Research Background

As interactions between different cultures and people increase in the modern

world, so do the situations during which interpreters are required. When

students train to become competent interpreters, they constantly observe the

performance of their more experienced counterparts for distinctive strategies

or traits that lead to better performances. However, so far there has only a

little amount of research to identify specific strategies that set experienced

interpreters apart. This gap between “experienced/expert interpreter” and

“novice interpreter” is difficult to bridge, yet this is an important issue to be

explored in terms of interpreter training. During interpreter training,

instructors can only give suggestions and comments to the students based on

the latters’ interpretation output. In other words, instructors analyze the

delivery and offer advice on how to improve it in the future. Yet based on the

author’s personal past experience as an interpreting student, this approach

can be rather frustrating since the student, more often than not, feels that they

still have no clue exactly how to improve their performance. For the students,

even with assistance and guidance from instructors, everything seems to

happen so fast during interpreting that they are not sure how to properly

conduct and finish the task. In order to solve this challenge, this study

attempts to break down the sight translation process of experienced

interpreters, and observe where and how experienced interpreters differ from

novices, and is there actually a “model” that experienced interpreters follow

but has not been further observed and studied yet. Hopefully the findings will

offer student interpreters more substantial guidelines on how to improve their

performance.

Interpreting is indeed a complicated field to study, as it involves many

components, and different modes of interpreting requires collaborations of

different efforts (Gile, 1995). Sight translation is a mode of interpreting which

input is in written form, and often employed in courtrooms or academic

conferences (Weber, 1990). In classrooms, it is used as a preparatory stage for

students before they begin simultaneous interpreting training (Agrifoglio,

2004), or to train students to read ahead of their notes for a smoother delivery

(Weber, 1990). Although the pace and timing of intepretation is controlled by

the interpreter, not the speaker, as opposed to simultaneous interpreting, this

does not imply sight translation is easier (Mikkelson, 1995; Agrifoglio, 2004).

In fact, some studies actually state that visual influence is greater than audio

influence (Agrifolio, 2004; Shreve, Lacruz and Angelone, 2010), thus sight

translation requires more effort or the fluency of delivery may be

compromised (Agrifolio, 2004).

As mentioned before, observing the performance of more experienced

interpreters is one of the means which interpreting students do in order to

improve their own delivery. Experts have the ability to deliver accurate and

complete performances fast and constantly, and form new solutions and

strategies as required (Glaser, 1976). Many studies have pointed out that

“experience” is crucial to become an expert (Moser-Mercer, 1997; Hoffmann,

1996; Dreyfus, 2004). Accumulated experience allows the expert to grasp the

comprehensive situation faster (Glaser, 1976), and make quicker decisions on

the action to take (Ericsson and Smith, 1993; Moser-Mercer B., 1997; Klein

and Hoffman, 1993; Dreyfus, 2004). Some suggest that experts possess a

mental “database” which stores and categorizes all past experience, so that the

expert can draw solution references relatively faster when they encounter

similar situations in the future (Klein & Hoffman, 1993). Despite different

theories on how past experience improves efficiency, most studies agree that

experience is crucial to the making of an expert, and that more experience

usually leads to shorter reaction time and consistent quality.

However, past researches have shown much difficulty defining the level of

“expertise” in the field of interpreting. Some suggested that students, upon

completing their interpreting training, can say they are experts to a certain

degree (Moser-Mercer, 1997). “Experience” is still stressed on in interpreting

expertise studies (Glaser, 1976; Moser-Mercer, 1997), in fact, how long has the

interpreter been in practice is often used to evaluate the level of expertise

(AIIC, n.d.). Experience is also considered a major factor that causes

limitation of skills and ability of novices (Lambert, 2004). More efficient

strategy decision is also mentioned in past researches (Kuenzli &

Moser-Mercer, 1995), and there are also studies that suggest different

strategies implemented by novice and experienced interpreters, respectively;

thus leading to different qualities of output (Moser-Mercer, 1997; Mayer, 1992;

Moser-Mercer, Frauenfelder, Casado, & Künzli, 2000). These past studies

present various differences between novice and experienced interpreters, yet

they still cannot offer a clear suggestion on exactly what do the experienced

ones do that lead to better performances. If this exact strategy or difference

can be pin-pointed, then in addition to offering novices more concrete

guidelines, that may also be considered as a criteria to objectively define an

“interpreting expert”.

So far most interpreting researches still focus on studying the final output,

and provide rather few observations on the entire process that produces the

delivery. This direction of research only sheds very limited light on how

interpreting students and novices can improve their skills and produce better

interpretations. Unfortunately, this is a rather common challenge faced by

interpreting instructors and students in the classroom (Huang, 2011).

Recently, the evolvement of new equipment, such as the eye tracker, provides

researchers new ways to observe cognitive behaviors such as reading (Rayner,

2009; Duchowski, 2002; Richardson & Spivey, 2004). Some researchers are

also attempting to reveal the secrets of experienced interpreters by breaking

down and studying the interpreting process. Related studies are still at the

budding stage, nevertheless they have begun to provide some basic

observations on the reading behavior of novice interpreters during sight

translation (Huang, 2011). Huang (2011) studied the different eye movement

indices of novice interpreters when they were performing sight translation.

The indices revealed the actions of the participants during different stages of

the entire process. This study will extend her research by replacing the

participants with experienced interpreters instead of novices, and compare the

eye movement results of the two groups afterwards. The reading habits and

methods of experienced interpreters would also be observed through eye

movement indices, and see whether there are any differences to those of

novices.

Since the input for sight translation is in written form, eye movements of the

participant can be recorded by an eye tracker for further analysis. Studies in

the past have established the relevance between various eye movement indices

and comprehension (Rayner, 2009; Just & Carpenter, 1980; Richardson and

Spivey, 2004); other studies further compared the results of different tasks,

such as silent reading and read aloud, with sight translation in attempt to

observe the level of effort required to complete them (Shreve, Lacruz, &

Angelone, 2010; Richardson, Dale, & Spivey, 2007; Huang, 2011). Various eye

movement indices are further observed and compared to yield more

observations on comprehension behaviors (Rayner, 2009; Just & Carpenter,

1980; Richardson and Spivey, 2004). Many studies have compared the

performance of bilinguals or novices interpreters with that of experienced, or

professional, interpreters (Moser-Mercer, Frauenfelder, Casado, & Künzli,

2000). However, in the past, the implementation of eye trackers in the T&I

field have mostly focused on translation (Huang, 2011); studies on

interpreting, on the other hand, are relatively limited. Furthermore, most of

the existing eye movement studies on T&I are mainly conducted on European

languages (Moser-Mercer, Frauenfelder, Casado, & Künzli, 2000), and studies

on Mandarin Chinese–English interpreting are even few and far between

(Huang, 2011). As a result, this study will extend on existing study results and

see whether experienced interpreters indeed, as experts in other fields, deliver

better performances than novices because they have more experience. The

study will also compare the comprehension processes of novice and

experienced interpreters whose working languages are Mandarin Chinese and

English, and observe if there are any differences between the two groups, and

if there are, would it be the special strategy or trait that novices should be

aiming for to acquire in order to improve their final delivery.