The reading aloud of English Language Texts in simultaneously interpreted conferences

This paper explores an important variable affecting interpretation quality, usually considered a major source of difficulty for interpreters: the situation in which speakers read their texts. In particular, it focuses on the reading aloud of English language texts to be interpreted simultaneously. A corpus consisting of ten authentic speeches recorded during various conferences has been analyzed. Five of them were delivered by native speakers, the other five by non-native speakers. The analysis of the corpus has been performed on the transcriptions of the oral delivery of the written texts. Several features have been analyzed, ranging from the peculiarities of written texts, such as high lexical density and lack of redundancy (i.e. assessment of whether the texts presented such features even when delivered orally) to the departures speakers made from the written texts, to pauses and speech rate. The article concludes with a number of practical suggestions speakers should be advised to follow before reading texts that are to be interpreted simultaneously, in order to facilitate the interpreter's task.