Eye-voice span in sight interpreting: an eye-tracking investigation

ABSTRACT

The time lag between the perception of a source text or utterance and its interpretation has received considerable attention among interpreting researchers. Many studies have explored its association with interpreting output, but the results have generally been inconclusive. Furthermore, these studies have mainly focused on time lag in simultaneous interpreting, while little research has investigated the issue in the context of sight interpreting. To fill this gap, we conducted an eye-tracking study and examined the eye-voice span in sight interpreting from Chinese to English among novice and professional interpreters, as well as its relationship with the interpreting renditions. The results show that a longer eye-voice span predicts a higher rate of errors and disfluencies in the interpreting outputs, and that this is more true for novice interpreters than professional ones. These findings expand our understanding of the utility of eye-voice span as an indication of speech production in sight interpreting.

KEYWORDS:

• Eye-voice span
• sight interpreting
• eye tracking
• interpreting output

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Projects of Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (21YJC740046) (教育部人文社会科学研究青年基金项目“计算机辅助口译技术下的同声传译过程与效果研究”资助,项目批准号: 21YJC740046).

Notes on contributors

Wenchao Su

Wenchao Su (苏雯超) is Associate Professor and Yunshan Young Scholar in the School of Interpreting and Translation Studies and is research fellow of the Center for Translation Studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. Dr. Su holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from University of Macau. She has developed a keen interest in the cognitive and psycholinguistic investigation of translation and interpreting processes and has published her research in leading translation studies journals.