How do trainee interpreters manage cognitive problem triggers in simultaneous interpreting with text? Insights from eye-tracking and retrospective interviews

Xingcheng Ma and Binhua Wang
Southeast University | Lingnan University

This study investigates how trainee interpreters use scripts in simultaneous interpreting with text (SIMTXT) when encountering cognitive problem triggers such as numbers, fast speech rates, proper names, and deviations from the script. Fifteen trainees performed English-to-Chinese SIMTXT under one baseline and four ‘problem-triggering’ conditions, each involving one of the aforementioned triggers. Analysis of eye-tracking data and retrospective interviews revealed that: (1) Cognitive effort and visual attention allocation during SIMTXT were influenced by the cognitive demands associated with each type of problem trigger. Frequent numbers prompted the most intensive script use, with more fixations within the script and fewer fixation shifts between script and video than in the baseline. In contrast, deviations reduced script reliance, with less dwell time and more fixation shifts relative to the baseline. (2) Most participants reported being disrupted by deviations. Their perceptions of script utility varied, but the majority regarded scripts as a valuable visual aid, particularly for managing numbers and proper names.

Publication history

Date received: 13 November 2023

Date accepted: 27 July 2026

Published online: 25 August 2026

Table of contents

Simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a cognitively demanding task that requires extensive bilingual transfer and cognitive control (Christoffels and De Groot 2005; Dong and Li 2019). The inherent constraints of SI, such as multitasking, immediacy of processing, and temporal pressure, are primary determinants of interpreting performance (Gile 2008). These constraints are often exacerbated by specific input variables or ‘problem triggers’ (Gile 2009) such as numbers, high speech rate, and syntactic complexity (Barghout, Ruiz Rosendo, and García 2015; Chmiel and Lijewska 2019; Kajzer-Wietrzny, Ivaska, and Ferraresi 2024). Problem triggers in SI “relate primarily to the nature of the source message which serves as the immediate input to the interpreter’s mental processing operations” (Pöchhacker 2016, 122). They may exert more pronounced impacts on conference interpreters who work with read discourse characterized by greater lexical and structural complexity (Agrifoglio 2004; Seeber 2017a). With the growing prevalence of read-out speeches based on prepared scripts at international institutions, simultaneous interpreting with text (SIMTXT) has become a widely applied mode during conference interpreting (Setton 2015; Ruiz Rosendo and Diur 2022).

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