicative effectiveness of SI - as aimed for by interpreters, expected and assessed by users, and manifested by the cognitive end-result in the audience. The project employs an interdisciplinary mix of research methods drawn from fields like cognitive and social psychology and applied linguistics, essentially combining survey research and experimentation. While audience response to specifically designed speech material will be measured in simulated hypertext environments by comprehension questions and rating tasks, the conference interpreter survey will use an innovative web-based design to ensure global reach. The description and experimental manipulation of paralinguistic features in the interpreter`s output will involve advanced acoustic analysis and audio-engineering software, and conference simulations will be staged in state-of-the-art facilities with fully digital audiovisual recording and presentation equipment. Building on recent advances in research on interpreting quality, the project breaks new ground, both conceptually and methodologically, and is designed to yield findings on crucial aspects of SI that will have a significant impact on the state of the art, with far-reaching implications for the practice of this form of international communication.

Conference interpreters have as their professional mission to enable effective communication in multilingual settings such as international conferences and organizations. This project has investigated the role definitions and quality standards underlying simultaneous interpreters` performance, and examined the extent to which their target- language output can meet the requirement of equivalent communicative effect in relation to the original speech. Whereas a few small-scale surveys had sought to identify conference interpreters` performance quality criteria or role perceptions, no comprehensive study of these interrelated issues had ever been carried out among the members of this worldwide profession. Role definitions, in particular, may range from machine-like converters to active intercultural mediators, while the interpreter`s emphasis in rendering the original speech may be on fidelity to the source (e.g. completeness) or on optimum linguistic form and delivery in the target language for the benefit of the audience. An online survey conducted among more than 2,500 members of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC) has yielded a stable pattern of output-related quality criteria that shows "sense consistency with the original", "logical cohesion", and "fluency of delivery" at the top while accuracy of grammar and terminology are valued more highly than "completeness". This orientation towards audience needs is also reflected in the way interpreters describe their role, with labels foregrounding agency, such as "facilitator", "mediator" and "communicator", dominating over more impersonal labels like "bridge", "link" or "tool". Notwithstanding interpreters` professional norms and aspirations as established in the survey part of the project, their actual performance under highly challenging working conditions may fall short of ideal quality-related standards. Aside from omissions and substitutions, previous research has identified deviations with regard to fluency and intonation that may have a detrimental effect on listener comprehension. This crucial issue was investigated in audience experiments involving more than 100 German-speaking subject-matter experts who were presented with prosodically different versions of a professional simultaneous interpretation from English into German. The experimental design involved a novel approach to speech data manipulation (using software to create an impression of disfluency and monotony) as well as a comprehension test administered in a simulated setting to randomized groups of business students matched for language proficiency and scholastic achievement. The manipulation of prosodic features, though limited by considerations of professional acceptability, tended to result in poorer comprehensibility of the interpretation and was associated with less favorable judgments of the interpreter`s performance quality. Employing a similar design, audience comprehension of a lecture delivered in non-native English, as widely practiced in technical contexts, was found to be significantly worse than that of a professional simultaneous interpretation into German. These findings for the communicative effectiveness of simultaneous interpreting have far-reaching implications for professional practice and training as well as for the quality of international communication using English as a Lingua franca rather than conference interpreting services.