Multimodal and Interactional Aspects of Sight Translation – A Critical Review

Abstract

Sight translation is a method used by interpreters to translate written documents such as verdicts, medical records, and agreements, which often involve civil rights and duties, into speech.Research on sight translation generally adopts a strong monologist focus, overlooking its interactional aspects, and the dominant linguistic understanding of sight translation disguises the effects of the modal shift from writing to speech on communication. Multimodal theory considers the choice of mode to be important for meaning-making; one might choose writing for the sake of precision or speech for its interactional potential. The communicative implications of modal shifts in community interpreting settings have not been sufficiently explored. This article presents a critical review of extant research on sight translation and a discussion of the findings based on multimodal theory. Its aim is to refine the understanding of sight translation and, thereby, raise awareness of potential obstacles in communicative practices which in turn may have consequences for civil rights and participating in today’s multilingual Europe.Resumen: Los intérpretes utilizan la traducción a la vista para transformar en discurso oral documentos escritos como veredictos, historias médicas y contratos, que suelen implicar derechos y deberes civiles. En general, la investigación sobre traducción a la vista adopta un marcado enfoque monológico, y deja de lado el aspecto de la interacción. Asimismo, la perspectiva lingüística dominante oculta los efectos que entraña el cambio de modalidad comunicativa, escrita a oral, sobre la comunicación. Según la teoría multimodal, la modalidad influye en la creación de significado: la comunicación escrita favorece la precisión, mientras que la oral fomenta la interacción. Las consecuencias de los cambios de modalidad sobre la comunicación en la interpretación en contextos públicos no han recibido suficiente atención investigadora. En este artículo se presenta una revisión crítica de la literatura sobre la traducción a la vista y sus conclusiones desde la perspectiva de la teoría multimodal, con el objetivo de contribuir a su comprensión y concienciar sobre posibles obstáculos en la comunicación, que, a su vez, pueden derivar en consecuencias para los derechos civiles y la participación ciudadana en la Europa multilingüe de la actualidad.

Interpreting intercepted communication: From talk to evidence

“…Kaindl, 2012Kaindl, , 2020 and lately also in interpreting studies focusing on hybrid forms such as, for example, sight interpreting (e.g. Havnen, 2019Havnen, , 2022, speech-to-text captioning (e.g. Platter, 2019) or subtitling through respeaking (e.g.…”

Errors in Specialized Translation Training: A Corpus-Based Study on the Sight Translation of a Popular Science Article

“…Although there is no single error framework that has been put forward to be used globally in translation, the literature on the matter agrees on the fact that meaning accuracy holds a central place in translation, and even interpreting, quality. Even if the classification and identification of errors can be knotty (Gile, 1997(Gile, /2002Havnen, 2019;Stenzl, 1983), there are also clear aspects that stand out, such as expression and grammar (form errors), on the one hand, and meaning issues (content errors), on the other hand (Agrifoglio, 2004;Falbo, 1998;Gile, 1984Gile, , 1989Gile, , 1995Gile, , 1997Gile, /2002 When it comes to SiT, studies have been conducted on errors, mostly in the realm of interpreting (Agrifoglio, 2004;Gile, 1983Gile, , 1985aGile, , 1990Gile, , 1995, but it remains underexplored (Li, 2014). Some have analyzed errors between written and SiT (Baxter, 2017;Dragsted & Hansen, 2009), while others have compared SiT with simultaneous and consecutive interpreting, notably Agrifoglio (2004).…”

“…The fact that mistranslation errors are widespread is not surprising. The shift in meaning is among the most common errors discussed in the literature about translation and interpreting (Havnen, 2019). It is worth restating that the participants of the experiment were students.…”

What does professional experience have to offer?

“…In considering SiT as a cross-modal task (Havnen 2019;Vargas-Urpi 2019), two concepts deserving of particular attention are the role played by memory (specifically WM) and the coordination between receiving input via the visual channel and producing and monitoring output via the auditory channel (or kinetic changes as in signed language interpreting (Spitzl & Hlavac 2017).…”