The influence of experience on output and reading behavior

If training has immediate effects on both the process and outcome of sight translation, does experience has anything more to offer? What does the next level of sight translation look like? In this section, we turn to comparisons between

experienced interpreters and interpreting students to outline the impact of experience.

A look at measures in silent reading for an identification of linguistic

competence in the first place is in order. Global indices including the total number of

fixations and total time were similar for both groups. However, every local reading index showed a significant difference, except for FFD. This is reasonable evidence that experienced interpreters were more efficient in meaning retrieval, and hence a probable superiority in general linguistic abilities. In contrast, Chen (2013) found a longer duration in GD, RRT, and TVT for trainees in silent reading, but none of the gaps in the task reached significance when compared with experts. This again tells us that language direction is an important factor to reckon with when making

interpretation of the results.

Turning to sight translation, however, all global and reading indices failed to show a difference between the two groups. It could be that training considerably boosted interpreting students’ speed, so the disparities apparent in silent reading were no longer observable, or the results were simply masked by the additional burden of reformulation and production conducted in different stages by each group.

We would like to direct our discussion to the fluctuations of numerical differences. In early reading indices, the divide between trainees and experts broadened gradually, reaching a maximum in GPT. From this we can infer that trainees adhered more strictly to the basic chunking routine, shortening the first pass and immediately going back to the initial positions of meaningful units for

reformulation (see previous section in which we discussed the acceleration of trainees in the first pass). In the meantime, experts’ shorter GPT may indicate the fact that a higher percentage of the message had been tackled in the first pass without regression, as proclaimed by Hsieh (2014), revealing the trace of experience.

However, going into later stages, trainees and experts started to behave much alike in terms of RRT and even TVT. At this point, bilinguals’ much longer duration may serve as a great baseline for comparison. Trained participants were more

confident and decisive in that they moved along the text successively, segment by segment, without frequently going back to previous regions once they finished

sight-translating the meaningful unit in their central vision, while untrained bilinguals were going back and forth continuously to piece together information in a correct order. The above deduction can also be substantiated by the rereading counts in different tasks for each group (see in Table 28 that both experts and trainees were able to limit rereading counts in sight translation to the same level as silent reading, but not bilinguals). In this regard, training seems to help develop a segment-by-segment approach, while experience is more visible only in the relative efficiency and effectiveness of handling each segment.

How about the reading pattern during sight translation? Can we see the impact of experience on what happened along the way? Starting from the number of fixations and length of silence before the participants began to deliver for the first time, we found that the two groups were statistically similar, except that professionals showed more variations in style. Trainees were extremely homogeneous, while experience seemed to free some experts to a certain extent from this

“don’t-keep-the-audience-waiting doctrine.”

The role of experience became more tangible once interpreting began.

Experienced interpreters on average needed significantly fewer fixations ahead of

each non-first utterance, and the distribution was much narrower, gravitating around 1.5 fixations, indicating that the style was consistent across all experts. The

percentage of pause among all verbal gaps was significantly lower for experts

(9.772%) than trainees (13.9%), exhibiting a smoother sight translation output, which could be further supported by a significantly shorter length of pauses on average.

Even if experts indeed ran into problems, they didn’t dwell on the issues for too long.

After a pause of 1.474 seconds at most on average, experts kept the ball rolling again.

On the other hand, trainees would need to stop for some time before moving on when real problems turned up. The number of fixations during each pause confirms this observation with a significant gap between the two groups. Experience perhaps gives professionals more flexibility in their choices for reformulation, so they could almost always quickly maneuver around the obstacles.

With much fewer and shorter pauses, experienced interpreters were still able to maintain a faster pace when sight-translating the text. Average length of verbal gaps showed a significant shorter length for experts than interpreting students. Thus, we can confidently say that professionals were generally faster, not just in situations that required problem solving. The flexibility honed by years of practice enabled a

smoother and quicker rendition when experts translated along the text.

From all the patterns manifested during sight translation, we can sense that trainees were trying to rely on the same chunking strategy as experts did, and they actually mastered the “form” (the method of chunking), so the only difference lay in

the “content”, that is, the flexibility in language, acquired through experience, that seamlessly combine chunked messages together in a coherent way.

So far, the influence of training is much more visible than that of experience because, with training, interpreting students did successfully catch up with

experienced interpreters in many aspects, including almost all global indices, local reading indices, and even rereading counts. Our findings coincide with those of Chmiel and Mazur’s (2013), in which trainees, regardless of the length of interpreter training, finished the sight translation task with comparable numbers of fixations, mean fixation duration and total time. This convergence of evidence proves that a formal training in sight translation skills is enough to wield an immediate, positive influence.

However, there are still some insurmountable gaps. First and foremost, though fluency was similar between experts and trainees, accuracy still clearly portrayed the value of experience, just as McDonald and Carpenter (1981) found in their study that experience led to a boost in accuracy, not speed. Lee (2012) also provided

corresponding evidence. In Lee’s experiment, experts had fewer major errors and expression errors, both of which go under the category of accuracy in the current study. In addition, experts also spent less time on the task. It’s a pity that no statistical method was used to verify the numerical differences in Lee’s study, or we might have more solid support for our findings.

Aside from higher accuracy as a group, the real difference appeared after participants began interpreting. Experts were able to maintain a faster pace of

interpreting, and they stuttered or hesitated fewer times. Even when experts stumbled, they paused for much less time and needed fewer fixations to get out of trouble.

What’s more, experts on average relied on largely fewer fixations between every two utterances to keep things going smoothly. The study of Chiang, Kuo, and Chen (2009) earlier has indeed already confirmed this distinction. In their experiment, second-year interpreting trainees had significantly shorter average pause duration and lower number of pauses than first-year students in English-to-Chinese sight translation, completely matching our findings. Therefore, we can safely say that the flexibility in language, as well as the resourcefulness, requires time to develop and does not happen

“overnight”.

Our findings on the influence of experience may have important implications for interpreter training. After receiving training, interpreting students may acquire the know-how to efficiently handle the task of sight translation. But in the meantime, trainees need to know how they can move to the next level by repeatedly trying out different solutions to develop that flexibility in language.

5.4 Intertwined relationships between indices and the skill of chunking, and