Research Background

As one of the world’s oldest profession, interpretation facilitates the cross-cultural

communication necessary in today’s society as interpreters convert one language into

another. Interpreters are language specialists who go beyond simply converting words into

another language but relay concepts and ideas between languages. They must master at

least two languages, have a good command of interpreting skills, and thoroughly

understand the subject matter in which they work to accurately get the message across. In

addition, interpreters must be sensitive to the cultures associated with their languages of

expertise. Against these high demands, the 1950s and 60s saw the emergence of translation

and interpretation (T&I) schools (Pöchhacker, 2004) aimed to cultivate students with the

abilities required to become competent interpreters. In turn, T&I studies have also made

leaps and bounds in terms of both quantity and quality.

Different from translation, in which both the input and output are in the written form,

interpretation is an oral form of translation which usually involves the oral input of the

source language and oral production of the target language. It is a complex cognitive task

reformulation or code-switching), and production (Seleskovitch, 1976). The interpreter

listens to comprehend the source language, discards the form (eg. words or structures) of

the input to reformulate the meaning during deverbalization, and produces the message

orally in the target language. Among the three components of interpreting, comprehension

plays a pivotal role because understanding the source language is a prerequisite to further

processing any information. It has been estimated that an interpreter devotes 80% of his/her

cognitive ability to listening and comprehension, and only 20% to speech production during

interpreting (Bajo et al., 2001).

The complexity of interpreting makes its study a challenging enterprise. If we are to

fully understand how this task is performed, the processing of language comprehension,

reformulation, and production need to be studied individually. However, while current

interpretation studies have already identified the required efforts for interpreting (Gile,

1995), few have attempted to address how the three components of comprehension,

reformulation, and production operate in relations to one another. Hence, the actual process

of interpreting, up until today, has remained rather elusive or even debated.

The lack of understanding towards the process of interpreting poses great challenges

for T&I students and instructors in both learning and teaching. In skills acquisition, a

novice needs to go through five different stages to become an expert (Tsui, 2003). When

applied to interpretation training, the difficulty for both students and instructors lies in

bridging the gap between the novice and the expert. Because both parties have very little

idea of how the three components of interpreting occur inside the interpreter’s head, it is

challenging for instructors to provide standardized methods to help students overcome

difficulties. Generally, an instructor only sees students’ final speech production and gives

feedback accordingly while students are able to witness instructors’ successful

demonstrations but cannot gain knowledge on how to become more like the expert. To

close the divide between the novice and the expert, light could be shed on the three

components of interpreting, and especially on largely unknown and uninvestigated

component of comprehension. By doing so, it will be easier to isolate and teach the

demands of each individual component in interpreting and focus on its participation in the

task as a whole. In turn, future T&I students and instructors benefit from learning and

teaching more efficiently.

One area in which we could begin to learn about interpreters’ comprehension is sight

translation, a type of interpretation in which the source language is provided to the

interpreter in the written rather than the oral form. Two main differences between the input

in sight translation and in other modes of interpreting lie in the distinction between the oral

and written language, and between the reading and listening process (Agrifoglio, 2004).

Different from listening, reading comprehension can be observed from the eye movements

of the reader while the speed of one’s comprehension is reflected in the speed of reading

(Just & Carpenter, 1980). In this light, two types of interpreting involve the source language

in its written form: sight translation (as mentioned above) and simultaneous interpreting

with text. Sight translation is a mode of interpretation in which the input of the source

language is written but the output of the target language is oral. It is an indispensable skill

in T&I training which enhances the work efficiency of interpreters. At the same time, sight

translation helps interpreter trainees react quickly and enhance their oral skills (Weber,

1990). Simultaneous interpreting with text, on the other hand, is an extension of sight

translation, except that the interpreter receives both written as well as oral input to render

the oral output. Since the two types of interpreting both involve written input, both could

serve as the starting point in using the eye-tracking method to investigate the

comprehension component in interpreting.

By observing eye movements, one gains understanding of the physical reactions and

cognitive activities of the person performing a cognitive task (Richardson, Dale, & Spivey,

2009). Monitoring eye movements during reading also provides valuable information

regarding the moment-to-moment comprehension processes (Rayner, 1998, 2009; Rayner,

Chace, Slattery, & Ashby, 2006). With its many applications, eye tracking has become one

of the most important research methods in cognitive psychology ( 李 筱 娟 ,2007).

Furthermore, the eye-tracking method has been employed in T&I research in recent years

(Chang, 2009; Hyönä, Tommola, & Alaja, 1995; Pavlović & Jensen, 2009; Sharmin,

Špakov, Räihä, & Jokobsen, 2008). However, most of the studies conducted with the

eye-tracking method have focused mainly on translation, in which the output is written, as

opposed to interpretation, in which the output is oral.

From the field of interpreting, Dillinger (1994) emphasized that cooperative research

is the only rational solution in future interpretation studies since interpreters and

experimenters need to work with each others’ expertise. From the field of cognitive

psychology, Rayner (1998) echoed this by highlighting that the future success of eye

movement research depends on the ingenuity of researchers to design interesting and

informative studies. For those very reasons, the present study sailed into unchartered waters

and applied the eye-tracking method to investigate the three components of sight translation

in general and the comprehension component in particular. This study may be critically

important in laying the groundwork which will pave the way to revealing the process of

sight translation, a fundamental mode of interpreting.