Reporting stress in simultaneous interpreting. The analysis of trainee interpreters’ retrospective reports and outputs

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the sources of stress for trainee interpreters and the coping strategies and/or stress-prevention strategies they adopt. It relies on retrospective protocols of trainees, in which they report stress experienced during simultaneous interpreting task. The study also triangulates process analysis (data in the form of retrospective protocols) with product analysis (manual comparison of source and target texts) to find out whether the stress reported during retrospection affects the product. The segments in which participants reported stress are analysed in search of 3 types of disfluencies: anomalous pauses exceeding 2 seconds, hesitation markers and false starts. The analysis also aims at investigating the relation between stress and directionality. The results show that the majority of target-text segments in which trainees reported having experienced stress are marked by disfluencies. The most frequently mentioned stressors are the delivery rate of the speaker, lexical search under time pressure, and interpreting failure in the preceding part of the text. Trainees have been found to cope with stress in most cases adopting the economy of expression strategies. These types of strategies were also adopted as stress prevention mechanisms. Another finding of the study reveals that stress is reported considerably more frequently in the retour than in the native.

Emotional Language Processing in Bilingualism: Subjective Affect and Prosodic Markers in Simultaneous Interpreting

“…Emotional processing in interpreting has been investigated through a wide array of indicators and measures (see Gieshoff, Lehr, and Hunziker Heeb 2021) from the self-reports (Gumul, 2021) to galvanic skin conductance (Korpal & Jasielska, 2019;Kurz, 2002), from heart rate (Klonowicz, 1994) to blood pressure (Roziner & Shlesinger, 2010) and cortisol levels (Moser-Mercer, 2005).…”

“…Moreover, it is fair to argue that SI is an emotionally taxing activity even without emotional language. Previous studies have identified several external stressors in SI, ranging from speaking rate (Korpal, 2016) to prolonged turns (Klonowicz, 1990;Moser-Mercer et al, 1998), from textual complexity to lexical search under time pressure (Gumul, 2021), from challenging techno-social work environments (Korpal, 2021;Kumcu, 2020;Kurz, 2002) to booth discomfort (Mackintosh, 2003).…”

Control de estrés en los estudiantes de los Talleres de Interpretación de la Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas durante la Enseñanza Remota de Emergencia (ERE)

“…Estudios anteriores a la presente investigación complementan este resultado con la percepción del estudiante sobre sus habilidades de producción y comprensión en la lengua B. Por un lado, Gumul (2020) considera que la falta de autoeficacia en la lengua B es uno de los principales estresores en los estudiantes de interpretación. El estudiante puede sufrir del llamado foreign language anxiety al interpretar a su lengua B, pues percibe que no tiene suficiente nivel para una interpretación de calidad (Chiang, 2009, como se citó en Gumul, 2020). La autora añade que estas dificultades están relacionadas con la búsqueda de equivalentes o el léxico (lexical search), es decir, el intérprete en formación se enfrenta a problemas de producción.…”

“…Los participantes del estudio de Korpal (2016), al igual que los de la UPC, manifiestan sentirse preocupados por eventos fortuitos. Gumul (2020) agrega que buscar ayuda a personas externas o profesores es una de las principales estrategias de control del estrés de sus participantes. Por consiguiente, en ambos artículos, el estudiante se siente estresado por la ERE.…”