Paraphrasing in respeaking – comparing linguistic competence of interpreters, translators and bilinguals

ABSTRACT

Respeaking is a method of producing subtitling for live events and TV programmes. Respeakers repeat speakers’ utterances so that they may be changed by speech recognition software into subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. Respeakers need to paraphrase the text so that it conforms with temporal and spatial constraints of subtitling. Due to the similarities between respeaking, interpreting and translation, we tested interpreters, translators and bilingual controls on a paraphrasing task to see whether interpreters or translators would manifest any advantage thanks to experience. Following respeaking training, the participants were asked to paraphrase sentences with semantic redundancies, oral discourse markers and false starts in a simultaneous and delayed condition. Contrary to our predictions, we found that experience did not modulate paraphrasing quality or speed in general, but interpreters did outperform other groups when eliminating semantic redundancies, which were also the most difficult reformulations to tackle for all participants. The data suggest that while interpreters and translators are not better predisposed to become respeakers than regular bilinguals, at least as regards the paraphrasing performance, certain aspects of the interpreting experience (the need to express meaning concisely within time constraints) may offer a slight advantage in producing well-formed respoken subtitles.

KEYWORDS:

• Respeaking
• paraphrasing
• interpreting
• translation
• subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Łukasz Brocki for programming the rating tool.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Agnieszka Chmiel is assistant professor in the Department of Translation Studies, Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU) in Poznań, Poland. Her research interests include lexical processing and memory in conference interpreting, reading in sight translation and audio description. She has published numerous experimental studies comparing conference interpreters to non-interpreting populations in search for the interpreter advantage. She has participated in two EU-funded international projects focusing on audio description (ADLAB and ADLAB PRO). She is head of the Postgraduate Programme in Audiovisual Translation at AMU. She has co-authored a book about audio description (in Polish: Audiodeskrypcja) and co-edited a book on teaching conference interpreting (in Polish: Dydaktyka tłumaczenia ustnego).

Agnieszka Lijewska received her PhD in English linguistics from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. She now works as an assistant professor in the Department of Psycholinguistic Studies in the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, where she teaches courses in natural language processing and psycholinguistics of bilingualism and multilingualism. Her research focuses on the influence of the process of language acquisition on lexical processing, as well as on understanding word recognition and speech comprehension in bilinguals and multilinguals.

Agnieszka Szarkowska is currently a research fellow at the Centre for Translation Studies, University College London (2016–2018). She is now working on the SURE project: Exploring Subtitle Reading Process with Eye Tracking Technology. Since 2007, she has also been assistant professor in the Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw. She is the founder and head of the Audiovisual Translation Lab (www.avt.ils.uw.edu.pl) and specialises in audiovisual translation, especially subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing and audio description. She is a member of the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation and European Society for Translation Studies, and an honorary member of the Polish Audiovisual Translators Association.

Łukasz Dutka, MA, is an interpreter and audiovisual translator. As a practitioner of subtitling and a pioneer of respeaking in Poland, he currently works at the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the University Warsaw in ‘Respeaking – process, competences, quality’ research project. He is also involved in training interpreters and respeakers. He regularly cooperates with theatres providing surtitles. He is working on a PhD on respeaking competences and quality in live subtitling. He is a member of the Audiovisual Translation Lab, Polish Association of Audiovisual Translators and European Society for Translation Studies.

ORCID

Agnieszka Chmiel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2138-3974

Notes

1 We understand accuracy as performing the required deletions of the unnecessary material (e.g. oral discourse markers, hesitations, etc.).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Science Centre Poland based on decision no. DEC 2013/11/B/HS2/02762.