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The aim of the study was to investigate the coordination of source text comprehension and translation in a sight translation task. The study also sought to determine whether translation strategies influence sight translation performance. Two groups of conference interpreters—professionals and trainees—sight translated English sentences into Polish while their eye movements and performance were monitored. Translation demands were manipulated by the use of either high- or low-frequency critical words in the sentences. Translation experience had no effect on first-pass viewing durations, but experts used shorter re-view durations than trainees (especially in the low-frequency condition). Professionals translated more accurately and with less pausing than trainees. Translation in the high-frequency condition was more accurate and had shorter pauses than in the low-frequency condition. Critical word translation accuracy increased with the translation onset latency (TOL) for individual sentences, and pause durations were relatively short when TOLs were either relatively short or long. Together, these findings indicate that, in sight translation, the initial phase of normal reading for comprehension is followed by phases in which reading and translation co-occur, and that translation strategy and translation performance are linked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Respeaking is a method of producing subtitling for live events and TV programmes. Respeakers repeat speakers’ utterances so that they may be changed by speech recognition software into subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. Respeakers need to paraphrase the text so that it conforms with temporal and spatial constraints of subtitling. Due to the similarities between respeaking, interpreting and translation, we tested interpreters, translators and bilingual controls on a paraphrasing task to see whether interpreters or translators would manifest any advantage thanks to experience. Following respeaking training, the participants were asked to paraphrase sentences with semantic redundancies, oral discourse markers and false starts in a simultaneous and delayed condition. Contrary to our predictions, we found that experience did not modulate paraphrasing quality or speed in general, but interpreters did outperform other groups when eliminating semantic redundancies, which were also the most difficult reformulations to tackle for all participants. The data suggest that while interpreters and translators are not better predisposed to become respeakers than regular bilinguals, at least as regards the paraphrasing performance, certain aspects of the interpreting experience (the need to express meaning concisely within time constraints) may offer a slight advantage in producing well-formed respoken subtitles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]