Chapter 5 Conclusions
5.1 Summary of Study
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Chapter 5 Conclusions
5.1 Summary of Study
This naturalistic study analyzed authentic data from the social media of YouTube
to understand online users’ responses and preferences about the performance of two
simultaneous interpreters in a highly interactive lecture by Professor Michael Sandel
from Harvard University.
Compared to the large volume of interpreting quality studies, there have been
relatively fewer studies devoted to the context of media interpreting. Most media
interpreting studies focused on television interpreting. Hardly any empirical works have
been conducted to investigate the impact of Internet and webcasting technologies on the
profession of interpreters. However, technologies for the delivery of interpreting
services are rapidly developing, and one can only foresee that in the future that more
and more interpreters will face assignments that involve forms of technology one way
of another, such as working in interpreting events that are webcasted live online.
When conducting media interpreting studies there are both advantages and
disadvantages. Unlike conference interpreting where professional interpreters have to
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safeguard the privacy of the meetings and clients, one major advantage when
conducting media interpreting studies is that because the content is broadcasted to the
public, researchers can have access to authentic interpreting events and conduct
corpora-based studies, as pointed out by Pöchhacker (2011). Yet one major limitation is
that because the audience in media interpreting are often “undifferentiated, anonymous
and numerous, with no possibility of active participation” (Mack 2002), researchers can
hardly get a hold of the remote users to understand their perceptions about interpreting.
Yet this study was not only able to enjoy the advantage of media interpreting and
develop a complete transcription of both source and target text, but also was able to
overcome the limitation of conventional media interpreting studies and listen to the
users’ voices.
One key element that laid the foundation of this research is that many YouTube
audience members were not passive viewers but active participants who voluntarily left
comments about the interpreting event. Out of the total of 964 YouTube comments
devoted to Sandel’s speech, as many as a quarter (25%) of them, or 233 comments,
were specifically related to interpretation related issues. These comments are the most
important asset of this research because they revealed a rich and unique set of user
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responses, especially regarding their quality perceptions and judgment, their preferences
or dislikes about certain aspects of the interpretation, and also their understanding of the
role and work of interpreters. Through these comments, the researcher was able to have
a glimpse into how a group of online users perceived a highly interactive interpreting
event.
The researcher also completed a full lecture transcription to contextualize the
YouTube comment data and to develop a more comprehensive understanding of some
of the possible reasons or motivations behind the user comments. The researcher also
analyzed the transcription data carefully, such as by recording and tabulating the order,
time point, language and time length of all the speakers and of the two interpreters. By
cross-examining the YouTube comments and lecture transcription, the researcher was
able to use certain parts of the transcription as evidence or explanation to gaze the
intention behind certain YouTube user comments. The researcher was also able to
understand why certain parts of the interpreters’ rendition, mediation or strategy caused
certain reactions and feedbacks from the audience. Overall, the combination of the
YouTube data and transcription offered a more comprehensive, holistic and in-depth
analysis of this unique interpreting event.
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Through examining the combined data, the researcher established the interpreting
context, which is characterized by both the media interpreting setting and the highly
interactive nature of the lecture. Because the lecture was webcasted live on YouTube,
the researcher was able to gain access to interpretation-related comments posted by the
social media users. As for the Socratic-style lecture weaved by numerous multi-party,
multi-directional Q&A sessions, it demanded the interpreters to play a very strong
communicative role, which also shaped the listeners’ interpreting quality perception.
The media interpreting setting shaped a unique speaker-listener-interpreter
relationship. From the interpreters’ viewpoint, they were probably focusing on
providing service for the 6,000 people-audiences at the stadium, without thinking too
much about the online audience. However, thanks to the webcast service, the
interpreters in fact were not only serving Sandel and the audience at the stadium on the
day of the event, there were also providing their service to a much larger group of
online listeners and over a much longer period of time. As observed from the timing of
the YouTube comments, while the majority of the comments were posted
simultaneously while the lecture took place, many comments were post-event ones. This
altered the conventional relationship between the interpreters and the users. Even
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though the interpreters’ assignment has ended, the “future” interpreting users were still
commenting on the interpreters’ performance. So to some extent, the “future” users are
interacting with the interpreters, forming a continuous speaker-listener-interpreter
relationship.
However, to ensure smooth delivery of interpreting service over the Internet and
successful communication, technology had an important role to play. Here, technology
mainly referred to the web-streaming technology that webcasted the event to the virtual
audience on YouTube. In this particular interpreting event, when the Public Television
Service arranged to webcast the event online, it did not take into consideration the
possibility of providing multi-lingual, multi-channel interpreting service. Instead it
simply webcasted two soundtracks merged together, one was the source text sound from
both Sandel and the audience member, and the other was the target text sound from the
interpretation booth, with the latter set at a larger volume. This technical arrangement
attracted much attention from the YouTube users, as supported by the large number (105
comments) of YouTube comments, who voiced their frustration or dissatisfaction about
the webcasting arrangement of the lecture. Some users found it painful to have to listen
to both channels at the same time, some inquired about ways to listen only to one sound
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channel, while many other users expressed their preference to shut off the interpretation
and only listen to the original lecture.
This finding underlines the crucial role of technology in an Internet interpreting
context. Technology exposes the interpreters’ performance to a greater audience and
over a longer period of time, yet at the same time, interpreting quality becomes more
dependent upon the quality of technology. When there is a lack of adequate technical
arrangement and support, listeners at the remote end will be negatively affected. At
times, technical shortfall might also have a negative effect on how listeners perceive the
role of interpreters.
To sum-up the effect of this Internet media interpreting context on the interpreters
as well as the interpreting users, when delivering interpreting service over the Internet,
in order to reap the benefits and avoid potential shortfalls, just having the webcasting
technology available is not sufficient. Many more delicate issues would need to be
considered by the event organizer, such as the provision of multiple language channels
and the availability of a SI technician. The researcher would also like to echo with
AIIC’s “Draft checklist for interpretation over the Internet” (2002). When taking on
internet interpreting assignments, professional interpreters should ask questions, such as
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“Will the webcast be accessible to the public at large or restricted to people with a
password?” and “How long will the conference (and the interpretation) remain posted
on the website?” Internet interpreting is here to stay and new technologies will continue
to open up new possibilities and challenges for the interpreting profession. This calls for
continuous research efforts devoted to the issue of Internet interpreting.
Another aspect of the interpreting context is the highly interactive nature of the
lecture. Based on Alexieva’s (1997) typology, in such type of interpreter-mediated event,
interpreters have a very prominent role to play. This is supported by the large number of
interpretation-related YouTube comments. If the online users did not notice the
interpreter’s role, most YouTube comments would have been related to the lecture
content itself, and not about the interpreters.
Indeed, as seen in the transcription data and in the eight main dialogues in Table 3
(p.58), the entire interpreting event had a very unique structure composed of numerous
back-and-forth, multi-directional exchanges between Sandel and the audience members.
Sandel’s speech was composed of many Q&A sessions and involved fast-turnabouts
between speakers and between languages. In ensuring the flow and pace of these
messages and exchanges, the interpreters played anything but a passive, invisible role.
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The interpreters had to proactively respond to all sorts of changes (e.g. changing
languages, changing the mindset of who the listeners are, changing to whom they are
addressing) all within a very short reaction time. There were even moments when
Sandel told the audience to comment in Chinese because he had an interpreter and when
an audience member said he was waiting for the interpretation before he could comment,
both incidents once again reinforcing the prominent role of interpreters in this event.
The research now revisits the primary research question and summarizes the main
findings.
Research Question: What is the interpreting quality perception of the social media users, and specifically, what quality criteria can be elucidated from the YouTube responses and how do these quality criteria differ from or support previous findings?
Findings from this study showed that delivery-related criteria and expressive
elements (e.g. synchronicity, fluency of delivery, intonation and voice quality) were
mentioned the most by the YouTube users, as opposed to content-related criteria. For
example, synchronicity was the most cited quality criteria among all. Meanwhile,
although the criterion, sense consistency with original message, was often found the
most important quality criterion in many previous quality studies, none of the comments
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mentioned this criterion. This supports research findings by Kurz (1993) and
Pöchhacker & Zwischenberger (2010). In a simultaneous interpreting event like this that
is filled with lively discussion and spontaneous exchange, a setting that resembles
media interpretation as well as dialogue interpretation, extra-linguistic criteria were
viewed more important by users. Another likely explanation is that the interpreting users
simply were not able to compare the rendition against the source text, because they
could not hear the source speech clearly. This was mainly because the speaker’s and the
interpreter’s voices were all mumbled together in one single channel. If dual-channel
streaming was available, the users might have been able to choose whether they wanted
to listen to the original or interpreted version, thus generating different quality
perceptions. This once again underscores the role of technology in this case study.
The large number of diverse YouTube comments also demonstrated that even in the
same interpreting event, different users perceive interpreting quality differently and
apply different quality criteria to describe the performance of interpreters. This supports
previous findings by Pöchhacker and Zwischenberg (2010) that, depending on the
meeting (type of event, size, degree of formality), various quality criteria might be
attributed different degree of importance by the listeners.
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Even more importantly, instead of asking users which quality criteria they deemed
important, as in most previous survey-based studies, the quality criteria in this study
were suggested bottom-up from the users’ spontaneous comments in a naturalistic
setting. This approach addresses the construct-validity problem pointed out by
Moser-Mercer (2009). In previous studies, researchers and survey respondents might
have different interpretations about what a quality criterion means, so the quality
parameters measured might differ from what users actually think. But in this study, the
researcher started out by observing specific quality attributes mentioned by the users
and then categorized them into different quality criteria. As exemplified by the YouTube
comments, users did not mention directly specific criteria. Instead, they commented on
concrete features that constructed or defined synchronicity, such as speaking speed,
breathing between sentences, and switching between source and target languages. With
this approach, the researcher brings the observation and findings closer to a real
communication context, and develops a better understanding of the complex and
multi-dimensional concept of quality.
In addition to the content- versus delivery-related quality criteria debate, this
research also contributes to existing interpreting quality literature by revealing broader
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factors that affect users’ quality perception. For example, the comments revealed larger,
macro trends of technology and of English as lingua franca, and their relation to
interpreting quality perception. In addition, while it is often taken for granted that
simultaneous interpreters work in pairs and are considered as a team, the many YouTube
comments compared the performance of the two interpreters as if they were competitors.
This indicated that when two interpreters carry rather distinctive and contrastive styles
in the same booth, interpreting users might take notice and even develop their
preferences for one interpreter over the other based on certain quality attributes. This is
also a very user-perspective judgment of interpretation performance, which would
otherwise not be easily noticed from the interpreter-centric perspective. The large
number of compliments and criticism also prompted this study to explore possible
reasons behind users’ quality judgment. Furthermore, the formation of different quality
perceptions is context-driven—the lecture was highly interactive and multi-directional,
which presented a great challenge to the interpreters, but also gave the interpreters an
opportunity to shine and demonstrate to the audience how interpreters could mediate
such a fast-pace and dynamic event. And this was one of the main reasons why so many
YouTube listeners were so impressed with the interpreters’ performance, especially the
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male interpreter.