This study investigated the effect of source language interference during English-Chinese simultaneous interpreting (SI) with and without text by examining the relationships between manifestations of language interference and interpreting modes. A corpus-based descriptive approach was used to investigate language interference during English-Chinese interpreting at various sessions of the United Nations General Assembly. An intermodal comparison was carried out in three dimensions, addressing (1) the general linguistic properties of the interpreted texts; (2) the distribution of reformulation strategies; and (3) strategies for interpreting passive constructions and attributive clauses, two structures representing structural asymmetries between English and Chinese. The results indicated that the interpreted texts produced by SI with text and SI without text showed different degrees of language interference.
Intralingual translation has long been peripheral to empirical studies of translation. Considering its many similarities with interlingual translation, also described as translation proper, we adopted eye-tracking technology to investigate the cognitive process during translation and paraphrase, an exemplification of intralingual translation. Twenty-four postgraduate students were required to perform four types of tasks (Chinese paraphrase, English-Chinese translation, English paraphrase, Chinese-English translation) for source texts (ST) of different genres. Their eye movements were recorded for analysis of the cognitive effort and attention distribution pattern. The result demonstrated that: (1) Translation elicited significantly greater cognitive efforts than paraphrase; (2) Differences between translation and paraphrase on cognitive effort were modulated by text genre and target language; (3) Translation and paraphrase did not differ strikingly in terms of attention distribution. This process-oriented study confirmed higher cognitive efforts in inter-lingual translation, which was likely due to the additional complexity of bilingual transfer. Moreover, it revealed significant modulating effects of text genre and target language.
This paper explores the impact of word order asymmetry between source language and target language on cognitive load during Chinese – English sight translation. Twenty-five MA students of translation from a Hong Kong university were asked to sight translate sentences with different degrees of between-language structural asymmetry from Chinese into English, in both single-sentence and discourse context conditions. Their eye movements were recorded to examine cognitive load during sight translation. The results show: (1) There was a significant effect of word order asymmetry on overall cognitive load as indicated by the considerably longer dwell times and more frequent fixations for the asymmetric sentences, but it was only during the later-processing stage that structural asymmetry exerted a strong influence on local processing in terms of first fixation duration and regression path duration; (2) the role of context in offsetting the asymmetry effect was very limited; and (3) although reordering may place a greater burden on working memory, most participants preferred reordering over segmentation to cope with the asymmetric structures. The empirical data point to the need to consider word order asymmetry as a variable in theoretical accounts of the interpreting process, especially for interpreting between languages that are structurally very different.
Word-order asymmetry between source language and target language has been recognized as a major obstacle in interpreting. Regarding whether the original word order is changed in target production, two strategies for asymmetrical structures are identified: chunking and reordering. This study primarily examined the cognitive mechanism involved in applying these two strategies during English to Chinese sight translation. The cognitive load associated with chunking and reordering was measured by eye movement and the resulting data were analysed. A group of interpreting trainees sight-translated asymmetrical sentences in two contexts: sentence and text. Their eye-movement measures, including total dwell time, fixation count and rereading rate, were recorded. The results demonstrate that chunking was the primary strategy used to render word-order asymmetry in both task conditions. A greater cognitive load was found in the reordered sentences. More contextual information did not contribute to an execution of the strategies that required less effort. This research is one of the first attempts to explore the cognitive process associated with interpreting strategies for word-order asymmetry. It provides a new perspective with which to deepen our understanding of the cognitive mechanism underlying the use of a strategy.
This study approaches syntactic complexity from a relative point of view and examines how translation and interpreting students cope with relative clauses and passive constructions, two exemplifications of syntactic complexity in English–Chinese sight translation. A group of students (N = 23) took part in the study. The study consisted of three parts: an English reading span test, a sight translation task, and a baseline reading task. During the sight translation task, the participants sight translated English sentences with different degrees of structural asymmetry into Chinese in the single sentence context and the discourse context. During the baseline reading task, they silently read the English sentences and answered the comprehension questions. The participants' eye movements in the sight translation and baseline reading tasks were recorded as indicators of cognitive load. Three major findings were generated: (1) Syntactic complexity resulted in a significant increase in cognitive load during the sight translation task. The syntactic aspects of the target language were activated during the initial stage of comprehension, which favoured the parallel view of translation. (2) Although sight translation became more time efficient due to wider contexts, a larger amount of contextual information did not make word-based processing less effortful, as indicated by more fixations and the longer regression path duration in the discourse context. (3) No correlations were found between reading span and cognitive load in addressing syntactical complexity.
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