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The evaluation of interpretation quality is fundamental to interpreting development. Previous interpretation evaluation studies focused solely on the interpretation itself, overlooking the interlocutors as recipients of the interpretation. We propose a novel approach by evaluating interpretation through mutual understanding between interlocutors. Using fNIRS hyperscanning, we examined neural activities of 20 interlocutor dyads communicating in Chinese-English context with interpreters. Results showed greater interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in frontal-temporal regions during communication. Notably, INS in the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) positively related to communication quality. Interpretation scores positively predicted INS in the left MTG, while mental load negatively predicted INS in the left inferior frontal gyrus, suggesting that INS in speech comprehension areas signifies interpretation quality at a semantic level. Moreover, the positive correlation between interpretation training time and INS in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex indicates that INS in mentalizing area reflects interpretation quality at a more advanced level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluency is an important yet difficult-to-measure criterion in interpreting assessment. This empirical study of English-Chinese consecutive interpreting aims to identify fluency parameters for a machine-learning-based automated assessment system. The main findings include: (a) empirical evidence supports the choice of the median values as the cut-offs for unfilled pauses and articulation rate; (b) it informs the selection of outliers as particularly long unfilled pauses, relatively long unfilled pauses, particularly slow articulation and relatively slow articulation; (c) number of filled pauses, number of unfilled pauses, number of relatively slow articulation, mean length of unfilled pauses, mean length of filled pauses can be chosen to build machine-learning models to predict interpreting fluency in future studies as they can explain the variance of established temporal measures and show stronger explanatory power than dependent variables when predicting scores. The study identifies assessment rubrics on an empirical basis and provides a methodological solution to automate the labour-intensive tasks in interpreting assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the translator as creative writer, and to call attention to the growing acknowledgment of the literary translator as a skilled artist. Topics include the background information on the translator's professional achievements; practical aspects of his translation experience, and critical statements on the extent, quality, consistency, and Impact of the translator's work.

Consecutive interpreting (CI) plays a crucial role in interpreting practice and education. To gain a better understanding of the skills and competencies needed on the path to consecutive expertise, this study collects empirical data from 22 professional interpreters and 22 students in terms of both the process and product of note-taking and CI in two interpreting directions. Important differences are found between the two groups. During note-taking, the professional group showed such features as higher writing speed, shorter time lag, larger note size, and lower note density than the students. The data also revealed different patterns in their use of symbols and choice of language. As for interpreting quality, the largest difference was found in information completeness, followed by fluency of delivery. Moreover, directionality was found to play an important role in interacting with the differences. Findings of this study point to some areas requiring special attention in CI training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unfilled pauses (UPs) are commonly regarded as an index of interpreting (dis)fluency. Despite their important role, it is not always straightforward in interpreting research to describe and characterize UPs. One potential controversy concerns the selection of a pause threshold to identify UP. A wide range of thresholds, ranging from 0.2–3 s, has been operationalized in interpreting literature. However, there has been little empirical evidence supporting the choice of a particular threshold or informing such selection. The present study, based on a large corpus of 320 English-Chinese consecutive interpretations, intends to generate such evidence by empirically examining the correlations between three acoustically measured, UP-related temporal variables (i.e. number of UPs per minute, mean length of UPs, and phonation time ratio) and rater-generated fluency ratings, for 16 pause thresholds that systematically increased from 0.25s to 1s. Major findings include: a) for both interpreting directions choosing a higher pause threshold generally led to lower correlation coefficients; b) for both directions phonation time ratio had the strongest correlation with subjective fluency ratings; c) stronger correlations were observed in the English-to-Chinese direction than the opposite direction. We discuss these results and provide suggestions regarding the selection of pause thresholds for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although consecutive interpreting of longer stretches of speech inevitably involves repetition and delays, it can also be regarded as a resource for engagement in storytelling. In an open, interpreted conversation on stage about a recently published piece of literature, the participants had to manage several tasks at once: an interview with questions of public interest, a literary reading session with captivating excerpts of adequate length, and the handling of alternating languages on the floor, all within a certain time frame. In the case explored, conversational interactions on different levels, such as repetition, gesture and gaze are analysed, to see both how cross-lingual narration is achieved and what the specific nature of an interpreter-mediated public literary conversation requires from the author, the moderator and the interpreter performing on stage. The study also touches on the role and function of the book as a talking object in the conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the similarities and differences between professional and student interpreters in their use of self-repairs, in terms of form and motivation, and analyzes the impact of expertise on fluency. To this end, a retrospective interview-based Chinese-to-English consecutive interpreting experiment has been carried out, of which the results are as follows. First, both groups adopt repetition, restart, replacement, rephrasing and delayed repair as repair techniques. Second, repair of errors and appropriateness constitute major motivations for self-repair, and repair for output idiomaticity and repair due to errors in the original speech are also observed, enriching the classification of repair motivations in the C-E consecutive interpreting context. Third, in comparison with the student group, the professional interpreters pay more attention to semantic reproduction and are more proficient in syntactic structure conversion, leading to fewer syntactic error repairs and D-repairs in the professional group. The differences in repair models between the two groups can thus be attributed to their varying capabilities in processing syntactic structures and semantic representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student self-assessment has been increasingly used as a formative assessment tool in interpreter education to help students foster learner autonomy, self-regulation and life-long learning. However, there seems to be little empirical research on how interpreting students perceive and view self-assessment. We therefore report a qualitative study, based on 38 students' reflective observations, to shed light on potential benefits and drawbacks of self-assessment which was practiced throughout a ten-week consecutive interpreting course. Inductive content analysis reveals 21 emerging themes, categorized under four general dimensions: Comments (C), Benefits (B), Drawbacks (D) and Suggestions (S). Data analysis indicates that overall self-assessment was beneficial, making students self-aware and self-reflective, but it may also have produced differential effects on different student groups (e.g., motivating some students, while demoralizing others). The study also reveals emergent themes that have not been reported in previous interpreting literature, and identifies some implementation problems that require special attention. Practical implications of the research results are discussed regarding the use of self-assessment as a formative pedagogic exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a first-person action research study in which the teacher-researcher reflects in/on his three-cycle (three-semester) project on summative peer assessment undertaken by undergraduate students using a rating scale. The settings for each cycle were two successive interpreting classes taught by the researcher using the same teaching materials. In each cycle, the participants (students in the two intact classes) were provided with training opportunities for 4 weeks running before the midterm examination. Their examination performances were assessed post situ by either classmates or students in the other class. The way in which the project was implemented in each cycle was changed according to the researcher's analysis of data collected. Data collection methods included reflective journals, interviews, rating sheets, end-of-semester questionnaires, and a validation meeting. This study demonstrates the credibility, benefits, and procedural difficulties of scale-referenced, summative peer assessment in a local interpreter training situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lexical simplification parameters, labeled as representative of the cognitive load in various processes, have been applied in corpus-based studies on translation universals and interpreting outputs. We speculate that the output of simultaneous interpreting (SI), the extreme situation of language control, might be more simplified than that of consecutive interpreting (CI) due to the high cognitive load. To test this hypothesis, the present study examines the simplification patterns of rendered texts, based on a corpus composed of SI and CI output texts, read-out translated speeches and non-interpreted, original English speeches in three dimensions: information density, lexical repetitiveness and lexical sophistication. The results demonstrate that all of the parameters apply more to CI than to SI, indicating that the CI output is more simplified than the SI output. This pattern of results implies that the cognitive load of CI, if not higher, may be as high as that of SI. The research reported here is the first to compare quantitatively the lexical features of the output of CI versus SI. The counterintuitive results lend support to the modification of the established Effort Model of CI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increasing popularity of peer assessment in tertiary-level interpreter education, very little research has been conducted to examine the quality of peer ratings on language interpretation. While previous research on the quality of peer ratings, particularly rating accuracy, mainly relies on correlation and analysis of variance, latent trait modelling emerges as a useful approach to investigate rating accuracy in rater-mediated performance assessment. The present study demonstrates the use of multifaceted Rasch partial credit modelling to explore the accuracy of peer ratings on English-Chinese consecutive interpretation. The analysis shows that there was a relatively wide spread of rater accuracy estimates and that statistically significant differences were found between peer raters regarding rating accuracy. Additionally, it was easier for peer raters to assess some students accurately than others, to peer-assess target language quality accurately than the other rating domains, and to provide accurate ratings to English-to-Chinese interpretation than the other direction. Through these findings, latent trait modelling demonstrates its capability to produce individual-level indices, measure rater accuracy directly, and accommodate sparse data rating designs. It is therefore hoped that substantive inquiries into peer assessment of language interpretation could utilise latent trait modelling to move this line of research forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accuracy of self-assessment has long been examined empirically in higher education research, producing a substantial body of literature that casts light on numerous potential moderators. However, despite the growing popularity of self-assessment in interpreter training and education, very limited evidence-based research has been initiated to shed insight into the formative assessment of language interpretation. This longitudinal study was therefore conducted to investigate to what extent student self-assessments of English-Chinese interpretation are accurate and how the accuracy level would change over time. Major findings are: (1) in general self-assessment accuracy improved over time for both interpreting directions; (2) regarding the three scoring dimensions of information completeness, fluency of delivery and target language quality, there was greater self-assessment accuracy for English-to-Chinese interpretation than in the other direction; (3) while information completeness was most accurately self-assessed in English-to-Chinese direction, the pattern was reversed in the opposite direction; and (4) the students tended to over-score the three quality dimensions for Chinese-to-English interpretation at each time point. These results are discussed in the light of the accuracy issue, its longitudinal trend and potential factors affecting the self-assessment of bidirectional interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the importance of peer assessment in interpreter education, little is known about how peer assessment is experienced by interpreting students. This case study aims to explore how undergraduate students feel about their scale-referenced, peer assessment activities in/for an interpreting examination. For this purpose, three Korean undergraduate students' self-reports of what they experienced in a scale-referenced summative peer assessment project were analysed in detail, using Giorgi's descriptive phenomenological method. The analysis revealed a general meaning structure consisting of the following six constituents: the students (1) worry about the proposed peer assessment scheme and their ability, (2) feel empowered and responsible, (3) realise that assessment results may be greatly divergent, (4) have difficulty applying criteria in practice and suffer from rating fatigue, (5) believe that peer assessment is reliable and helpful and (6) express regrets about feedback. This study provides a better empirical understanding of what peer assessment is like, particularly for teachers interested in scale-referenced, summative peer assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research studies the development of metacognitive skills in students of consecutive interpreting from German into Spanish. The purpose is to discover which self-regulating processes appear after introducing a specific pedagogical action based on metacognitive guides. Our hypothesis is that self-regulating activity will increase as work with the guides advances. We also analyse the changes which occur as the course progresses. The analysis of the corpus enables us to describe metacognitive activity in consecutive interpretation students and also to justify the introduction of a component of self-regulation in teaching andlearning processes. The research contributes to pedagogical development in consecutive interpretation since it sheds light on how to use effective teaching and learning patterns that can lead to self-regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers a problem of normal based two group classification when the groups are artificially dichotomized by a screening variable. Each group distribution is derived and the best regions for the classification are obtained. These derivations yield yet another classification rule. The rule is studied from several aspects such as the distribution of the rule, the optimal error rate, and the testing of a hypothesis. This article gives relationships among these aspects along with the investigation of the performance of the rule. The classification method and ideas are illustrated in detail with two examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we consider the distributions of the number of success runs of specified length and scans on a higher-order Markov tree under three different enumeration schemes (the “non overlapping”, the “at least”, and the “overlapping” scheme). Recursive formulae for the evaluation of their probability generating functions are established. We provide a proper framework for extending the exact distribution theory of runs and scans from based on sequences to based on directed trees. Some numerical results for the run and scan statistics are given in order to illustrate the computational aspects and the feasibility of our theoretical results. Finally, two special reliability systems are considered, which are closely related to our general results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standing at the centre of a dynamic process of communication between communicators from different cultures, consecutive interpreters adapt to the oral interpretational eco-environment through selective adaptation and selection. Providing exemplification and analyses from his own thirty-odd years of experience of work with English-Chinese and Chinese-English consecutive interpreting, the author first discusses the oral interpretational eco-environment and the interpreter's adaptation and selection to it. On this basis, he then classifies the interpreter's selective adaptation in consecutive interpreting into three types: i) adaptive replication; ii) adaptive reduction, and iii) adaptive addition. The interpretational and situational examples of adaptation and selection clearly demonstrate that when interpreting is regarded as a process of the interpreter's adaptation to the oral interpretational eco-environment, this leads to an effective rendition. This article not only confirms the theoretical approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection, but may also be helpful for students of interpreting as well as practicing interpreters by heightening their awareness of factors that have a bearing on their performance in specific situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]