Many factors can affect the translation and interpreting process, but the quality of source texts has been explicitly identified as an issue in surveys of professional translators and interpreters as well as in recent workplace studies. If translators and interpreters encounter resistance in carrying out their tasks, for example by difficulties in extracting meaning from non-native English input, then flow can be interrupted and performance affected. In this paper, we explore how English as a lingua franca (ELF) input could potentially increase the cognitive load not only for translators and interpreters but also for other multilinguals. We describe the range of methods that can be used to measure the cognitive effort and stress associated with processing ELF input and explain the challenges that can be encountered when researchers are committed to using authentic ELF material to make comparisons under relatively controlled but ecologically valid conditions. One of the driving motivators for this type of research is to understand how interpreters and translators deploy their expertise to deal with ELF input in work settings in order to draw inferences about strategies for other segments of the population.
The paper applies cognitive theories of text and language processing, and in particular relevance theory, to the analysis of notes in consecutive interpreting. In contrast to the pre-cognitive view, in which note-taking is seen mainly as a memory-supporting technique, the process of note-taking is described as the reception and production of a notation text. Adding the relevance-theoretical constructs of explicature and implicature to the general account of cognitive text processing as coherence building and the construction of a mental representation at local and global levels, this approach allows for the comparison of source, notation and target texts with respect to the underlying propositional representation, and shows how the sense of highly fragmentary notation texts is recovered in consecutive interpreting. The paper is based on an empirical study involving consecutive interpretations (English-German) by five trainee interpreters. The analysis shows that the interpreters operate relatively closely along micropropositional lines when processing the source, notation and target texts, with the explicature regularly having the same propositional form as the corresponding proposition in the source text.A key feature of all forms of interpreting is that the interpreters try to understand the source text's sense by processing its conceptual content rather than the words as such. In consecutive interpreting, this raises the question as to how the information extracted in the process is transmitted via the interim phase of note-taking to target text production. In the pre-cognitive view, under which note-taking is some kind of memory-supporting technique, the answers remain inconclusive due to an unclear conception of the underlying relationship between sense and its linguistic representation. This is where the cognitive theory of text and language processing comes in. From this perspective, the process of understanding is described as
Abstract:In ELF research, ample evidence has been collected to show that communication in (dialogic) ELF interactions works and that it does so in intriguingly creative ways. In a questionnaire survey and an in-depth interview study, simultaneous conference interpreters present a less optimistic view with regard to (monologic) mediated multilingual settings, which are increasingly shaped by a growing number of non-native English-speaking participants. Moreover, the interpreters put the adverse effects of ELF speaker output on their cognitive processing down to the speakers' restricted power of expression. This is paralleled by empirical evidence from ELF speakers in TELF (the Tübingen English as a Lingua Franca corpus and database), who put into perspective their general feeling that they can cope in ELF interactions (which is in line with the ELF study findings mentioned above) by voicing dissatisfaction with their restricted capacity of expressing what they want to convey with the required or desired degree of precision.In a theoretical discussion, the Express-ability Principle is introduced to capture the nature of the human effort for expression (complementary to Bartlett's effort after meaning). In the subsequent presentation, sociocultural and psycholinguistic research sheds light on express-ability in the context of ELF by applying Slobin's Thinking for Speaking (TFS) hypothesis to second-language contexts. It reveals the interface between verbal (L1) thinking and externalized (L2) speech and explains expression-related problems in terms of transfer effects in connection with age of acquisition and linguistic environment. This directs further ELF research into the nature of express-ability towards an examination of production processes, developmental and procedural aspects in early and late bilingual ELF speakers, a shared languages benefit to compensate for cross-linguistic transfer and the (relative) effectiveness of unmediated and mediated ELF communication.Keywords: English as a lingua franca (ELF); conference interpreters; expressability principle; Thinking-for-Speaking (TFS); early and late bilingual ELF speakers; shared languages benefit. * I should like to thank Robert DeKeyser, Kurt Kohn, Anna Mauranen, Tim McNamara, and Barbara Seidlhofer for mind-opening comments in personal communication and the two anonymous reviewers for comments that advanced my argument. Michaela Albl-Mikasa'Express-ability' in der ELF-Kommunikation Zusammenfassung: Eine Umfrage unter professionellen Konferenzdolmetschern sowie Interviews mit diesen Dolmetschern und mit ELF-Sprechern aus dem TELFKorpus verweisen auf einen Widerspruch zwischen dem allgemeinen Eindruck von ELF-Sprechern, dass sie in der Kommunikation zurechtkommen (was Forschungsergebnissen eines strategischen Funktionierens in ELF-Interaktionen entspricht) und ihrer Unzufriedenheit mit den eigenen eingeschränkten Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten (die Dolmetscher wiederum als Verarbeitungshindernisse erleben). Mit der Einführung des "express-ability principle" lässt s...
To facilitate the process of consecutive interpreting, professional interpreters typically use a special system of note-taking. In the approaches developed on the basis of practical interpreting experience, these notations are commonly regarded as a note-taking technique, and in relevant specialist literature they are often conceived as a language-independent instrument. Against the background of a cognitive approach, however, it can be shown that the so¬called note-taking TECHNIQUE can adequately be described by means of the theoretical constructs LANGUAGE and DISCOURSE. The language dimension is explored with regard to word meanings, word formation and inflection, semantic relations at sentence and text level as well as pragmatic functions. The discourse dimension is mainly discussed from the perspective of rele¬vance theory with a particular emphasis on the balance between the explicit and the implicit.
Our paper is based on the Swiss research project ‘Interpreting in Medical Settings: Roles, Requirements and Responsibility’, which was supported by a grant of the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation (KTI) and carried out by an interdisciplinary team comprising medical specialists from the University Hospital of Basel (Marina Sleptsova and colleagues) and interpreting studies/applied linguistics researchers from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) (Gertrud Hofer and colleagues). It explores videotape transcriptions of 12 authentic interpreted conversations between German speaking doctors/medical staff and patients of Turkish or Albanian origin. The analysis finds that culture-specific expressions produced by the patients occur rarely and do not pose any interpreting problems. By contrast, phatic tokens and hedges play an important role in medical personnel’s presentation of their interactional, trust building, diagnostic and therapeutic intentions. Although these expressions are essential communication elements geared at building patients’ compliance and establishing doctors’ safeguards, they are rarely or inconsistently rendered by the interpreters. It is argued that, while medical interpreters may have plausible reasons not to render these expressions, they would still need to be made aware of the significance of such pragmatic aspects of communication in training courses and/or pre-encounter briefings. More generally, empirical research – similar to that on questioning style and questioning techniques – should focus more on the exploration of discourse markers, meta-discourse comments and rapport-building expressions of different types of utterance and discourse practices in healthcare interpreting settings.
Thanks to the availability of appropriate technical solutions as well as growing experience with remote interpreting in various countries, video interpreting has made its way into community interpreting, predominantly in the healthcare sector. It is thought to combine advantages of face-to-face interpreting (e.g. visibility, eye contact, non-verbal communication, visual information and certain trust-building features) with advantages of distance interpreting (e.g. saving travel time and expenses) in facilitating correct diagnosis and obtaining informed consent, compliance, treatment success and patient safety. This article describes a video-interpreting initiative undertaken in the German-speaking DACH area (Germany, Austria, German-speaking part of Switzerland) following the 2015 refugee crisis. It highlights the training measures introduced to address the needs of patients speaking languages for which interpreters are not usually available in Germany and Austria, and the subsequent expansion of the initiative into Switzerland. It also reports on the views of the course participants on the basis of a questionnaire survey conducted after training.Resumen: La interpretación a distancia por videoconferencia se ha abierto camino en la interpretación comunitaria, predominantemente en el ámbito sanitario, gracias a la disponibilidad de soluciones técnicas apropiadas así como a la creciente experiencia en la interpretación a distancia en diferentes países. La idea es combinar las ventajas de la interpretación en persona (por ejemplo, la perceptibilidad, el contacto visual, la comunicación no verbal, la información visual y aspectos de creación de confianza) con las ventajas de la interpretación a distancia (como, por ejemplo, el ahorro de costos y gastos de trayectos) y, de esta manera, facilitar un diagnóstico correcto y obtener el consentimiento informado, la conformidad, los tratamientos exitosos y la seguridad del paciente. El presente artículo describe las propuestas llevadas a cabo para la interpretación por videoconferencia en los países de habla alemana (Alemania, Austria y la parte germanohablante de Suiza) a raíz de la crisis de refugiados. Se pone especial énfasis en las actividades de formación introducidas con el fin de satisfacer las necesidades de los pacientes que hablan lenguas para cuya interpretación no suele haber intérpretes en Alemania y Austria, así como su introducción subsiguiente en Suiza. Además, se presenta la opinión de los participantes de los cursos en base a una encuesta llevada a cabo después de las actividades de formación.
The critical attitude of conference interpreters towards English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has so far been downplayed by ELF researchers. This paper aims at detailing the experience of professional conference interpreters in interpreter‐mediated ELF communication and argues that ELF research has a stake in looking into their complaints because this may produce a better understanding of a number of aspects of mediated and unmediated ELF communication. Interpreter experience may thus contribute to achieving a more comprehensive and balanced description of ELF.
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