Publications

Publication details [#4002]

Gile, Daniel. 1999. Testing the effort models' tightrope hypothesis in simultaneous interpreting: a contribution. Hermes 23 : 153–172.
Publication type
Article in jnl/bk
Publication language
English

Abstract

In a sample of 10 professionals interpreting the same source speech in the simultaneous mode, errors and omissions (e/o’s) were found to affect different source-speech segments, and a large proportion among them were only made by a small proportion of the subjects. In a repeat performance, there were some new e/o’s in the second version when the same interpreters had interpreted the same segments correctly in the first version. These findings strengthen the Effort Models’ “tightrope hypothesis” that many e/o’s are due not to the intrinsic difficulty of the corresponding source-speech segments, but to the interpreters working close to processing capacity saturation, which makes them vulnerable to even small variations in the available processing capacity for each interpreting component.
Source : Abstract in journal