Chapter 4 Findings and Discussions
4.4 Delivery-related Quality Criteria
4.4.1 Synchronicity
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between Sandel and the audience members. Moreover, the interpreters’ rendition was
webcasted live over the Internet. How the lecture content was delivered by Sandel and
interpreted by the interpreters is crucial to the listeners’ perception, which explains why
delivery-related quality criteria received more attention.
4.4.1 Synchronicity
Kurz (1997) said that “speed is of the essence” in media interpreting, which meant
that the interpreter should stay as close to the speaker as possible, and if the lag
becomes too long, especially in Q&A-filled interviews, the entire interpreting event
becomes “unpalatable and unacceptable” (p.197). Bross-Brann (1994, as cited in
Pignataro, 2011) also emphasized that a television interpreter should be able to work at
a supersonic speed. Synchronicity is often thought important when interpreting for jokes
or when finishing up, but synchronicity and keeping up the speed with the speaker is
also very important in short dialogue exchanges, especially in a media setting, to ensure
the natural flow of the conversation and interactions.
In this particular interpreting context, which is a Socratic-style lecture filled with
multi-directional and interactive dialogues between the speaker and numerous audience
members, synchronicity is very important, and probably more important than in other
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settings. Kurz (1993) discussed how extra-linguistic criteria might be considered more
important in media interpretation or in conferences filled with lively discussion and
spontaneous exchange. Furthermore, among the various extra-linguistic criteria,
Pöchhacker & Zwischenberger (2010) found that users recognize the importance of
synchronicity when commenting specifically about media events. These previous
studies confirm the findings of this study, as synchronicity is the most cited quality
criteria among all—among the 35 quality criteria-related comments, as many as 13
comments were related to synchronicity (see Table 7 and Table 8). Furthermore the
spontaneous comments by users reflect the many concrete features that construct or
define synchronicity, which include speaking speed, breathing between sentences, and
switching between source and target languages. Once again, this is the strength of this
naturalistic data as it avoids the construct validity issue commonly appeared in previous
survey-based studies.
In this interpreting event, Sandel and the audience members had to wait for the
interpreter’s rendition before they could proceed with their following comments, so the
more simultaneous the rendition, the shorter the waiting time, and thus the smoother the
dialogue. Yet the tradeoff was that the interpreters were forced to shorten their EVS in
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order to keep up with the speakers and the switching of speakers. There were two
comments that directly mentioned the talking speed of the interpreters:
Comment #82 : “演講者有把講話速度放慢 但是這口譯根本全速飆車阿” [The
speaker did slow down, but the interpreter was talking at full speed.]
Comment #147 : “口譯好厲害喔 翻完英文馬上回到中文” [The interpreter was
awesome—after translating into English, he immediately switched back to Chinese.]
Moreover, when the source content often involved code switching between Chinese
and English, mainly because some audience members chose to spoke in English, the
interpreters had to garner extra effort to not only adapt to different speakers’ styles, but
also change their output language accordingly. This is why in the 13
synchronicity-related comments, the researcher found many YouTube users commenting
on the switching between Chinese and English by the interpreters. While some thought
it sounded very busy and even chaotic (Comment #156: “一下英文一下中文真莫
名”[So random, English for a while, and then Chinese for another.]), some were very
impressed with the interpreters’ ability in making fast and uninterrupted transitions
between the two languages (Comment #62: “超強!!! 中翻英 英翻中 不打結”[Superb!
Chinese into English, and English into Chinese, without any difficulty.];Comment #68:
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“中英交替翻很厲害有趣”[Code-switching between Chinese and English is quite
amazing and interesting.]).
Table 8: Quality criteria- synchronicity
Comment # Commenter # YouTube comment (13 comments) 58 C19 oh my god!!! 這是什麼雙語狀況...
It is also important to study the transcription data and see whether the data supports
these findings from the YouTube user comments concerning synchronicity. As
mentioned, Sandel’s lecture was not a one-directional speech, but was composed of
multiple question-and-answer exchanges between Sandel and his audience. Take the
two following transcription segments for example. These examples demonstrated how
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the interpreters had to make constant, short switches between Chinese and English to
interpret for both Sandel and the audience members who stood up and voiced their
opinions.
In the five-minute-and-thirty-minute segment in Frequent Turn Example 1 (Table
9), there were 11 turning points between Chinese and English, and within them, the
longest segment lasted for one minute and eight seconds (Segment #34), while the
shortest one lasted for only 2 seconds, and there were quite a few segments that lasted
less than 10 seconds. Moreover, even when interpreting into Chinese, there were four
occasions when the interpreters switched from interpreting for Sandel to interpreting for
the audience members or vice versa, thus requiring the interpreters to adjust to the
different English-speaking styles. For example, in Segment #32, the audience member
all of a sudden switched from speaking in English to Chinese and sped up her talking
speed. The interpreter had very short reaction time. In other words, within this shorter
than six minute segment, multiple multi-faceted, brief dialogue exchanges occurred in
different directions, demanding the interpreters to react quickly, keep up with different
speakers and different languages, while at the same time providing highly synchronous
interpretation.
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Table 9: Frequent turn example 1 Segment
# Starting
time Time length Speaker Interpreter Language direction
24 0:32:28 0:00:55 3-M-C Male C→E
25 0:33:23 0:00:20 Sandel Male E→C
26 0:33:43 0:00:05 2-F-C Male C→E
27 0:33:48 0:00:12 Sandel Male E→C
28 0:34:00 0:00:33 2-F-C Male C→E
29 0:34:33 0:00:04 Sandel Male E→C
30 0:34:37 0:00:07 2-F-E Male E→C
31 0:34:44 0:00:03 Sandel Male E→C
32 0:34:47 0:00:17 2-F-C Male C→E
33 0:35:04 0:00:02 Sandel Male E→C
34 0:35:06 0:01:08 3-M-C Male C→E
35 0:36:14 0:00:09 Sandel Female E→C
36 0:36:23 0:00:03 2-F-E Female E→C
37 0:36:26 0:00:02 Sandel Female E→C
38 0:36:28 0:00:01 2-F-E Female E→C
39 0:36:29 0:00:55 Sandel Female E→C
40 0:37:24 0:00:02 2-F-E Female E→C
41 0:37:26 0:00:03 Sandel Female E→C
42 0:37:29 0:00:08 2-F-E Female E→C
43 0:37:37 0:00:08 Sandel Female E→C
44 0:37:45 0:00:04 2-F-E Female E→C
45 0:37:49 0:00:01 Sandel Female E→C
46 0:37:50 0:00:08 2-F-C Female C→E
47 0:37:58 0:00:07 Sandel Male* E→C
*Note: Out of frustration, the male interpreter took over from here.
In another frequent turn example (Table 10), although the interpreter mostly
interpreted into Chinese, there were multiple frequent yet brief exchanges between
Sandel and the audience member (5-F-E). The three-minute conversation was filled
with very short segments, indicating that both Sandel and the audience member 5-F-E
uttered very short sentences or words, requiring the interpreter to achieve synchronous
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delivery.
Table 10: Frequent turn example 2 Segment
# Starting
time Time length Speaker Interpreter Language direction
82 0:49:06 0:00:43 4-F-C Male C→E
83 0:49:49 0:00:13 5-F-E Male E→C
84 0:50:02 0:00:10 Sandel Male E→C
85 0:50:12 0:00:04 5-F-E Male E→C
86 0:50:16 0:00:09 Sandel Male E→C
87 0:50:25 0:00:03 5-F-E Male E→C
88 0:50:28 0:00:05 Sandel Male E→C
89 0:50:33 0:00:10 5-F-E Male E→C
90 0:50:43 0:00:07 Sandel Male E→C
91 0:50:50 0:00:10 5-F-E Male E→C
92 0:51:00 0:00:18 Sandel Male E→C
93 0:51:18 0:00:05 5-F-E Male E→C
94 0:51:23 0:00:37 Sandel Male E→C