Impact of Directionality on Student Interpreters’ Performance in Consecutive Interpreting

Abstract

Studies showed that interpreters might differ in performance when it comes to directionality. Nevertheless, limited research has been undertaken concerning the impact of directionality on student interpreters’ performance in consecutive interpreting (CI), a type of interpreting categorised by the working mode. This study aims to investigate the relationship between directionality and performance by adopting a quantitative approach. Four student interpreters from a Chinese university were selected as samples with a homogeneity sampling method. The participants used Chinese as their first language (L1, or A language) and English as a second language (L2, or B language). Analytic rating scales were combined with propositional analysis to assign scores for different aspects of accuracy and completeness in the product of the CI test by student interpreters. To determine the impact of directionality on performance, paired samples t-test was adopted in the current study by testing the significance of the difference between two mean scores of the CI test. The results showed that directionality affected the performance of student interpreters. Overall, the participants performed better in the into-B direction than in the into-A direction. Thus, it is recommended that teachers pay more attention to training listening comprehension ability of the source text in into-A direction.

Lexical density, lexical diversity, and lexical sophistication in simultaneously interpreted texts: a cognitive perspective

“…Interpreters’ performance in each direction also varies based on their own bilingual proficiency, which is referred to as the “asymmetry effect” or “directionality effect” ( Chou et al, 2021 ). Empirical studies ( Darò et al, 1996 ; Mead, 2000 ; Chen, 2020 ; Chou et al, 2021 ; Lu et al, 2023 ) have confirmed the existence of the directionality effect but have not reached a consensus on which interpreting direction imposes a higher cognitive load on interpreters or yields better or worse performance.…”

“…However, there are still advocates for interpreting in this direction. Studies have shown that interpreting from one’s A language achieves a higher level of accuracy and completeness ( Rinne et al, 2000 ; Lu et al, 2023 ) because of the minimal mental effort required for understanding the source speech in one’s native language. This, in turn, facilitates better quality of the interpreting output ( Denissenko, 1989 ) and smooth delivery ( Chen, 2020 ).…”