Difference between professional interpreters and trainee interpreters

Moser-Mercer et al. (2000) found that interpreters’ interpreting speed and accuracy increase with expertise. In reading research, it has been shown that less skilled readers have longer fixations, shorter saccades, and make more fixations and regressions than skilled readers (Rayner, 2009). Therefore, in this study, it was hypothesized that with little regard to layout and language, professional interpreters would read the notes more rapidly and efficiently than trainee interpreters, as reflected in shorter duration length in temporal eye-movement measures, fewer fixations, lower regression rate, and longer saccade length.

From the results of the global analysis, we observe that the professionals used significantly fewer fixations and shorter total time than the trainees to read and interpret one page of notes. Fewer fixations indicate that the professional interpreters were able to grasp the information in the notes with fewer glimpses and thus were more skillful in using the notes as a memory trigger, even when the notes were not written by themselves. Shorter total reading time is consistent with the finding of higher interpreting speed of experts reported by Moser-Mercer et al.

(2000).

Moreover, the professionals did not show as much need as the trainees to regress backward/upward to the information which they had either read or skipped. In reading, regressive saccades occur because a reader encounters difficulties in processing an individual word, or difficulties in processing the meaning or structure of a sentence (Rayner, 2009). Likewise, we believe that regressions in note-reading in CI may well suggest difficulties in information processing. Low mean regression rate of the professional interpreters implies that they were able to immediately recall the

75

relationship between each piece of information, and such swift reaction to the notes allowed them to continuously acquire new information without getting stuck or backtracking.

While the results of the aforementioned three measures support our hypothesis, the others do not seem compatible with it. For one thing, except total reading time, the other temporal measures in all three levels of analysis do not reveal a significant difference between professionals and trainees. The professionals even displayed longer first fixation duration than the trainees in the local (Targets) analysis, suggesting that it took the former longer time to process the linguistic information in the Target regions when they are fixated on for the first time in the first pass, though the statistics only reach marginal significance. It is possible that due to more experience and background knowledge, the professionals may immediately think of more than one potential option in the TL for a particular word, hence their longer processing time than the trainees on the information with linguistic clues when they are encountered for the first time.

Another unexpected finding is the shorter saccade length of the professionals than the trainees. This result may seem counterintuitive, but we believe that the subjects’

responses in the questionnaire and interview have provided some possible explanations.

As stated in Research Limitations, the biggest deviation from typical CI practice in our experiment is the subjects could not take notes by themselves but had to read the designed notes while listening to the source speeches. Unsurprisingly every subject, after completing the experiment, said they were “not used to reading someone else’s notes” because “the notes contain elements that I would not write down”, “the notes’ style is different from mine”, or “I do not understand what certain symbols mean”. However, they also mentioned that “if the notes had not been given to read while listening, I would not have been able to recall every detail in the speeches since three minutes are quite long”. Therefore, all the subjects acknowledged the usefulness of the designed notes, regardless of layout and language, as they helped aid and trigger memory, which is in line with the subjects’

perceptions of the purposes of notes (please refer to Table 27 in Chapter 4). In addition, despite being unfamiliar with the style of the designed notes, they thought the notes were much more complete than their own if they were to take notes by themselves. Nevertheless, some of the subjects did not find the notes helpful with analyzing and reformulating the messages, which is quite understandable since each interpreter grasps and reorganizes information in different ways.

76

Of course, the subjects could choose to not read the notes “attentively”, which, interestingly, was the case in many professional interpreters. The questionnaire and interview data reveal that while the professionals overall considered the notes significantly easier to read than the trainees, as evidenced by their ratings (please refer to Table 32 in Chapter 4), the former actually expressed higher reluctance in using the notes as memory aid or triggers than the latter. Most of the professional interpreters found reading the designed notes and listening at the same time annoying and severely impeding their comprehension of the source speeches, especially at the beginning of the experiment when they learned to balance their cognitive efforts between listening and reading. In order to facilitate better comprehension, they, at first, decided to pay attention mostly to listening without worrying about “deciphering” the notes. Some of them even said that they would deliberately look at the empty space on the notes or would rather close their eyes so that their comprehension would not be bothered by what they saw. Unfortunately such approach only worked when the content was easy and concrete such as the speech about tourism and the MICE industry in Hong Kong. When the content became hard and vague, as in the speech about education reform in Australia, they would realize the necessity of reading the notes, hence began to adjust their approach by allocating more cognitive efforts in matching what was seen and what was heard, which, according to them, usually happened in the second half of the experiment. In other words, even though the professional interpreters were given access to the notes which would be used for interpreting while listening to the source speeches, they still decided to allocate most cognitive resources to listening rather than depending on the notes.

The trainee interpreters, on the contrary, viewed reading the designed notes while listening as a privilege which could facilitate interpreting. Most of them, especially at the beginning of the experiment, decided to depend solely on the notes without paying much attention to listening because they knew they would have the notes to read while interpreting. However, they gradually found themselves unable to fluently generate the interpreting output because they neither fully comprehended the source speeches, nor could they “decipher” the notes which they had read before, let alone figuring out the relationship between note elements. After a few trials, they started to change their approach by putting more effort in listening and comprehending with less dependence on the notes.

From the responses of the professional interpreters and the trainee interpreters in the interview after the experiment, it is clear that the two groups adopted very different mindsets and approaches to cope with the unnatural scenario of having

77

someone else’s notes at hand while listening. The professionals were able to analyze, organize, and reformulate the incoming messages based on their own comprehension because they allocated cognitive resources mainly to listening instead of note-reading in the first phase of CI. Before production, they already had a mental model for the target discourse. As a result, they did not really have to rely on the notes to construct the target discourse but instead treated them only as memory triggers. When they read the notes for interpreting, they could read at a steady pace by fitting each piece of information in the notes sequentially into that mental model.

Even if the note elements were not arranged according to their mental model, they knew exactly where to focus on and to find the information needed, hence the short saccade length. Together with their low regression rate, it is conceivable that the professionals were moving their eyes in a steadily forward fashion. The trainee interpreters, on the other hand, overlooked the importance of listening.

Consequently their comprehension in the first phase of CI was compromised and had to rely heavily on the notes to generate the interpreting output. Long saccades, together with high regression rate, indicate their need of looking back and forth across long distances for the connection between several pieces of information and the difficulty faced in organizing the note elements.

To sum up, the present study has demonstrated that professional interpreters overall read the CI notes more rapidly and efficiently than trainee interpreters. Such speed and efficiency are not necessarily reflected in shorter time spent on acquiring each piece of information in the notes but a more skillful approach of using the notes only as a memory trigger instead of a text that one has to peruse carefully. Therefore, the professional interpreters read the notes with fewer fixations, shorter saccades, and fewer regressions, which eventually cost them less time than the trainees during note-reading/interpreting. More importantly, the two groups demonstrate different mastery levels of strategy employment, a finding in agreements with Moser-Mercer’s (1997). The professionals better employ workload management strategies to properly allocate their limited cognitive efforts both at the listening phase and the production phase. As a result, they are able to better employ comprehension strategies to quickly update their mental models of the target discourse in the first phase of CI. In particular, they even apply the planning strategies already at the comprehension stage so that at the production stage, they precisely focus on the information needed for interpreting, hence their skillful note-reading behavior.