Cover not available
Part of
Psycholinguistic and Cognitive Inquiries into Translation and Interpreting
Edited by Aline Ferreira and John W. Schwieter
[Benjamins Translation Library 115] 2015
► pp. 67–100

Discourse comprehension in simultaneous interpreting

The role of expertise and redundancy

| University of Leicester
This article reports the results of a mixed-method investigation of high-level discourse processes in simultaneous interpreting. The research analyses the effect of six variables indexing different inferential, shifting and integrative processes on the performance of expert and novice interpreters and identifies qualitative and quantitative differences in the way discourse processes are executed as a function of experience. The findings suggest that local coherence inferences tend to be successfully encoded by all interpreters; the process of shifting at macrolevel is equally efficiently executed. Differences related to skill variation appeared with integrative processing in the condition of high semantic density. The latter were attributed to the acquisition of task-specific skills and strategies by the experts (in the sense of Ericsson and Kintsch 1995), a finding corroborated by means of retrospective verbal data.
Published online: 22 January 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.115.04hil
References (74)
Anderson, Anne, Simon C. Garrod, and Anthony J. Sanford. 1983. “The Accessibility of Pronominal Antecedents as a Function of Episode Shifts in Narrative text”. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology35 (A): 427–440. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Linda. 1994. “Simultaneous Interpreting: Contextual and Translation Aspect”. In Bridging The Gap: Empirical Research In Simultaneous Interpretation, ed. by Sylvie Lambert and Barbara Moser-Mercer,101–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Asher, Nicholas, and Alex Lascarides. 1995. “Lexical Disambiguation in a Discourse Context.” Journal of Semantics 12: 69–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bajo, María Teresa, Francisca Padilla, and Presentación Padilla. 2000. “Comprehension Processes in Simultaneous Interpreting.” In Translation In Context, ed. by Andrew Chesterman, Natividad Gallardo-San Salvador, and Yves Gambier, 127–142. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beech, John R. 1989. “The Componential Approach to Learning Reading Skills.” In Acquisition And Performance Of Cognitive Skills, ed. by Ann M. Colley and John R. Beech,113–136. Chichester, UK: John Willey and Sons.Google Scholar
Bell, Laura C., and Charles A. Perfetti. 1994. “Reading Skill: Some Adult Comparisons.” Journal of Educational Psychology 86: 244–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burger, Susanne. 1997. Transliteration of Spontaneous Speech sata – Manual of Transliteration Conventions, Internal report from project VERBMOBIL II, University of Tuebingen, Germany.Google Scholar
Caplan, David, and Gloria S. Waters. 1999. “Verbal Working Memory and Sentence Comprehension.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (1): 77–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, Patricia A., Akira Miyake, and Marcel A. Just. 1994. “Working Memory Constraints in Comprehension: Evidence from Individual Differences, Aphasia and Ageing.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics, ed. by Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 1075–1122. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Chernov, Ghelly V.V. 1994. “Message Redundancy and Message Anticipation in Simultaneous Interpretation.” In Bridging the Gap: Empirical Research in Simultaneous Interpretation, ed. by Sylvie Lambert and Barbara Moser-Mercer, 139–154. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Christoffels, Ingrid K., Annette M.B. De Groot, and Lourens J. Waldorp. 2003. “Basic Skills in a Complex Task: A Graphical Model relating Lexical Retrieval, Working Memory, and Simultaneous Interpreting.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 6: 201–211. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Christoffels, Ingrid K., Annette M.B. de Groot, and Judith F. Kroll. 2006. “Memory and Language Skills in Expert Interpreters: The Role of Expertise and Language Proficiency.” Journal of Memory and Language 54: 324–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Raphael, Michael Elhadad, and Noémie Elhadad. 2013. “Redundancy in Electronic Health Record Corpora: Analysis, Impact on Text-mining Performance and Mitigation Strategies.” BMC Bioinformatics 14 (10): 1–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cromer, Ward. 1970. “The Difference Model: A New Explanation for some Reading Difficulties.” Journal of Educational Psychology 61: 471–483. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Darò, Valeria, and Franco Fabbro. 1994. “Verbal Memory during Simultaneous Interpretation: Effects of Phonological Interference.” Applied Linguistics, 15: 365–381. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dilligner, Mike. 1994. “Comprehension during Interpreting: What do Interpreters know that Bilinguals don’t?“ In Bridging the Gap: Empirical Studies in Simultaneous Interpretation, ed. by Sylvie Lambert and Barbara Moser-Mercer, 155–190. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dillinger, Mike. 1989. Component Processes of Simultaneous Interpreting. unpublished PhD thesis, McGill University, Canada.
Ericsson, K. Anders, and W. Kintsch. 1995. “Long-term Working Memory.” Psychological Review 102: 211–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ericsson, K. Anders, and Herbert A. Simon. 1996. Protocol Analysis (revised edition). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Eysenck, Michael W., and Mark T. Keane. 1995. Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook (3rd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Charles R. 1994. “Levels of Representation in Memory for Discourse.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics, ed. by Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 589–607. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Garnham Alan, Simon Garrrod, and Anthony Sandford. 2006. “Observations on the Past and Future of Psycholinguistics.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed.), ed. by Matthew J. Traxler and Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 1–19. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Garnham, Alan, and Jane Oakhill. 1992. “Discourse Processing and text Representation from a “Mental Models” Perspective.” Language and Cognitive Processes 7: 257–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garnham, Alan, Jane Oakhill, and Phil N. Johnson-Laird. 1982. “Referential Continuity and the Coherence of Discourse.” Cognition 11: 29–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gernsbacher, Morton Ann. 1990. Language Comprehension as Structure Building. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
1996. “Coherence cues Mapping during Comprehension.” In Pocessing Interclausal Relationships in the Production and Comprehension of Text, ed. by Jean Costermans and Michel Fayol, 3–21. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Gernsbacher, Morton Ann, and Mark E. Faust. 1991. “The Mechanism of Suppression: A Component of General Comprehension Skill.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 17: 245–262. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gernsbacher, Morton Ann, and Miriam Shlesinger. 1997. “The Proposed role of Suppression in Simultaneous Interpreting.” Interpreting 2: 119–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gerver, David. 1974. “Simultaneous Listening and Speaking and Retention of Prose.” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 26: 337–341. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gile, Daniel. 1995. Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graesser, Arthur C., Murray Singer, and Tom Trabasso. 1994. “Constructing Inferences during Narrative text Comprehension“. Psychological Review 101:371–395. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graesser, Arthur C., Danielle S. McNamara, Max M. Louwerse, and Zhigiang Cai. 2004. “Coh-metrix: Analysis of text on Cohesion and Language.” Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers: A Journal of The Psychonomic Society 36 (2): 193–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haberlandt, Karl. 1994. “Methods in Reading Research.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics, ed. by Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 1–31. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hild, Adelina. 2007. “Establishing Rigour in a between-method Investigation of SI Expertise”. In Doubts And Directions In Translation Studies, ed. by Yves Gambrier, Miriam Shlesinger, and Radegundis Stolze, 99–112. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson-Laird, Philip N. 1983. Mental Models. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Just, Marcel. A., and Patricia A. Carpenter. 1980. “A theory of Reading: From Eye Fixations to Comprehension.” Psychological Review 45: 325–354.Google Scholar
Just, Marcel A., and Patricia A. Carpenter. 1987. The Psychology of Reading and Language Comprehension. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon Inc.Google Scholar
Just, Marcel A., and Patricia A. Carpetner. 1992. “A Capacity theory of Comprehension: Individual Differences in Working Memory.” Psychological Review, 99: 122–149. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kamp, Hans, and Uwe Reyle. 1993. From Discourse to Logic: Introduction to Modeltheoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and Discourse Representation Theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kintsch, Walter. 1988. “The Role of Knowledge in Discourse Comprehension: A Construction-Integration Model.” Psychological Review 95: 163–182. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998. Comprehension: A Paradigm for Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kintsch, Walter, and Douglas Vipond. 1979. “Reading Comprehension and Readability in Educational Practice and Psychological Theory.” In Perspectives on Memory Research, ed. by Lars-Goran Nilsson, 329–366. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Kintsch, Walter, and van Dijk, Teun A. 1978. Towards a model of text comprehension and production. Psychological Review 85: 363–394. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Köpke, Barbara. 2009. Approche neuropsycholinguistique de la gestion des langues chez le sujetplurilingue. Dossier de synthèse présenté pour l’obtention de l’Habilitation á diriger des recherches. Toulouse: Université de Toulouse Le Mira.Google Scholar
Lambert, Sylvie. 1985. Recall and Recognition among Conference Interpreters. unpublished PhD thesis, University of Stirling, Scotland.
Liu, Minhua, Diane L. Schallert, and Patrick J. Carroll. 2004. “Working Memory and Expertise in Simultaneous Interpreting.” Interpreting 6 (1): 19–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Long, Debra L., Clinton L. Johns, and Phillip E. Morris. 2006. “Comprehension ability in Mature Readers.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed.), ed. by Matthew J. Traxler and Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 863–901. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
McClelland, James L., and Jeffrey L. Elman. 1986. “The TRACE Model of Speech Perception.” Cognitive Psychology 18: 1–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mackintosh, Jennifer. 1985. “The Kintsch and van Dijk Model of Discourse Comprehension and Production applied to the Interpretation Process.” META 30: 37–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McKoon, Gail, and Roger Radcliff. 1992. “Inferences during Reading.” Psychological Review 99: 440–466. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merrill, Edward C., Richard D. Sperber, and Charley McCauley. 1981. “Differences in Semantic Encoding as a Function of Reading Comprehension Skill.” Memory and Cognition 9:618–624. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, George A. 1963. Language and Communication. New York: McCraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Oakhill, Jane 1994. “Individual Differences in Children’s text Comprehension.” In Handbook Of Psycholinguistics, ed. by A.M.G ernsbacher, 821–848. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Oakhill, Jane, and A. Garnham. 1988. Becoming a Skilled Reader. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Padilla, Francisca, Pedro Macizo, and María Teresa Bajo. 2007. Tareas de traducción e interpretación desde una perspectiva cognitiva. Una propuesta integradora. Granada: Editorial Atrio.Google Scholar
Pearlmutter, Neal J., and Maryellen C. MacDonald. 1995. “Individual Differences and Probabilistic Constraints in Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution.” Journal of Memory and Language 34: 521–542. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sanford, Anthony J., and Simon C. Garrod. 1981. Understanding Written Language: Explorations in Comprehension beyond the Sentence. Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Schank, Roger C. 1976. “The Role of Memory in Language Processing.” In The Nature of Human Memory, ed. by Charles N. Cofer, 162–189. San Francisco: Freeman.Google Scholar
Sinclair, John McHardy. 1985. “On the Integration of Linguistic Description.” In Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Teun A. van Dijk, 13–28. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Singer, Murray. 1990. Psychology of Language. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, Michael K, and John C. Trueswell. 2006. “Eye Movements and Spoken Language Comprehension.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed.), ed. by Mattew J. Traxler and Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 863–901. London: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Teddlie, Charles, and Abbas Tashakkori. 2009. Foundations of Mixed Methods Research. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Treisman, Anne M. 1965. “The Effects of Redundancy and Familiarity on Translating and Repeating back a Foreign and a Native Language.” British Journal of Pshychology 56(4): 369–379. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Underwood, Geoffrey, and Vivienne Batt. 1996. Reading and Understanding. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Van den Broek, Paul. 1994. “Comprehension and Memory of Narrative Texts: Inferences and Coherence.” In Handbook Of Psycholinguistics, ed. by Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 539–588. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun A., and Walter Kintsch. 1983. Strategies Of Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Vandepitte, Sonia. 1988. “Metapragmatic Terms or the Expression of Propositional Attitude: The Case of Causal Conjunctions.” Acta Linguistica Hungarica 38: 201–210.Google Scholar
Woods, Anthony, Paul Fletcher, and Arthur Hughes. 1986. Statistics in Language Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wrenn, Jesse O., Daniel M. Stein, Suzanne Bakken, and Peter D. Stetson. 2010. “Quantifying Clinical Narrative Redundancy in an Electronic Health Record.” Journal of American Medical Information Association 17: 49–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yudes, Carolina, Pedro Macizo, Luis Morales, and María Teresa Bajo. 2012. “Comprehension and Error Monitoring in Simultaneous Interpreters.” Applied Psycholinguistics 34 (5): 1–19. CUP, ISSN. 0142-7164. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Yuill, Nicolla, and Janne Oakhill. 1991. Children’s Problems in Text Comprehension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zwaan, Rolf. A., and David N. Rapp. 2006. “Discourse Comprehension.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed.), ed. by Mattew J. Traxler and Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 725–765. London: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zwaan, Rolf. A., and Murray Singer. 2003. “Text Comprehension.” In Handboook Of Discourse Processes, ed. by Arthur C. Graesser, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, and Susan R. Goldman, 83–121. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Zwaan, Rolf A., and Herre van Oostendorp. 1993. “Do Readers Construct Spatial Representations in Naturalistic Story Comprehension?” Discourse Processes 16: 125–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Gieshoff, Anne Catherine & Michaela Albl-Mikasa
2024. Interpreting accuracy revisited: a refined approach to interpreting performance analysis. Perspectives 32:2 ► pp. 210 ff. DOI logo
Li, Xiangdong
2024. Teaching listening for interpreting through mind mapping. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 37:1 ► pp. 172 ff. DOI logo
Cheung, Andrew K. F.
2022. Remote Simultaneous Interpreting from Home or Hub: Accuracy of Numbers from English into Mandarin Chinese. In Translation and Interpreting in the Age of COVID-19 [Corpora and Intercultural Studies, 9], ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Gumul, Ewa & Rachel E. Herring
2022. Employing retrospective process tracing in an international exploratory study. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 5:2 ► pp. 221 ff. DOI logo
Gieshoff, Anne Catherine
2021. Does it help to see the speaker’s lip movements?. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 4:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.