Motivated by the need for better control of standards of a certification examination for interpreters in Taiwan, this exploratory study aimed at identifying indicators that may be used to predict source material difficulty for consecutive interpreting. A combination of quantifiable measures — readability level, information density and new concept density — was used to examine different aspects of three English source materials. Expert judgment was also used as a more holistic method of judging source material difficulty. The results of these analyses were compared with two groups of student interpreters’ performance on consecutive interpreting of the source materials into Mandarin Chinese. The participants’ assessment of speech difficulty after the interpreting task was also compared with the other measures and the expert judgment. The quantifiable measures all failed statistically in predicting source material difficulty, possibly due to the very small sample size of the materials or to the fact that the materials were very similar in the aspects assessed by these measures. A trend emerged to suggest that information density and sentence length may be potentially useful indicators for predicting source material difficulty. It was also shown that source material difficulty affected the performance of lower-skilled interpreters more than that of higher-skilled interpreters.
2020. Translation and Interpreting Assessment Research. In Translator and Interpreter Education Research [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 61 ff.
2017. Should Math Tools and Quantitative Methods be Part of University-based Translator and Interpreter’s Training? Russian Graduates’ Voices in the Focus. EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education 13:8
Chen, Sijia
2017. The construct of cognitive load in interpreting and its measurement. Perspectives 25:4 ► pp. 640 ff.
Doherty, Stephen, Natalie Martschuk, Jane Goodman-Delahunty & Sandra Hale
2022. An Eye-Movement Analysis of Overt Visual Attention During Consecutive and Simultaneous Interpreting Modes in a Remotely Interpreted Investigative Interview. Frontiers in Psychology 13
2020. Effect of dependency distance of source text on disfluencies in interpreting. Lingua 243 ► pp. 102873 ff.
Kuang, Huolingxiao & Binghan Zheng
2022. How does interpreting performance correlate with note-taking process, note-taking product and note-reading process? An eye-tracking and pen-recording study. Across Languages and Cultures 23:2 ► pp. 167 ff.
Kuang, Huolingxiao & Binghan Zheng
2023. Note-taking effort in video remote interpreting: effects of source speech difficulty and interpreter work experience. Perspectives 31:4 ► pp. 724 ff.
2018. Exploring a relationship between students’ interpreting self-efficacy and performance: triangulating data on interpreter performance assessment. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 12:2 ► pp. 166 ff.
Li, Xiangdong
2019. Material development principles in undergraduate translator and interpreter training: balancing between professional realism and classroom realism. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 13:1 ► pp. 18 ff.
Lin, Yumeng, Qianxi Lv & Junying Liang
2018. Predicting Fluency With Language Proficiency, Working Memory, and Directionality in Simultaneous Interpreting. Frontiers in Psychology 9
Ma, Xingcheng
2021. Coping with syntactic complexity in English–Chinese sight translation by translation and interpreting students.. Across Languages and Cultures 22:2 ► pp. 192 ff.
Ma, Xingcheng, Tianyi Han, Dechao Li & Zhenguang G. Cai
2022. A cognitive inquiry into similarities and differences between translation and paraphrase: Evidence from eye movement data. PLOS ONE 17:8 ► pp. e0272531 ff.
2019. Interpreting Studies by Chinese Scholars (1949–2017). In Translation Studies in China [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 135 ff.
Sasaki, Anna
2020. Reconsidering the contents of interpreters’ notes: A human-centered approach to classification. Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting 6:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Sun, Sanjun
2019. Measuring Difficulty in Translation and Post-editing: A Review. In Researching Cognitive Processes of Translation [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 139 ff.
2023. Cognitive processing of the extra visual layer of live captioning in simultaneous interpreting. Triangulation of eye-tracked process and performance data. Ampersand 11 ► pp. 100131 ff.
Yuan, Rongjie
2022. Material development for beginner student interpreters: how does text structure contribute to the difficulty of consecutive interpreting?. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 16:1 ► pp. 58 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 february 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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