Comprehension in interpreting and translation: testing the phonological interference hypothesis

ABSTRACT

Studies on the comprehension process in interpreting have shown that concurrent processing reduces recall in simultaneous interpreting. This effect has been attributed to phonological interference: since the articulatory loop is busy with the parallel vocalization of two streams of speech, encoding is impaired to such an extent that interpreters are not able to remember much of what they have just interpreted. On the other hand, recent studies on the translation process show that comprehension and production overlap in written translation in a way that is similar to simultaneous interpreting. Therefore, this article examines the role of phonological interference in written and oral translation to determine whether or not it also hinders recall in written translation, and to gauge how task requirements affect the comprehension process in translation and interpreting. In this study, comprehension was measured through summarization, multiple choice comprehension questions and cloze questions administered after simultaneous interpretation and translation activities were completed by a group of advanced interpreting students. Results suggest that both translation and interpreting share similar features regarding parallel processing and, furthermore, that the process of comprehension is influenced by the demands associated with translation and simultaneous interpreting.

KEYWORDS:

• Comprehension
• interpreting process
• translation process
• articulatory suppression
• task effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Stephanie Díaz-Galaz is associate professor of translation and interpreting studies at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Her research interests are the interpreting process, the acquisition and development of interpreting skills, and interpreter training.

Alejandro Torres is teaching associate of translation with a specialization in screen translation at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. He holds an MA in Screen Translation from the University of Sheffield. His research interests are audio-visual translation, adaptation, and translator training.

ORCID

Stephanie Díaz-Galaz http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6481-9742

Alejandro Torres http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5500-5226

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fondo de Fomento al Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico under Fondecyt grant number 11150591.