Chapter 4 Findings and Discussions
4.6 Broader Factors Affecting Quality Perception
4.6.3 Users’ General Perception and Understanding of the Role of Interpreters
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4.6.3 Users’ General Perception and Understanding of the Role of Interpreters
The role of interpreters is far from invisible in this online YouTube lecture
broadcast session, otherwise there would not have been close to a quarter of YouTube
comments devoted to interpreter or interpretation related discussions. Interpreters and
the interpreted content must have in one way or another caught the attention or sparked
the interests of the users, including both the live audience and remote YouTube users. In
addition to quality perception, this naturalistic data also offered rich information
regarding the online users’ general perception of the profession and role of interpreters.
Many of these perceptions or expectations for the interpreters are from the audience’s
perspective, which might not align with the need of the source language speakers,
illustrating the fact that interpreters often serve multiple clients and users.
Table 28 revealed comments showing that many listeners only had limited
understanding of the function or role of interpreters, suggesting that this event was the
first time they received service from interpreters or that they seldom had opportunities
to listen to interpreters. Six comments (Type 1, Table 28) inquired why the interpreters
had to translate into English, instead of just into Chinese. Examples:
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Comment #54: “為何講中文也要口譯成英文 XD?” [Why is the Chinese speech
interpreted into English?]
Comment #61: “這哪招阿??? 還出現中翻英...” [What’s going on? Interpretation
from Chinese into English?]
On one hand, this misconception resulted from the technical arrangement that did
not allow the online YouTube users to select channels but to listen to both source and
target text speeches simultaneously. But these comments also suggested that these users
were not aware of the fact that the interpreters were also serving the speaker, Sandel, in
the three-way communication context.
In response to these questions, there were a number of comments that provided
explanations (Type 2, Table 28). These comments tried to explain that the interpreters
were also translating for Sandel, and therefore they had to interpret in both directions.
One user tried to point out that interpreters’ job is to translate what he heard in English
into Chinese, and vice versa, as seen in Comment #96 : “翻譯的工作是要翻譯出來，聽
到英文就要翻成中文，聽到中文就要翻成英文。” [It’s the job of the interpreter to
listen to English and translate into Chinese, and to listen to Chinese and translate into
English.] These comments revealed that different users have different understandings
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about the work nature and job requirement of an interpreter, which would in turn affect
users’ interpreting quality perception and expectations.
Previously in Table 26, a number of users criticized the interpreters’ performance,
commenting on how the interpretation sounded very chaotic and busy. Taking a more
understanding viewpoint, two users said they had some prior translation or
interpretation experience so they understood how challenging the work is (Comments
#45 and #232, Type 3, Table 28). Two other YouTube viewers empathized with the
interpreters and asked the other listeners to be more understanding and appreciative of
the work of interpreters. Examples:
Comment #43 : “口譯是邊聽邊翻，跟事後整句翻譯的狀況當然不同囉...”
[Interpreters have to listen and interpret at the same time, so of course it differs
from translating the entire segment after the lecture concludes.]
Comment #190: “耳朵聽英文嘴巴講中文持續十分鐘不能錯不能間斷，試試看
就知道有多累了...” [Just try to listen to English and talk in Chinese non-stop for
ten minutes, and you know how tiring it is.]
On a separate note, there were two comments (Comments #30 and #148, Type 4,
Table 28) that showed their interest and understanding of the interpreter profession from
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a different perspective, namely financial compensation. One user inquired about how
much the interpreters got paid. Another user commented that interpreting requires solid
skills and those who truly master the skill might charge $40,000-$50,000 NTD during a
two-hour event. Although there were only two comments that raised the financial
compensation issue, they provided another perspective when discussing users’ general
understanding of the interpreter profession.
To summarize the above comments, although this research does not have a user
profile with defined parameters or characteristics, these YouTube comments represented
a wide range of diverse opinions from a group of social media users. They were vocal
and active online, and that was why they left a large number of interpretation-related
comments. These comments about the interpreting event therefore convey the online
users’ viewpoint of interpretation, instead of the sample groups most often researched in
previous studies, such as professional interpreters, frequent conference participants,
experts, specialists, or students of interpreting studies. This is another reason how this
naturalistic study compliments existing research.
Table 28: Discussion and general understanding of the work and role of interpreters Comment# Commenter# YouTube comment (28 comments)
Type 1: Users questioning the English rendition (6 comments)
Type 2: Users explaining about target text (9 comments)
49 C19 中文口譯 桑德爾也聽得到... 哈哈
Type 3: Users empathizing with interpreters (9 comments)
43 C29 口譯是邊聽邊翻，跟事後整句翻譯的狀況當然不同囉...
Type 4: Users curious about the price of interpreting service (2 comments) 30 C19 及時口譯領多少錢...
148 C79 即時口譯的功力很重要，厲害的人，這兩小時可能就 要價四、五萬
Type 5: Users commenting about interpreter’s intervention (2 comments) 150 C53 中文名自英文名字都可以!!口譯好可愛 哈哈 160 C85 他剛剛應該是被翻譯影響了
The transcription data also revealed some information about how the users think of
the role of interpreters. The researcher found from the transcription data several
intervention strategies adopted by the interpreters. By reviewing both the YouTube
comment and transcription data, the researcher attempts to understand whether the
YouTube users noticed these strategies, and if so, what they thought about the
intervention strategies and how the intervention affected users’ quality perception.
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Illustrated in Table 29, when an audience member (14-M-C) asked Sandel whether he
should speak in Chinese or English, the male interpreter, instead of translating this
question and posing it to Sandel to answer, he went ahead to answer for Sandel and told
the audience member that either language was fine. The interpreter probably assumed
that Sandel would answer the same, so he employed this intervention strategy that could
help save time and make the exchange more efficient. This highlighted the interpreters’
role in shaping the lecture content. Interestingly, some audience members probably
noticed this intervention, as reflected in an user comment (#150), “中文名自英文名字
都可以!!口譯好可愛 哈哈” [Chinese or English names both work! The interpreter is
so adorable.]).
Table 29: Interpreter’s intervention example 1 Segment
#
Speaker Interpreter Source text Target text
138 14-M-C Male 中文還是英文嗎 n/a
139 14-M-C Male n/a 都可以都可以
140 14-M-C Male Steven. Steven. That's his name, Steven.
There is also much evidence from the transcription data that points to the
interpreters’ intervention and the interpreter’s highly active, communicative role. In
order to provide additional explanation for the speaker and to facilitate the audience’s
understanding, the interpreters took a more proactive and intervening strategy.
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For example, among the 24 audience members who participated in the dialogue
with Sandel, one of them (#22) was a student activist (Wei-Ting Chen 陳為廷) who
received much media spotlight at the time of the interpreting event. So when he stood
up to voice his opinion, the audience cheered for him. The interpreter instantly provided
a brief background for Sandel about the student so that Sandel could better understand
the audience’s enthusiastic reaction (see Table 30). Although none of the YouTube
comments mentioned about this intervention example, the researcher did find many
YouTube comments about Chen and his comments. This incident showed that when the
interpreting audience knew about Chen and reacted towards his statement, Sandel had to
rely on the interpreter’s intervention to understand the audience’s reaction and to
continue his dialogue with the audience.
Table 30: Interpreter’s intervention example 2 Segment
#
Speaker Interpreter Source text Target text 172 22-M-C Male 大家好，我的名字叫陳
Another intervention example (Table 31) from the transcription data showed how
the interpreters intentionally tried to help Sandel memorize the name of the audience
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members by purposefully repeating and emphasizing the Chinese names of the Q&A
audience members for Sandel. To help Sandel pronounce the Chinese names, the
interpreters also simplified some of the names by dropping the family names and altered
them into a slightly more English-like pronunciation.
Table 31: Interpreter’s intervention example 3 Segment
#
Speaker Interpreter Speaker’s comment Interpreter’s rendition
96 6-M-C Male 那我全部都用中
Except for the one comment (Comment#150, Type 5, Table 28) that directly
mentioned the interpreter’s intervention, there exist no direct evidence to conclude that
the audience might perceive the role of interpreters differently based on interpreters’
intervention. Some intervention examples meant to provide service to the speaker,
Sandel, and maybe that was why no audience members noticed or mentioned about
them. Meanwhile, even if some people noticed about these intervention cases, they
might not have any particular opinion, either positive or negative, about how or why the
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interpreters intervened, and thus no related comments were found. To conclude, in this
research, how such intervention affects users’ perception on quality remains unclear. It
will be worthwhile to research further on how these service-oriented intervention
strategies by interpreters affect users’ quality perceptions.