Agnieszka Chmiel

What experimental studies can tell us about directionality in interpreting

Agnieszka Chmiel, Department of Translation Studies, Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Interpreting into one’s native language is favoured by many international organisations and a standard on various national markets (Seleskovitch and Lederer 1989), although interpreting into both directions is a common practice in many countries, especially when languages of limited diffusion are involved (Denissenko 1989, Chernov 1992, Lim 2005). The majority of previous studies on the directionality effect confirm superior performance in B-A direction (Gran and Fabbro 1988, Chang 2005, Donovan 2005, Mead 2005). Only two studies to date have shown A-B directionality advantage (Tommola and Helevä 1998, Kurz and Färber 2003).

For the purposes of the present paper, I reanalysed data from my previous studies (Chmiel 2016a, 2016b, 2018) that involved professional conference interpreters (with Polish as their A language and English as their B language) and employed language direction as the independent variable. The interpreters participated in memory, lexical recognition and lexical production tasks. They obtained higher working memory scores in Polish as compared to English. In a priming study, they recognized words in their A languages faster than in their B language and manifested a priming effect only in the A-B direction, thus suggesting a native language comprehension advantage. In a task involving word translation production in a sentence context, interpreters performed faster in the A-B direction in high context constraint and faster in the B-A direction in low context constraint, showing better anticipation in their native language.

The studies create a complex pattern of results. In terms of memory, comprehension and anticipation, it might be more efficient to work in the A-B direction while in terms of production, it might be better to work in the B-A direction. These results show that both A-B and B-A interpreting can be time-efficient but due to different factors.

References

Chang, Chia-chien 2005. „Directionality in Chinese/English simultaneous interpreting: Impact on performance and strategy use.”Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.

Chernov, Ghelly V. 1992. „Conference interpretation in the USSR: History, theory, new frontiers.”  Meta 37 (1):149-162.

Chmiel, Agnieszka. 2016a. „In search of the working memory advantage in conference interpreting – Training, experience and task effects.”  International Journal of Bilingualism. doi: 10.1177/1367006916681082.

Chmiel, Agnieszka. 2016b. „Directionality and context effects in word translation tasks performed by conference interpreters.”  Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 52 (2):269-295.

Chmiel, Agnieszka. 2018. „Meaning and words in the conference interpreter’s mind – effects of interpreter training and experience in a semantic priming study.”  Translation, Cognition & Behaviour 1 (1).

Denissenko, Jurij. 1989. „Communicative and interpretative linguistics.” In The theoretical and practical aspects of teaching conference interpretation, edited by Laura Gran and John Dodds, 155-158. Udine: Campanotto.

Donovan, Clare. 2005. „Teaching simultaneous interpretation into B: A challenge for responsible interpreter training.”  Communication and Cognition. Monographies 38 (1-2):147-166.

Gran, Laura, and Franco Fabbro. 1988. „The role of neuroscience in the teaching of interpretation.”  The Interpreters’ Newsletter 1:23-41.

Kurz, Ingrid, and Birgit Färber. 2003. „Anticipation in German-English simultaneous interpreting.”  Forum 1 (2):123-150.

Lim, Hyang-Ok. 2005. „Working into the B Language: The Condoned Taboo?”  Meta: Journal des traducteurs 50 (4). doi: 10.7202/019870ar.

Mead, Peter. 2005. „Directionality and fluency: an experimental study of pausing in consecutive interpretation into English and Italian.”  Communication and Cognition. Monographies 38 (1-2):127-146.

Seleskovitch, Danica, and Marianne Lederer. 1989. Pédagogie raisonnée de l’interprétation, Collection “Traductologie” 4. Paris: Didier.

Tommola, Jorma, and Marketta Helevä. 1998. „Language direction and source text complexity: Effects on trainee performance in simultaneous interpreting.” In Unity in diversity. Current trends in translation studies, edited by Lynne Bowker, Michael Cronin, Dorothy Kenny and Jennifer Pearson, 177-186. Manchester: St. Jerome.