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Translation and Interpreting Studies: Online-First Articles

Probing the cognitive load of consecutive interpreters

A corpus-based study

ORCID logo | Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation (GIIT), Shanghai International Studies University (SISU)
ORCID logo | Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation (GIIT), Shanghai International Studies University (SISU)

This study employs four purpose-built corpora to assess the frequency of the disfluency marker uh (emm) in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting (CI) renditions as a proxy measure of interpreters’ cognitive load. Based on Plevoets and Defrancq (2016, 2018), the frequencies are compared across four informational load indicators: delivery rate, lexical density, proportion of numbers, and sentence length. The analysis also probes the potential influence of interpreting directionality on disfluencies. Results reveal differential effects of the four informational load indicators on disfluencies and, by extension, interpreters’ cognitive load, while Chinese-to-English CI is associated with an increase in disfluencies compared to English-to-Chinese for interpreters with Chinese as their A language.

Keywords: cognitive load, consecutive interpreting, disfluency, corpus, directionality
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Four informational load indicators in consecutive interpreting
  • Data and methods
    • Participants
    • Measures
    • Corpus data
    • Analysis
  • Results
    • Relations between informational load indicators and disfluencies
    • Informational indicators in SC and the frequency of disfluency markers in TE
    • Informational indicators in SE and the frequency of disfluency markers in TC
    • Informational indicators in TE and the frequency of disfluency markers in TE
    • Interpreting directionality and cognitive load
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion, limitations, and suggestions for future studies
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.22047.mor
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