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口譯產出停頓時的認知歷程:以視譯眼動軌跡為證

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(1)A Thesis Presented to The Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation National Taiwan Normal University. 國立臺灣師範大學翻譯研究所碩士論文. Thesis adviser: Dr. Tze-wei Chen. 指導教授:陳子瑋博士. Cognitive process during pauses in interpreting output: from eye movements in sight translation. 口譯產出停頓時的認知歷程:以視譯眼動軌跡為證. Advisee: Ya-Wei Su. 研究生:蘇雅薇. July, 2013. 中華民國一○二年七月.

(2) Table of Contents Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... i List of Tables ............................................................................................................... iii List of Figures ............................................................................................................. iv List of Figures in Appendix B .................................................................................... v Abstract ........................................................................................................................ vi 摘要............................................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 1.1 Research background ........................................................................................ 1 1.2 Research questions ............................................................................................ 5 Chapter 2 Literature Review ................................................................................... 7 2.1 Interpretation and sight translation ............................................................... 7 2.1.1 Characteristics and difficulties of sight translation ............................... 8 2.1.2 The interpretation process ...................................................................... 12 2.2 Pauses ............................................................................................................... 14 2.2.1 Juncture pause and hesitation pause .................................................... 16 2.2.2 Distribution of pause in spontaneous speech ...................................... 18 2.2.3 Psycholinguistic functions of pause in spontaneous speech .............. 20 2.2.4 Pauses in interpretation output ............................................................. 24 2.3 Eye movement ................................................................................................. 28 2.3.1 Eye movement and reading comprehension ........................................ 30 2.3.2 Eye-tracking method in T&I studies ..................................................... 33 2.3.3 Eye movement and pause ....................................................................... 37 Chapter 3 Pause Data Collection and Analyses ................................................. 40 3.1 Data source and collection ............................................................................. 40 i.

(3) 3.2 Data processing ............................................................................................... 41 3.2.1 Selection of observation points............................................................... 41 3.2.2 Annotated protocol .................................................................................. 42 3.3 Oral data analyses results .............................................................................. 45 3.3.1 Juncture pause .......................................................................................... 46 3.3.2 Hesitation pause ....................................................................................... 47 Chapter 4. Eye Movement Analyses ..................................................................... 56. 4.1 Data collection ................................................................................................. 56 4.1.1 Eye fixation protocol ................................................................................. 56 4.1.2 Examined parameters .............................................................................. 58 4.2 Eye movement data analyses ........................................................................ 62 4.2.1 Global analyses ......................................................................................... 63 4.2.2 Juncture pause analyses ......................................................................... 66 4.2.3 Hesitation pause analyses ....................................................................... 75 Chapter 5 Discussion ............................................................................................. 88 5.1 Additional eye tracking data findings ........................................................... 88 5.1.1 Examination of the main interruption rule for repairs........................ 88 5.1.2 Eye movements during pauses yet to be explained ............................. 93 5.2 Cognitive process during pause and implication for interpretation studies and training............................................................................................. 101 5.3 Research limitation and future perspective .............................................. 104 5.4 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 106 Reference .................................................................................................................. 108 Appendix A. Selected Experiment Materials ....................................................... 112 Appendix B. Eye fixation protocol examples....................................................... 115. ii.

(4) List of Tables Table 1-1. Categorization of pauses (Cecot, 2001) ............................................ 16 Table 4-1. Number of pauses and fixations occurred during pauses ............... 62 Table 4-2. Number of fixations during pauses ................................................. 63 Table 4-3. Saccade direction at the onset of pause .......................................... 64 Table 4-4. Saccade direction at the end of pause ............................................. 64 Table 4-5. Number of fixations during juncture pauses .................................. 66 Table 4-6. Saccade direction at the onset of juncture pause ........................... 67 Table 4-7. Saccade direction at the end of juncture pause .............................. 67 Table 4-8. Number of fixations during hesitation pauses ................................75 Table 4-9. Saccade direction at the onset of hesitation pause ......................... 76 Table 4-10. Saccade direction during the end of hesitation pause .................. 76. iii.

(5) List of Figures Figure 3-1. Selection of pause data in Audacity ............................................... 42 Figure 3-2. Categorization of pauses ................................................................ 45 Figure 4-1. Selection of fixation data during pauses in Praat .......................... 56 Figure 4-2. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-1 ............................................ 58 Figure 4-3. Fixation position in reading passes during juncture and hesitation pause ................................................................................................................. 66 Figure 4-4. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-2 ............................................ 72 Figure 4-5. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-3 ............................................ 73 Figure 4-6. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-4 ............................................ 74 Figure 4-7. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-5 ............................................ 74 Figure 4-8. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-6 ............................................ 80 Figure 4-9. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-7 .............................................81 Figure 4-10. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-8 .......................................... 82 Figure 4-11. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-9 ........................................... 83 Figure 4-12. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-10......................................... 84 Figure 4-13. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-11 ......................................... 85 Figure 4-14. Eye fixation protocol of Example 4-12 ......................................... 86 Figure 5-1. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-1 ............................................. 89 Figure 5-2. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-2 ............................................ 89 Figure 5-3. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-3 ............................................. 91 Figure 5-4. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-4 ............................................ 92 Figure 5-5. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-5 ............................................ 94 Figure 5-6. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-6 ............................................ 94 Figure 5-7. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-7............................................. 95 Figure 5-8. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-8 ............................................ 96 iv.

(6) Figure 5-9. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-9 ............................................ 97 Figure 5-10. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-10 ......................................... 98 Figure 5-11. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-11 .......................................... 99 Figure 5-12. Eye fixation protocol of Example 5-12 ....................................... 100. List of Figures in Appendix B Figure B1. Eye fixation protocol of Participant 210002 .................................. 116 Figure B2. Eye fixation protocol of Participant 210003 ................................. 118 Figure B3. Eye fixation protocol of Participant 210004 ................................ 120 Figure B4. Eye fixation protocol of Participant 210005 .................................122 Figure B5. Eye fixation protocol of Particiapnt 210007 .................................124 Figure B6. Eye fixation protocol of Participant 210008 .................................126 Figure B7. Eye fixation protocol of Participant 210010 ................................. 128 Figure B8. Eye fixation protocol of Participant 210012 ................................. 130 Figure B9. Eye fixation protocol of Participant 210017 ..................................132. v.

(7) Abstract. Pause studies have raised the assumption that juncture pauses, pause that occurs at sentence junctures, and hesitation pauses, pause that occurs elsewhere in the sentence, could possess distinct functions and indicate different cognitive processes. However, so far little research has focused on examining the speaker / interpreter’s cognitive reaction right at the moment of pausing, nor has additional data been used to triangulate the oral production analyses. The present study incorporates eye movement data, which has been commonly used in reading studies as indicators of cognitive processes, into the study of pausing in sight translation. The research focused on examining eye fixation location and saccade trajectory at the time of pausing, and comparing eye movement data with oral production. Oral outputs and eye movements of 11 trainee interpreters were recorded during a task of Chinese to English sight translation. Results showed that the eye is usually in the first or second reading pass during juncture pause, and tend to fixate on the upcoming segment after the pause, suggesting the interpreter is engaged in early stages of interpreting, comprehending and reformulating the upcoming text. During hesitation pause, the eye tends to fall in the third reading pass and on, and the pause is likely to begin with a regression, which indicates the interpreter is involved in the error detection stage, solving lexical, syntactic and strategic problems causing production difficulties. The results support the assumption that distinct cognitive processes go on during juncture and hesitation pause. This study may help refine the pause criteria in assessment of interpretation quality, and produce a vi.

(8) more systematic way of instructing the control of pauses to interpretation students.. Key words: juncture pause, hesitation pause, cognitive process, sight translation, eye tracking. vii.

(9) 摘要. 停頓研究推論位於句尾的結構停頓(juncture pause)和位於句中其他位置 的遲疑停頓(hesitation pause)應分別具有獨特的功能,並象徵不同的認知處 理歷程。然而目前為止鮮有研究專於分析講者/口譯員於停頓當下的認知反應, 或採用第二組資料對口語產出進行三角檢測。本研究採用眼動資料以分析視譯產 出中的停頓,因眼動資料已普遍應用於閱讀研究當中,作為認知歷程的指標。本 研究主要檢視產出停頓當下的眼睛凝視位置和掃視方向,並比較眼動資料與口語 產出內容。 本研究蒐集十一位受試者於中進英視譯時的口語產出及眼動資料。研究結果 顯示產生結構停頓時,眼睛多位於第一次或第二次閱讀,且凝視在停頓後即將產 出的段落,顯示受試者正在口譯的初期階段,理解並重組即將產出的內容。產生 遲疑停頓時,眼睛多位於第三次閱讀之後,且停頓多以回視開始,顯示受試者正 在偵測錯誤,解決造成產出困難的字詞、句法和翻譯策略問題。研究結果支持結 構停頓和遲疑停頓代表不同的認知處理歷程。根據本研究結果,可修正口譯品質 評量中的停頓標準,以及提出較系統性的方式,教導口譯學生如何控制口語產出 的停頓。. 關鍵字:結構停頓、遲疑停頓、認知歷程、視譯、眼動. viii.

(10) Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Research background The main purpose of interpreting service is to facilitate communication between two parties that speak different languages. First introduced during the post-World War Two period, simultaneous interpretation has since played a vital role in cross-cultural communication, but interpreting has been here for thousands of years. Through various forms of interpretation, including consecutive interpreting, simultaneous interpreting, escort interpreting and sight translation, interpreters have been critical in various different situations that range from translating speeches given by a president to showing foreign guests around the interpreter’s home country. The act of interpretation is likened to building a bridge, connecting two sides that were originally isolated due to language barrier. Through this bridge, people on the two sides will be able to understand each other, which forms the basis for further discussion and communication. In order to successfully facilitate understanding between the two participating parties, fluency in interpretation is very important as disfluency would impair the listener’s comprehension of the content. And pausing is one of the factors that influence the fluency of interpreting output. From the very beginning of interpretation training, trainee interpreters are instructed to control to the number and length of pauses in their interpreted output (楊承淑, 2000). From the author’s experience as an interpreting student, trainees are told to avoid uttering fillers like um and ah, which fall in the category of “filled pause.” In performing sight translation tasks, interpreters are even advised to 1.

(11) read and comprehend the source text continuously as they interpret so as not to leave awkward long pauses in the middle of the interpretation (Weber, 1990). However, there seems to lack a systematic way of instructing how pauses in interpretation output should be controlled or avoided. During the author’s years as an interpreting student, trainee interpreters were sometimes instructed to avoid or shorten pauses, but sometimes also advised to add or extend pauses in their interpretations. These comments are usually made on a case-by-case basis, but a general rule for pausing in interpreting, such as where should pauses be avoided / inserted and how long the pause should be, does not seem to exist. Exactly how should pauses be managed in interpretation output? To find the answer for this question, another question needs to be answered first: what is the interpreter engaged in cognitively during pauses in interpreting? Or in broader terms, what is a person’s cognitive process during pause onset in speaking? Pause, the silent gap between words in the flow of speech, has existed alongside speech since the very beginning of human discourse. However, the significance of pause in discourse analyses was not acknowledged until much later. While the academia focused on researching the hearable tangible human speech, pauses were simply treated as “meaningless or as hindrances to good communication” (Fox Tree, 2002). This was perhaps partly due to the lack of technology to accurately select and calculate pauses before the 1950s (Rochester, 1973). In the early days of pause studies, pauses were discerned from the rest of the text by human ear, which was not exactly accurate. Thus it was much easier to focus on researching the tangible oral output data instead. As recording technology developed, scholars were finally able to record 2.

(12) actual speeches for analysis. With the help of automatic recording devices, they could also discern pauses as short as 1ms that were indiscernible to the human ears (Boomer & Dittman, 1962). As researches on pauses gain focus in the 1950s, scholars began to acknowledge that pauses do present specific meanings in human speech, and their functions can be exploited to indicate the discourse planning process. Studies on pauses in spontaneous speech have mostly been global, quantitative analyses. Empirical data has been able to inform scholars where pauses are most likely to occur in spontaneous speech, and what incidences and conditions are likely to increase the onset of pauses. Researches on pauses in interpretation output also began alongside studies of pauses in spontaneous speech. In fact, early pause researchers such as Goldman-Eisler conducted studies both on pauses in speech and interpretation. The conditions that were found to incur pauses in speech also seem to increase the possibility of pause occurrence in interpreting. Aside from direct researches on pauses, pause is also used as a sub-parameter of fluency in interpretation quality analyses. Though abundant empirical results from pause studies have been accumulated, there have been few qualitative studies that focus on investigating the speaker’s cognitive reactions right at the moment of specific pauses in the flow of speech. This is likely because analyzing only the pause itself and surrounding oral output, whether in spontaneous speech or interpretation, provides limited information that infers the speaker / interpreter’s cognitive process at the moment of pause onset. Another set of data, preferably one that has been used to indicate cognitive behavior, needs to be incorporated for triangulation. In recent years, psycholinguistic studies have yield results that established links between neurological activities and 3.

(13) different human cognitive processes. However, utilizing cognitive psychology tools in pause studies can be difficult. Most of these tools, such as EEG or MEG, collect electoral activities or magnetic fields created by the brain. Thus the prerequisite for experiments using these tools is usually total silence of the participant, as sound waves will interfere with the data collection. These devices have been used in single-word utterance / interpretation experiments, but for the analyses of pause, the speaker / interpreter needs to be able to speek freely for a certain period of time for natural pause data to be collected. So far, fMRI, which detects blood flow changes in the brain, has been used in spontaneous speech pause studies (Kircher, Brammer, Levelt, Bartels, & McGuire, 2004), as speaking does not interfere with the data collection process. Another viable device that can be used is the eye tracker, which records the eye movement data of the participant, since sound waves also do not jeopardize the recording process. However, in order to utilize the eye tracker in pause research, there must be a form of visual material relevant to the oral output for the participant to look at during the experiment, otherwise eye movement data could not be obtained and compared with pause data. This prerequisite is difficult to fulfill for spontaneous speech task, which usually involves only the speaker talking, and most interpretation tasks, which concerns listening and speaking, but not reading. Fortunately, a form of interpretation does involve reading: sight translation. Sight translation is performed when the interpreter reads a written text in one language, then orally interprets the written text into another language. Though the source of input is different from simultaneous and consecutive interpretation, sight translation nonetheless shares similar general interpretation process and demand on efforts with other forms of 4.

(14) interpretation. Therefore, a close study of pause occurrence in sight translation output, triangulated with the interpreter’s eye movement data during the course of interpretation, should be able to bring certain insights into. the. interpreter’s. ongoing. cognitive. process. during. pauses. in. interpretation. The results of this study would enable a systematic way of instructing pausing patterns in output to interpreting students based on the cognitive functions of pauses. The findings may also bring the possibility of utilizing pauses and their cognitive functions to analyze the interpreter’s cognitive processes during different stages of interpretation.. 1.2 Research questions This research proposes to incorporate eye movement data in the analyses of pause occurrence in sight translation output. The moment-to-moment nature of the eye tracker will be able to indicate the interpreter’s cognitive state right at the moment of pause onset. The purpose of this research is to establish an empirical base for the explanation of pause occurrence in interpretation. The primary research questions are as follows: (1) To examine the interpreter’s eye movements during pause onset in sight translation. Examined eye movement parameters include the eye’s position in reading passes, fixation location and saccade direction. (2) To infer the cognitive process during pauses in sight translation signified by eye movement data. The remainder of this thesis is organized into four sections. Chapter 2 reviews previous studies on sight translation, pauses in spontaneous speech / interpretation and eye tracking. Chapter 3 describes the oral pause data 5.

(15) collection process, and establishes preliminary pause analyses. Chapter 4 describes the eye movement data collection process, and incorporates eye movement data into the final pause analyses. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses exceptions in eye movement data, and concludes with how the findings can be applied to interpretation studies and training, and offers suggestions for future research.. 6.

(16) Chapter 2 Literature Review 2.1 Interpretation and sight translation The act of interpretation can be performed through several different modes, with consecutive interpretation (CI), simultaneous interpretation (SI) and sight translation (ST) being the most common few. The input of CI and SI are both oral, as interpreter renders the source text spoken by the speaker orally into the target language. In CI, the speaker and interpreter tend to appear before the audience alongside each other, and the two take turns to speak. The interpreter would take notes while the speaker speaks for a certain period of time, usually a few minutes, then begin interpreting once the speaker pauses, sometimes with the help of the note he has taken. In SI, the interpreter would work in the booth, listening to the speaker’s source text through a headphone and producing his interpretation for the audiences to hear through a microphone. The speaker would speak continuously under this situation, thus the interpreter would need to listen and comprehend the source text, reformulate the message and produce the interpretation in the target language at the same time throughout the entire speech. Sight translation’s major difference with CI and SI is that the source input is visual text instead of oral speech. In normal ST task, the interpreter is given a piece of written text, then either given time to skim through the entire text first or directly begin interpreting orally. In the professional setting, most interpretation is given through the CI and SI mode. ST is most commonly used alongside SI in scientific and technical meetings in the form of SI with 7.

(17) text (Lambert, 2004). As speakers at these conferences tend to read directly from their published reports or prepared speech text, the interpreter is given the written text of the speech beforehand. Later when the interpreter is performing SI, he can rely not only on the speaker’s oral input, but also refer to the text at hand to make up for missed information. SI with text is slightly different from normal ST task since the interpreter could not simply interpret from the visual text but need to pay attention to the speaker’s output constantly, in case the interpreter is going too fast, or the speaker deviates from the originally written text.. 2.1.1 Characteristics and difficulties of sight translation ST is commonly believed to be easier and less demanding than translation, which it shares the same visual input, and interpretation, which it shares the same oral output (Sampaio, 2007). However, scholars of interpretation have argued that ST is not easier but simply different from CI and SI, requiring different interpreting strategies and cognitive efforts. The complexity and techniques of ST should not be deemed less demanding than other modes of interpretation (Agrifoglio, 2004; Shreve, Lacruz, & Angelone, 2010). The most distinct feature of ST is the visual input. As interpreter translates from a piece of written text, the source text is always available to the interpreter throughout the whole task. This luxury is not present in SI and CI, in which the oral input is transient and only appears once, thereby unable to be referred to or reviewed during the production phase. SI interpreter must rely on his memory and CI interpreter on his note to produce the interpretation in the target language, but interpreter performing ST can move forward and backward in the source text as he wishes for information he 8.

(18) needs for production. ST production is also not paced by the speaker, as there is no speaker at all. On the other hand, interpreter performing SI cannot set the pace of his interpretation, since the interpreted output must match the pacing of the speaker to keep the audiences on track, and avoid storing too much information in the interpreter’s working memory that increases the difficulty of the task. Even CI interpreter, who can pace his production freely, is under the speaker’s constrain. The interpreter is usually required to begin interpreting as soon as the speaker stops, so the time available for comprehension and reformulation is paced by the speaker, not the interpreter (Agrifoglio, 2004; Shreve et al., 2010). However, ST interpreter also faces certain difficulties that are unique to the nature of ST. First, the different linguistic and syntactic structure between written text and oral speech means that ST interpreter needs to comprehend an input text that is more formal and contains complex and complicated structures such as compound clauses. Thus, comprehending the source text in ST would cost the interpreter more effort than CI and SI (Agrifoglio, 2004; Shreve et al., 2010). Moreover, interpreter of ST is expected to render the written text into smooth output that sounds like genuine oral speech (Weber, 1990). Therefore, the interpreter must endeavor to use simpler words and transform the written text into sentences more fitting for oral speech, which all add pressure to the interpreting process (楊承淑, 2000). In fact, the constant existence of the source text in ST may hinder the production of natural, fluent interpretation. When listening, the speech is transient and cannot be reviewed again, so listeners tend to grasp the gist and general meaning of the content; when reading, the words are forever written 9.

(19) in black on white paper, therefore readers would instead focus on remembering the actual words used in the text. Recalling every single word instead of the meaning of the text may be detrimental to ST interpreter, as he would need to allocate extra effort to achieve independence from the source text. Thus the constant presence of the source text may actually become a significant interference in the interpreting process, affecting the grammatical and syntactic structure of the target production (Agrifoglio, 2004; Shreve et al., 2010). In her experiment, Agrifoglio (2004) found that when comparing the output of ST, SI and CI, ST has significantly less meaning errors, but much more expression problems than the other modes of interpretation. Sight translation, just like all forms of interpretation, is a complicated task that is highly cognitive-demanding. In Gile’s effort model (1995), he divided the act of interpretation into several different “efforts” that are needed to produce adequate interpretation. As the total amount of effort available for use is fixed, the interpreter must constantly allocate his effort to different tasks at hand in order to maintain a fluent and correct interpretation. Gile described the efforts of ST as:. ST = R (reading and analysis) + P (production). The “reading effort” replaced the “listening effort” listed under SI and CI. The “memory effort” was excluded, as Gile believed the constant presence of the source text requires little use of memory in performing ST. The “coordination effort” present in SI and CI was also left out. Agrifoglio (2004) argued that both the memory and coordination effort may still be present in ST. In order to ensure smooth delivery, interpreter of 10.

(20) ST must start reformulating and producing while reading. Therefore, even though the source text in ST can always be reviewed during production, the interpreter still needs to store some of the information already read in memory until it can be produced in the target output. Since the “reading and analysis” and “production” efforts overlap with each other, a coordination effort is also required to smoothly manage the efforts. Agrifoglio proposed a modification to Gile’s ST effort model:. ST = R + P + m (slight use of memory) + C (coordination). As ST is usually not performed alone in the professional interpreting market, ST nowadays serves a more pedagogical purpose, being taught at the early stage of interpretation training to facilitate the interpreter’s performance of CI and SI (Weber, 1990). Training in ST can equip interpreter with faster reading of written text, rapid conversion of information from the source language into the target language, the skill to avoid word-to-word translation and public speaking techniques. Mastering these skills can greatly improve the interpreter’s performance in all modes of interpretation, as he will be able to quickly familiarize himself with the conference materials, and his processing of the source text can also be quickened. In short, sight translation is a challenging task that demands no less cognitive effort than other interpretation modes. A close examination of ST’s process can reveal important clues about the complex process of interpretation. And thanks to the use of visual text as input, eye tracker can be employed in ST studies to collect eye movement data. These data can be analyzed alongside ST oral production for triangulation, and bring researchers 11.

(21) one step closer to uncovering what goes on inside the interpreter’s brain when they translate.. 2.1.2 The interpretation process The act of interpretation consists of a series of complex processes that can be roughly separated into the comprehension, reformulation and production phases (Macizo & Bajo, 2004; Seleskovitch, 1976). The precise relation between each phase and their coordination has been the interest for research. Macizo and Bajo (2004) investigated the relationship between the comprehension and reformulation phases, and suggested two possible perspectives: vertical and horizontal. The vertical perspective is based on Seleskovitch’s “deverbalization theory” (1976). The theory proposes that during interpretation, comprehension and reformulation are performed sequentially. The interpreter would first process the incoming source text, absorb the meaning and at the same time discard the linguistic form of the source language. After full comprehension of the source text, the interpreter would then reconstruct the obtained information into the interpretation output that is in accordance with the rules of the target language grammar. As access to the target language only begins after comprehension of the source language is completed, there is no link between the source and target language at the lexical and syntactic level. If ST follows the vertical perspective, then reading for translation should be very similar to normal reading, as the act of translation is not yet involved at this stage. The horizontal perspective instead suggests that the processes of comprehension and reformulation overlap with each other. While the interpreter is still listening/reading the source text, partial code-switching is 12.

(22) already being done alongside comprehension. Under the circumstances, matches between the source and target languages can be done on the lexical and syntactic level, since both languages are accessed at the same time. If ST follows the horizontal perspective, reading for translation would impose more pressure on the interpreter than normal reading because of the added effort for code-switching. While Macizo and Bajo’s experiment supported the horizontal perspective, issues with experiment design meant that the study could not be taken as a natural, moment-to-moment observation of the interpreting process. Huang (2011) examined the vertical vs. horizontal perspective in her ST experiment using eye tracker. Her findings supported the vertical perspective in ST. In first-pass indices such as first fixation duration, gaze duration and fixation probability, similar results were found for silent reading and ST tasks, suggesting no extra effort is needed for ST during first pass reading as the interpreter is only comprehending the source text. Indices for after first-pass activities, like rereading time and total viewing time, were significantly higher for ST than silent reading, showing that more efforts are needed for reformulation and production in ST after the initial phase of comprehension. Due to confounding results from interpreting studies and the lack of clear definition, though vertical and horizontal perspectives are important aspects of interpretation studies and could possibly pertain to the current study, they will not be discussed in the following pause analysis. The overlapping of the comprehension and production phase can be observed not only in SI, where the interpreter needs to simultaneously interpret and listen to the non-stop source text produced by the speaker, but also in ST. Scholars have noted that in order to give a smooth production that 13.

(23) sounds like genuine communication and avoid hesitation and uncomfortable pauses in ST, the interpreter must continue comprehending the upcoming source text while he is still producing the target text (Sampaio, 2007; Weber, 1990). In other words, the interpreter needs to constantly read ahead, meaning his eyes always move ahead of what he is enunciating. Huang’s experiment (2011) also provided objective evidence for read-ahead in ST. The interpreter was deemed “reading ahead” when his eye fixated on Sentence N+1 for the first time while still orally producing contents in Sentence N. The findings show that the overall read-ahead probability for ST was 72.80%. This means that comprehension in ST is a continuous effort and does overlap with production.. 2.2 Pauses Physically and linguistically speaking, all pauses in spoken languages can be. separated. into. intra-segmental. pause. and. inter-lexical. pause.. Intra-segmental pause refers to brief silence within a word, and is usually caused by natural occlusion of the vocal tract during speech. Inter-lexical pause appear between two words, and can occur for various reasons. This kind of pause can be further separated into silent pause and filled pause according to psycholinguistic classification. While silent pause is a perceived silent segment in speech, filled pause is a voiced segment, which can appear in the forms of “drawls, repetitions of utterances, words, syllables, sounds and false starts” (Zellner, 1994). For example, ums and uhs are some commonly seen filled pauses in spoken English. It has been suggested that silent pauses and filled pauses pose different functions in speech. Fox Tree (2002) inferred from her experiment that the occurrence of a filled pause signifies the speaker has 14.

(24) advance knowledge of an on-coming silent period due to production difficulties. Therefore, filled pause would indicate a more severe production problem than silent pause. Researches. on. pause. function. can. be. approached. from. the. psycholinguistic front or the rhetoric and public speaking side. The psycholinguistic approach deems all forms of disfluencies, including pause, as cognitive items, and the occurrence of these items in speech indicates production problems encountered. Investigating disfluencies would thus provide researchers with clues about the speech production process (Shriberg, 1999). The rhetoric and public speaking approach instead focuses on the communicative functions of pause. The existence of pause in speech is vital as they can be used skillfully by the speaker to emphasize new or important information and organize the structure of discourse (Cecot, 2001). Speech hesitation can play a huge part in social perception, affecting the listener’s perception. of. the. speaker’s. competence,. social. attractiveness. and. trustworthiness (Greene, 1984). Cecot (2001) combined previous categorizations of pauses and proposed a comprehensive categorization that covers both psycholinguistic and rhetoric approach of pauses. All forms of disruption in the flow of the speech, referred to as “non-fluencies,” were separated into silent pauses and disfluencies. Disfluencies included filled pauses and utterance interruptions like repetition and restructuring. Silent pauses were further divided into communicative pauses and non-communicative pauses. Communicative pause covered the rhetoric approach, including segmentation pauses that facilitate the listener’s understanding of discourse syntactic structure, and rhetorical pauses that emphasize the word they precede. Non-communicative pauses basically 15.

(25) referred to hesitation pause that is the focus of the psycholinguistic approach researches. Due to the scope of this research, only silent pauses in output will be selected and analyzed.. Table 1-1. Categorization of pauses. Inter-lexical pause Silent pause Communicative pause . Segmentation pause. . Rhetorical pause. Filled pause. Non-communicative pause Hesitation pause. Drawls Repetitions False start Restructuring Fillers. 2.2.1 Juncture pause and hesitation pause Lounsbury (1954) was the first to hint there are two different silent pauses, named juncture pause and hesitation pause, in spontaneous speech. He defined juncture pause as pauses that appear at boundaries of major syntactic units, or syntactic junctures. These pauses can be fleetingly brief (shorter than 100ms), or exaggeratingly long for emphasis and stylistic effect. The purpose of producing juncture pauses is to help the listeners structure the sentences in the speech. Hesitation pause tends to appear not at standard linguistic boundaries, but midsentence between two words of low transitional probability. These pauses are usually longer than juncture pauses, and signify that the speaker is thinking on one’s feet, or groping for the right expression. To the listener’s ear, hesitation pauses would sound like an annoyance. According to Lounsbury’s definition, juncture pause corresponds to units of decoding, meaning its appearance is solely to facilitate the listeners in 16.

(26) deciphering the speech. Hesitation pause corresponds to units of encoding, as it occurs due to difficulties encountered during the speaker’s speech encoding process. Boomer and Dittman (1962) supported Lounsbury’s categorization of pause, and reinforced that there are functional differences between juncture pause and hesitation pause. For their experiment, they defined pauses that occur after a terminal juncture as juncture pause, and the rest as hesitation pause. In accordance with Lounsbury’s claim, they claimed that while hesitation pause can occur for various reasons, ranging from transitional probabilities between words to familiarity with the material, juncture pauses are deliberately inserted in the speech to reinforce the preceding juncture, and aid the listener in grasping the syntactic structure of the speech. Their experiment examined the perception threshold for both groups of pauses, and found that juncture pauses were harder to detect by the listeners. While listeners discerned most hesitation pauses at durations above 200ms and almost perfectly detect all at 500ms, juncture pauses couldn’t be properly discerned until they were longer than 500ms. Early researches had presented juncture and hesitation pauses as two mutually exclusive elements in function, with hesitation pause indicating increase in processing effort and juncture pause signaling syntactic structure for the listeners. But this notion has been debatable. Researchers have argued that juncture pause does not only facilitate the listener in understanding, but also serve a speaker function in granting more time for processing (Rochester, 1973) Goldman-Eisler found through her experiment that pauses at the same grammatical juncture have shorter duration in silent reading than in spontaneous speech, which indicates there may be ongoing planning for 17.

(27) production during longer pauses at junctures in speech (1958). A major drawback of Loundbury, Boomer and Dittman’s researches is the lack of experiment and empirical data to support their assumptions on the cognitive functions of juncture and hesitation pause. This significantly reduces the credibility of their claimed assumptions (e.g. the questionable claim that juncture pause only serves the listener). Nonetheless, these studies raised an interesting notion worth exploring: pauses at different locations in the flow of speech could signal different cognitive functions and meanings. To empirically verify this claim, researches that examine parameters indicating the speaker’s cognitive activities at the moment of juncture and hesitation pauses onset need to be conducted. In order to do so, two questions need to be answered: where do these pauses occur? And how do they occur?. 2.2.2 Distribution of pause in spontaneous speech Researchers deeming to answer the first question were interested in the distribution of pauses within spoken texts, or the location of pause. The methodology most of these studies adopted was for the researcher to select a certain grammatical unit as the basic production unit, then examine the number of pause that occur within and between the selected production unit. The rationale behind such methodology was that if pauses reflect the process of preparing subsequent speech, they should be predominately located at the boundaries of production units (Schilperoord, 2002). Smaller grammatical units like phrases consisting of several words, called “syntactic frames,” were adopted and analyzed first to no concluding results (Maclay & Osgood, 1959). The experimenters found that there were as many pauses between these syntactic frames as within the frames, suggesting phrase 18.

(28) was probably not the ideal production unit for pause research. Larger grammatical units like clauses were next adopted. In Boomer’s study (1965), he selected the phonemic clause, a segment containing one primary stress and ends in a terminal juncture, as the basic production unit for his research on pause position. The experiment material was 16 spontaneous English speeches given by adults, and all pauses exceeding 200ms were calculated. However, juncture pauses (pause between phonemic clauses and not preceded by incomplete words) were excluded, as Boomer believed they only contain rhetoric function and are cognitively insignificant. The result proposed that most silent pauses appear after the first word of the phonemic clause instead of between two clauses. Boomer’s finding was immediately challenged to be skewed due to the exclusion of juncture pauses, as research has shown that pauses at the same grammatical juncture are shorter in reading than in spontaneous speech, indicating there can be ongoing planning for production during pauses at junctures in speech (Goldman-Eisler, 1958). If all the juncture pauses were added back for calculation, then silent pauses in spontaneous English speech mostly occur at phonemic clause boundaries (Barik, 1968). The same results were found in spontaneous output of children. In 48 children’s rendering of a story, 66% of the pauses occurred at phonemic clause-initial positions, 24% at phrase boundaries, and only 10% appeared at word boundaries (Hawkins, 1971). In short, the claim that the majority of pauses tend to occur at syntactic clause boundaries was supported with solid empirical data. The location also happens to correspond to syntactic juncture, the location of juncture pause claimed by Lounsbury. Since the rationale for this series of researches was 19.

(29) that pauses reflect the process of preparing subsequent speech, they indicate that juncture pause does signify not just efforts to serve the listeners, but also processing of the upcoming sentence or segment in speech. However, though these studies implied the function of juncture pauses, the cognitive meaning of the other pauses that occurred within production units (presumably hesitation pause) was not discussed. Though yielding concrete data for the location of pauses in spontaneous speech, these studies did not take the extra step to empirically research what could have caused these pauses, presumably because the cause of pauses was not the experimenters’ primary focus. Thus the speaker’s cognitive activities at the moment of juncture and hesitation pause onset remained undetermined. For analyses on the cognitive functions of pauses, a different set of pause studies need to be referred to.. 2.2.3 Psycholinguistic functions of pause in spontaneous speech Another group of pause scholars were interested in the cognitive activities signified by pauses. In these studies, global indices like total pause duration, mean pause time and pause frequency in the entire output of the speaker were examined. The study of pause in language production fits into the psychological stimulus-response paradigm; that is, the length of the pause should signify the cognitive energy needed to produce a response (Schilperoord, 2002). Researches have found correlation between pauses and increased cognitive effort. Such efforts may derived from an array of different causes, including uncertainty in lexical choice, planning for production and searching for the adequate words or grammatical expressions (Bortfeld, Leon, Bloom, Schober, & Brennan, 2001; Greene, 1984; Merlo & Mansur, 2004; 20.

(30) Schachter, Christenfeld, Ravina, & Bilous, 1991; Schnadt & Corley, 2006; Schonpflug, 2008; Yang, 2007). These studies manipulated the experimental condition to examine what variants may increase the speaker’s cognitive effort, thus triggering more and longer pauses. Some experiment conditions were designed to affect the speaker’s understanding and comprehension of the task material. When participants were asked to define abstract nouns rather than concrete ones, the individual duration and frequency of pause in the participant’s output increased (Rochester, 1973). In an experiment where participants described two sets of familiar objects (photographs of children) and unfamiliar objects (tangrams), the disfluency rate was higher when the participants described tangram (6.37 units / 100 words) than photographs of children (5.55 units / 100 words) (Bortfeld et al., 2001). Another experiment had subjects participating in the Network Task, describing the route a marker took from pictures of object to object. When visual accessibility of the pictures was manipulated, making some of the pictures blurry to the eye, it was noted that longer pauses were more likely to occur before the participant described the blurred pictures, indicating impeding conceptual access increases the overall rate of disfluency (Schnadt & Corley, 2006). Other experiment conditions were designed to manipulate the difficulty of the speaker’s production process. When participants were asked to make a sentence using difficult topic words, individual pauses became longer and were more likely to occur (Rochester, 1973). Goldman-Eisler (1968) discovered that the ratio of silent pauses in speech was larger and the mean pause duration longer when the participants interpreted the meaning of cartoons instead of describing them, as the act of interpreting meaning 21.

(31) requires extra cognitive processing effort than simply describing what the eyes saw. Giving a verbatim recall of a story was found to be more cognitively demanding than a gist recall, since verbatim recall requires the participant to access both the linguistic form and the meaning of the story stored in his memory. Results showed that silent pause duration was longer in verbatim recall compared to gist recall (Schonpflug, 2008). This string of studies on the psycholinguistic functions of pauses in spontaneous speech have produced several causes that are likely to increase the cognitive demand of the speaker, forcing him to stop in the middle of the speech. However, most of the studies analyzed only global indices of pauses, i.e. pause frequency, total pause duration or mean pause duration, which do not distinguish between pauses at different locations in the speech. Therefore, the speaker’s cognitive reaction at the moment of juncture and hesitation pause onset was yet to be directly examined.. To conclude, past studies on pauses in spontaneous speech, whether with focuses on the location of pause in speech or the possible causes for pausing, have yielded rich results through experiments. However, the location of pauses and their possible triggers and functions need to be analyzed together to truly understand the ongoing cognitive process behind each pause in the speech. Direct analysis of cognitive indicators at the moment of pause onset, a method rarely adopted in current pause studies, is necessary,. Currently, pause research has mostly replied on analyzing the sole available data: the verbal output of the speaker. However, to directly examine the speaker’s cognitive state during pauses through oral production data isn’t easy, as available cognitive indicators are fairly restricted. Experimenters 22.

(32) could only examine the length of the pause, which indicates the amount of cognitive demand, and the produced words / phrases before and after the pause, which may suggest the cause of the pause. In fact, without triangulation with a second set of data that can be used as cognitive process indicators, it will be hard to verify Lounsbury, Boomer and Dittman’s assumptions. In recent years, the employment of cognitive psychology tools in studies on human cognitive behavior has become more popular. The set of data collected by these tools could be used to triangulate the oral production data in pause studies. Though the employment of such cognitive psychology tools in pause studies is still rare, one research did used fMRI in the examination of pauses between and within grammatical clause, triangulating pause data with blood-oxygen-level dependence (BOLD) response of the brain (Kircher et al., 2004). Six subjects participated in the experiment, describing seven Roschach ink blot for three minutes each while their BOLD response was recorded by fMRI. Experiment results showed that pauses within grammatical clause coincide with the activation of the left superior temporal region. This region has been proven to be related to lexical retrieval, semantic network, error detection and verbal self-monitoring. On the other hand, pauses at grammatical clause boundaries are associated with activation of the right inferior gyrus. This region is said to be related to memory retrieval, search process and conceptual organization, indicating the speaker is thinking about what to say next. This experiment serves as the testament to how triangulation with cognitive psychology data can provide more precise insights into the speaker’s cognitive process at the moment of pause onset. Therefore, this research will continue with the trend of employing psychology tools in the study of pauses. This would be the first research to 23.

(33) utilize eye tracker in the study of the interpreter’s moment-to-moment cognitive reaction during pausing in sight translation. Triangulation of eye movement data with oral output should provide a clearer view of the interpreter’s ongoing cognitive activities during pauses in sight translation output.. 2.2.4 Pauses in interpretation output Researches on pauses in interpreting output have mostly focused on the functions and meanings of pause. Similar to spontaneous speech, pauses in interpretation are thought to be closely linked to cognitive efforts needed in the translation process. Due to the complexity of interpreting process, increase in interpretation hesitancy can likely be attributed to various reasons, ranging from difficulties of the task, directionality of interpretation, to the experience of the interpreter. Manipulation of the source text has been commonly adopted in interpretation studies to control task difficulties and examine its effect on production fluency. Extra background noises were added to the source speech in SI task, adding stress to the interpreters as it would be harder to listen and comprehend the content for interpretation. As a result, pauses in the output were longer compared with those from output performed under normal circumstances (Piccaluga, Nespoulous, & Harmegnies, 2005). Increasing density of information delivered in the source speech within a certain timeframe may also be cognitively demanding, as interpreters need to comprehend, reformulate and produce densely packed information within a short period of time. Fastening of the source speech was shown to increase the number of pauses in interpretation output (Piccaluga et al., 2005). Increase in 24.

(34) the speaker’s speech proportion, meaning the ratio of speaking time to the total time of SI, also increase the density of information in the source text, and results in more pauses and errors in the interpreted output (Lee, 1999). Directionality is another factor affecting cognitive efforts unique to interpretation tasks. It is commonly believed that since interpreters have less control over their B language, their first foreign language, they would need to allocate more effort to the reformulation and production stages of interpretation when translating into their B language, thus making the task more difficult than translating into their A language (mother tongue), where most of the effort would be allocated to comprehending the source text. Research found that mean duration of filled pauses and total pauses were longer when interpreters translated from their A language into their B language (Mead, 2000). Apart from studies directly focusing on pause and disfluencies in interpretation output, pause has also been used as a sub-parameter of determining interpretation fluency and quality. Disfluency indices such as pause, fillers and repetition are used as quantitative measurements to analyze the quality of delivery in interpretation (Nation, 1989; Riggenbach, 1991; 楊承 淑, 2000). The existence of abundant or frequent pauses is considered a negative element of fluency, as pauses infer difficulties encountered in performing the complex task of interpreting. Using disfluency parameters to measure interpretation quality is well justified as researches have shown that hesitation in interpretation output affect the listener’s perception of quality. Macias (2006) tested the theory in her experiment, where listeners were asked to rate the fluency of several videos with different levels of disfluencies. The control video was a German 25.

(35) speech and its Spanish simultaneous interpretation given by a professional interpreter. Test Video 1 and 2 each were inserted with an extra 13 and 20 silent pauses, and the silent pauses were categorized into three groups: 0.25 to 2 seconds, 2 to 4 seconds, and 4 to 6 second. Three groups of participants listened to one of the three videos each, then rated quality-related features of the interpretation in a questionnaire. The findings showed that when compared with the control video, videos with longer total pause duration and more 2 to 4 seconds pauses were given lower ratings for their fluency, indicating that pause is certainly considered a negative element of interpretation output by listeners. Studies on pauses in interpretation employ similar global pause indices and methodologies with researches on psycholinguistic functions of pauses in spontaneous speech, which means they also share similar flaws. Distribution of pause is seldom discussed in interpreting studies, which may affect results of interpretation quality obtained through the calculation of production disfluencies. For instance, researchers have acknowledged that pauses in interpreting may also hold rhetorical and communicative values, and can be used by the interpreters tactically (Mead, 2000; Tissi, 2000). These pauses, which fit the description of juncture pause, may improve the listener’s comprehension, and in fact enhance the quality of the interpreting production. However, when used as sub-parameter of interpretation fluency, such pauses are not differentiated from those that truly indicate production difficulties. Thus the claim that frequent pausing in interpreting output directly indicates negative quality may not hold true without further probing and qualitative research. 26.

(36) To sum up, various pause studies have defined the location and functions of juncture pause and hesitation pause. Juncture pause tends to appear at syntactic clause boundaries in the speaker’s output. The speaker inserts juncture pause to emphasize the end of a syntactic unit and clarify the structure for the listeners. Juncture pauses also provide the speaker ample time to formulate the upcoming segment. Hesitation pause tends to appear elsewhere in the sentences. The occurrence of hesitation pause signifies the speaker is thinking on one’s feet and encountering difficulties in production. Review of pause studies in spontaneous speech and interpretation reveals that examination of the speaker / interpreter’s immediate cognitive response at the moment of pause onset has yet to be explored; the location of pauses and their psycholinguistic functions are still in need of being analyzed together under empirical experiment. Furthermore, studies in both areas so far have only examined the pauses and their surrounding oral output contents for analyses. Therefore, incorporating another set of data for triangulation would be a good place to start on the journey towards unveiling the speaker / interpreter’s cognitive processes right at the moment of juncture and hesitation pauses. This research proposes to employ the eye tracker, a cognitive psychology tool, in the analyses of pause phenomena during sight translation. Eye tracking data recorded during the onset of pauses could provide indications of cognitive activities in addition to the information obtained from the oral output of interpretation. Such triangulation of data can hopefully produce the empirical data to support the respective functions of juncture and hesitation pauses in interpretation. 27.

(37) 2.3 Eye movement In recent years, the eye tracker has been commonly used in analyses of cognitive processing, particularly in reading comprehension. Just and Carpenter (1980) raised the immediacy assumption and eye-mind hypothesis as the foundation for utilizing eye movement in the studies of reading comprehension. The immediacy assumption assumes that processing of a target word begins as soon as the word is fixated, so there is no delay between the onset of fixation and information processing. As for the eye-mind hypothesis, it proposes that as long as the eye continues to fixate on a word, the word is being processed. Not only word recognition but all levels of comprehension, including assigning the meaning of the word and determining its status in the sentence, are conducted during this period of processing. The gaze duration on the word coincides with the process time needed, meaning the information processing time begins with the eye’s fixation on the word, and continues until all levels of analyses are complete. The more cognitively demanding the word is, the longer the fixation duration would be. Subsequent researches have refuted such close synchronization between cognitive processing and fixation.. Studies have shown that the semantic. relationship between the fixated target word and the following word can affect the duration of the fixation, and that words to the left of the fixated target are recognized by the reader, though it was not fixated. The findings suggest that it is possible to gain useful linguistic information from parafoveal viewing of the word prior or after the fixated target word (Inhoff & Radach, 1998). The spillover effect may also complicates the direct connection of processing demand and fixation, as fixation duration may be affected by the difficulties of previous encountered words (Radach & Kennedy, 2004). However, Rayner 28.

(38) (2009) contended that for complicated task such as reading complete paragraphs, the relationship between fixation and local processing remain strong, rendering eye movement data suitable for exploratory examination of cognitive processing. The eye-mind hypothesis is crucial for the current research as it forms the basis of triangulating fixation data with oral pause data. Once fixations during pauses in output are identified, the eye-mind hypothesis can then support that whatever word / phrase was fixated was also processed by the interpreter at the same time. The most commonly examined eye movement parameters are fixation and saccade. Fixation is the period that the eye remains relevantly still on a specific point. In contrast, saccade refers to rapid moving of the eye in a coordinated manner from one fixation point to the next, which happens three to four times per second (Radach & Kennedy, 2004; Richardson, Dale, & Spivey, 2007). Due to human anatomy, even though the eye covers a visual field of 200 degrees, acuity of sight is only good in the fovea, which covers only 2 degrees, and decreases considerably when moved to the parafoveal and peripheral region of the eye (Rayner, 2009; Richardson et al., 2007). In order to see things clearly, people need to continuously move their eyes to fixate the fovea on places they want to focus on, which explains the need for eye movement in conducting everyday activities, including reading. As the speed of eye movement is as fast as 500 degrees per second, the sensitivity of the eye is at a near blindness level during saccades, so the target is only clearly visible to the human eye for processing during the relevantly stable periods of fixation (Richardson et al., 2007). A unique characteristic of eye movement data and eye tracking method is its moment-to-moment record. Since the eye is constantly on rapid move, 29.

(39) eye-tracking data would represent a semi-continuous record of the reading process. With the eye tracker, researchers can examine data captured during the course of cognitive processing, instead of focusing only on output data after the cognitive process is completed (Duchowski, 2003; Richardson et al., 2007). This is important especially for interpretation researches, which is mostly interested in the exact ongoing cognitive processing during the complicated stages of interpretation. In reading and interpreting researches utilizing the eye tracker, certain areas in the written text are frequently designated as the region of interest (ROI). A ROI can be as small as a word or as big as an entire paragraph in reading tasks, or a symbol or a picture in tasks on materials other than words. ROI are usually areas closely related to the research questions of the study, and analysis of eye fixation on ROI or saccade trajectory around it can bring insights that will facilitate the answering of such questions. In Chinese reading tasks, the perception span of one fixation covers one Chinese character to the left and three Chinese characters to the right of the fixation. Therefore, when the reader / interpreter fixates on the ROI in the source text, the surrounding four characters would be deemed as viewed (and probably processed) even though they were not directly fixated (蔡介立、顏妙璇、汪勁安, 2005).. 2.3.1 Eye movement and reading comprehension When reading a text, the eye generally moves along the line of words on the page in the direction that the language is written. For example, with an English text the eye would mostly be moving from left to right. However, approximately 10-15% of saccades are regressions, meaning saccades that move backward. Regression is thought to be related to difficulties encountered 30.

(40) in word and sentence processing. Average fixation duration in English or other alphabetic language is between 225 and 250ms, and the average saccade length between fixations is two degrees of visual angle, or 7 to 9 letter spaces. As for Chinese reading, the average saccade length is only 2 to 3 characters, as linguistic information is packed more densely in Chinese than English, so it is harder for the eye to skip characters without compromising comprehension (Rayner, 2009; Richardson et al., 2007). Researchers of reading comprehension are interested in two elements of eye movements: when does the eye move, and where does it move. Two sets of indices can be used to examine and explain these two aspects of eye movement. The “when,” or temporal aspect of eye movement, is mostly examined through the length of durations. Temporal parameters of eye movements include: 1.. First fixation duration (FFD): the length of the first fixation a target receives on the first pass.. 2.. Single fixation duration (SFD): the length of the only fixation a target receives on the first pass.. 3.. Gaze duration (GD): the combined length of all the fixations on a target during the first pass.. 4.. Re-reading time (RRT): the combined length of all the fixations on a target after the first pass.. 5.. Total viewing time (TVT): the total length of fixations on a target from all the passes (Inhoff & Radach, 1998). The length of fixation is closely associated with higher-level lexical. property of the fixated word and the process of comprehension. FFD, SFD and 31.

(41) GD reflect the initial stage of word recognition during reading. They are affected by linguistic elements such as orthographic, phonological or lexical properties of the target word, its metaphorical status, and contextual constrains (Inhoff & Radach, 1998). RRT and TVT are sensitive to difficulties in post-recognition process, reflecting linguistic analyses like adjustment of word meaning based on the context and reformation of syntactic structure (Inhoff & Radach, 1998). The increased length of fixation duration exemplifies an increase in cognitive effort needed to comprehend the target. The “where,” or spatial element of eye movement, is more concerned with whether a word is fixated and how it is fixated. Spatial parameters of eye movements include: 1.. Fixation position: where the eye lands within the target.. 2.. Saccade length: the distance between one fixation and the next, whether forward or backward.. 3.. Refixation rate: the frequency of multiple target fixations (Inhoff & Radach, 1998). The way the eye moves is thought to be determined by lower-level. linguistic properties of the text. For example, a word is more likely to be fixated if it is long, a content word, orthographically strange or morphologically complex (Inhoff & Radach, 1998; Radach & Kennedy, 2004). Higher order of comprehension difficulties can also affect where the eye moves. One noticeable example is regression. When the effort for comprehension increases, longer regressions would occur as the eye needs to return to earlier parts of the text to fully comprehend the content, resulting in higher refixation rate (Rayner, 2009). 32.

(42) 2.3.2 Eye-tracking method in T&I studies Though eye tracker has been widely utilized in reading-related research, its employment in interpreting studies is only at the beginning. This is because the input and output of most interpretation modes (SI and CI) are both oral, thereby providing no practical way to employ eye tracking in related studies. Sight translation, which uses written text as input, has been the only possible way to combine eye movement research with interpretation. The very first research on eye movement and interpretation was conducted by McDonald and Carpenter (1981). Their experiment examined idiom interpretation, parsing strategy and error recovery in ST (called simultaneous translation in the paper). They proposed that idiom can be interpreted in two ways: under the Literal First Model, the reader retrieves the literal meaning of an idiom first. If the literal meaning does not match the prior context, the reader would subsequently retrieve the idiomatic meaning. However, if reading under the Direct Access Model, the idiomatic meaning of an idiom should be retrievable by the reader directly without first comprehending the literal meaning. The experimenter therefore designed a set of two sentences that start with identical idiom (“kick the bucket” or “break the ice”) but end with different disambiguation segments, one priming the literal meaning of the idiom, the other priming the idiomatic meaning. Four. German-English. bilingual. interpreters. participated. in. the. experiment. They sight translated 44 paragraphs that contained the above mentioned sentences with either literal or idiomatic meaning. Their eye movements and oral production during the tasks were recorded. Chunking strategies employed in comprehending the idioms was examined through eye movement indices. A chunked unit was defined as the area from the first word 33.

(43) to the farthest word on the right that was fixated in one reading pass before the eye regressed. If the idiom is chunked as a whole, as in Mike hit the nail right on the head, it suggests the idiomatic meaning was retrieved. If the idiom is chunked at any syntactic boundaries within it, such as Mike hit the nail / right on the head, the literal meaning was retrieved. The results of the experiment shed light not only on parsing strategies for idioms, but also the process of interpretation. Each phrases in the paragraph received at least two scans. The first scan (called first-pass reading), presented as a series of forward fixations, signified the initial comprehension of the phrase. The second scan (or second-pass reading) was marked by a regression of the eye to previously fixated words in the phrase, then followed by rereading of the phrase. The interpretation production also began during the second scan. Furthermore, if the interpreter realized the idiom was wrongly interpreted after the second scan, his eye would regress back to the idiom in question. During this third scan of the idiom, eye movements showed that the idiom would be chunked differently from before, suggesting the right meaning was being retrieved. McDonald and Carpenter’s experiment supported the vertical perspective of interpretation, though it was not the original focus of their study. The first scan took the interpreters a total of 950ms, which is very similar to the speed of normal silent reading. The second scan, however, took a total of 3000ms, which was three times longer than the reading pass. This was due to the additional effort needed to produce the interpreted oral output. As for the error detecting / recovering third pass, the total time needed was 4801ms, even longer than the second pass. The long duration may be attributed to detection and recomputation process needed in error recovery. 34.

(44) Huang’s experiment (2011) took up what Carpenter and McDonald left, and used the eye tracker to examine the participant’s interpreting process during sight translation. 18 trainee interpreters were instructed to silently read, read aloud and sight translate three pieces of Chinese text comparable in difficulty and length, and their eye movements were recorded. It was assumed that since silent reading concerns only comprehension, reading aloud concerns comprehension and production, and sight translation concerns all three stages of comprehension, reformulation and production, comparing eye movements during these three tasks would provide insights into the interpreting process. First-pass reading time and probability, go-past time and probability, total viewing time, rereading time and probability were examined for all three tasks. The results showed that for first-pass reading, there was no significant difference between silent reading and sight translation, indicating that during the initial stage of word recognition and comprehension, reading and reading for translation are not much different. However, for eye movement indices that indicate the later stage of reading, such as total viewing time and rereading time, interpreters spent much more time during sight translation than silent reading, which suggested that ST calls for more effort in the later stage of reading. Huang’s research results supported the vertical aspect of interpretation. Interpreters likely engage in normal reading comprehension during first-pass reading. The complicated task of reformulating, which calls for extra effort, seems to take place in later reading passes. This research also exemplified how various eye movement indices can be utilized in interpreting studies to reveal the complex interpreting process that goes on in the interpreter’s mind. 35.

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In this paper, we have shown that how to construct complementarity functions for the circular cone complementarity problem, and have proposed four classes of merit func- tions for