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The global spread of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has caused a fundamental change to translation and interpreting (T&I). Translation and interpreting used to revolve around bilingual mediation between native speakers and native listeners. In interpreting, in particu­lar, more often than not, source speeches are now produced by non-native English speakers. The impact of this development has the potential to uproot our traditional understanding of T&I. This article sets out to describe how ELF or, more specifically, input produced by non-native English speakers under ELF conditions, differs from the native-speaker input, transla­tors and interpreters used to be dealing with. It gauges the consequences of these differences for translation and interpreting and examines how fundamental a change it is navigating between non-native speakers and listeners, as compared to the traditional situation of mediat­ing between speakers and listeners operating in their respective first languages. This culmi­nates in an exploration of the question as to whether there is reason to speak of a paradigm shift in translation and interpreting studies.

Erworben im Rahmen der Schweizer Nationallizenzen (http://www.nationallizenzen.ch) The focus to date on interactive encounters has resulted in there being little research into monological texts and speeches produced in English as a lingua franca (ELF) contexts. They are, however, the very substance of what interpreters and translators increasingly deal with today. The quality of these language professionals’performance depends to a large extent on the input they receive. From a translation and interpreting studies (TIS) perspective, understanding what makes an ELF text or speech special and different seems paramount. In this paper, we present an innovative approach to exploring what is in an ELF text. We introduce the concepts of ‘ELF density’ and ‘ELF dense spots’ to capture and visualize types and tokens of ELF features as well as clusters they form at a local and more global level across stretches of text or speech and discuss a number of methodological challenges in determining ELF density. Based on a preliminary retrospective verbal protocol and interview analysis following 26 professional interpreters’ renditions, we aim to demonstrate the concepts’ added value for TIS, but also for non-TIS related applied linguistic tasks geared towards ELF.

The focus to date on interactive encounters has resulted in there being little research into monological texts and speeches produced in English as a lingua franca (ELF) contexts, which are often more abstract and technically complex than contributions to interactional conversations and discussions. They are, however, what conference interpreters and translators increasingly deal with in monological settings, where pragmatic and cooperative strategies of meaning negotiation do not apply. The quality of these language professionals' performance depends to a large extent on the input they receive. For them, but also for other multilinguals in such settings, understanding what makes an ELF text or speech special and different and perhaps even difficult to process seems paramount. Thanks to their multilingual expertise and in-depth coherence-building capacities, interpreters are usually able to resolve individual non-conformities with relative ease, but perhaps less so when ELF features accumulate. In this paper, we introduce the concepts of ‘ELF density’ and ‘ELF dense spots’ to capture and visualize types and tokens of ELF features as well as clusters they form at a local and more global level across stretches of text or speech. Based on data from the larger-scale CLINT (Cognitive Load in Interpreting and Translation) project and the analysis of retrospective verbal protocols and interviews following 26 professional interpreters’ renditions, we present an innovative approach to describing ELF material and exploring potential difficulties associated with processing monological ELF input.

References: - Albl-Mikasa, Michaela (2021). English as a lingua franca: a paradigm shift for Translation & Interpreting? Slovo 12(4), forthcoming. - Déjean Le Féal, Karla 1990. Some thoughts on the evaluation of simultaneous interpretation . In D. Bowen & M. Bowen (eds) Interpreting— Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow . New York : SUNY , 154 – 160 . - Reithofer , Karin 2010 . English as a lingua franca vs. interpreting— Battleground or peaceful co- existence . The Interpreters’ Newsletter 15 , 143 – 157 . - Setton, R. (1999). Simultaneous Interpretation. A Cognitive-Pragmatic Analysis. John Benjamins. - Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (2001). Relevance: Communication and cognition (2nd ed). Blackwell Publishers. In Déjean Le Feal’s classic definition of conference interpreting some amount of agency, which is generally attributed to community interpreting, and deviation from the conduit ideal is already factored in: “What our listeners receive through their earphones […] should have the same cognitive content and be presented with equal clarity and precision in the same type of language if not better, given that we are professional communicators, while many speakers are not, and sometimes even have to express themselves in languages other than their own” (1990: 155, my emphasis). That some amount of “improvement” is particularly relevant in non-native English speaker settings has been pointed out by Reithofer (2010: 151). While Reithofer’s PhD results show that conference participants reliance on interpretation yields better comprehension scores than direct listening to the ELF speaker, it is as yet unclear, what this “improvement” consists in or what interpreters actually do in target speech production to enable such better comprehension. Relevance Theory (RT) (Sperber/Wilson 2001) provides the tools to analyze in detail the changes interpreters make to source text input. The fleshing out of explicatures by means of enrichments, disambiguations and reference assignments is particularly transparent in mediated communication where fleshed out target speech can be compared to underspecified source speech input. From an RT perspective, interpreters, when mediating between native speakers, are meant “to convey the message to the hearers at the same level of relevance, i.e. requiring on their part no more effort for the derivation of the same contextual effects than is required of members of the audience who are listening to the Speaker directly" (Setton, 1999: 230). Under ELF conditions, however, preliminary research results suggest a need for greater agency (Albl-Mikasa 2021), which would translate into extra enrichment, disambiguation and reference assignment processes requiring additional cognitive effort. As part of a larger project on cognitive load in processing ELF input, this paper presents an RT analysis of eight professional interpreters’ renditions of ELF speaker input, demonstrating how and to what degree they "elaborate or embellish" (Setton 1999: 230), and attempting to answer the question as to whether the tenet of speaker fidelity shifts towards greater agency in conference as in community interpreting.

In previous work, we have outlined the effects that English as a lingua franca (ELF) or, more specifcally, the increasing number of non-standard English source texts (in specialized and public service translation) and speeches (in conference and community interpreting) can have on translation and interpreting (T&I) processing, performance, and quality (Albl-Mikasa and Ehrensberger-Dow 2019). We have also suggested that the respective research fields can be merged into the subdiscipline of Interpreting, Translation and English as a lingua franca (ITELF). In this chapter, we take a closer look at how Translation Studies and Interpreting Studies converge in facing and addressing similar issues and questions raised by the ubiquity of ELF in most places in the modern world. We consider fundamental translation and interpreting (T&I) concepts with different labels (e.g. speaker fidelity – loyalty) and contrast their relevance under what have been considered standard vs ELF conditions.

This chapter provides an overview of research into the implications the global spread of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has had for conference interpreting over the past decade, during which the subfield of ITELF (interpreting, translation and English as a lingua franca) has evolved. It details the complete list of empirical studies carried out so far and outlines the consequences for central topics in conference interpreting, namely interpreting quality, cognitive demands, interpreting strategies and capacity management, interpreters’ self-concept and interpreter training. It also addresses preliminary insights into how conference interpreting under ELF conditions could be rethought. It concludes with a table summarizing the changes in the parameters and premises that characterize the new paradigm of interpreting input from a majority of non-native English speakers.

Over the last decades, English has become the unchallenged lingua franca at international gatherings. English as a lingua franca (ELF) is not without consequences for interpreters in that they increasingly face the difficult task of having to interpret non-native speakers. Much of the ELF-related research in interpreting studies has so far focused on non-native accented speech. Current surveys among interpreters suggest, however, that accent is not the only difficulty. Instead, it seems that non-native speeches are characterized by a wide range of phenomena such as lack of cohesion and unclear argumentation, lexical and grammatical irregularities, increased explicitness and signs of processing, all of which may contribute to adding to the interpreters’ cognitive burden. In the SNSF-funded CLINT-project, we are currently addressing this research gap. Ongoing data collection allows us to look at the simultaneous English to German interpretations of 20 professional interpreters for the investigation of the effect of ELF on interpreting. The authentic source speech delivered at a conference on energy-related matters was produced by a non-native English speaker. It was recorded, transcribed and re-spoken by a Canadian native speaker to control for accent. In-depth analysis confirmed that it contained a considerable number of phenomena typical of ELF-speeches, which may affect interpreters’ cognitive load. Interpreters were also presented with a second version of the same speech which was edited to comply with standard British English. Ten participants interpreted the original ELF-version of the speech, the other ten participants interpreted the edited version of the same speech. Based on the assumption of higher cognitive load involved in interpreting an ELF speech, we expected to find an overall lower interpreting quality as well as an effect of fatigue, reflected in an earlier decline in interpreting quality. Interpreting quality is a multifaceted concept, a major aspect of which is accuracy or, more precisely, completeness and sense consistency with the source text. At the HKBU Conference we propose to present a promising method for the quantitative assessment of sense consistency and completeness of a target text over time. The newly designed method has been used on the first set of data, or first 20 interpretations, procured as part of the above-mentioned project.

Translatorische Aufbereitung im Zeitalter von Englisch als Lingua franca – ein Paradigmenwechsel? Sinn und Kontext sind die Eckpfeiler der Verdolmetschung und Übersetzung. Fallen diese in sich zusammen, wenn sie von ELF untergraben und ausgehöhlt werden? ELF oder Englisch als Lingua franca bezieht sich auf die globale Ausbreitung von zunehmend nichtmuttersprachlichem Englisch in der mündlichen wie schriftlichen Kommunikation und damit einhergehend auf mehr und mehr von Nichtmuttersprachlern produzierte Ausgangsreden und -texte. Die Tragweite dieser Entwicklung für das Dolmetschen und Übersetzen ist noch wenig erforscht, es zeichnet sich allerdings ab, dass sie gravierend sein könnte. Denn Sinn bzw. mentale Kohärenzbildung und Kontext bzw. situative Einflussfaktoren sind über kognitiv-inferentielle Verarbeitungsprozesse auf vielfältige Weise verflochten und voneinander abhängig. Was passiert, wenn die zentrale Kohärenzbildung durch hybriden, nichtstandardgemäßem Sprachgebrauch gestört wird, wenn sich der Ko-Text auf grammatischer, semantischer und pragmatischer Ebene als unzuverlässig erweist, wenn wichtige Kontextfaktoren wie Textproduzentensprache und - kultur nicht mehr einschätzbar sind? Wie nehmen Dolmetscher ihre Verantwortung bezüglich Rednertreue oder genauer und vollständiger Wiedergabe wahr, wenn die Aussageintention unklar formuliert ist, wenn dem Redneranliegen kein Vertrauen geschenkt werden kann und wenn die Inputanalyse Kapazitäten vom Produktionsprozess abzieht? Und wie werden sie dem Kredo „faithful in message and style“ (Gile 1992: 189) gerecht, wenn sich dieses auf eine Ausgangsrede bezieht, die der Redner vielleicht lieber anders präsentiert hätte, wäre er dazu in der Lage gewesen (gemäß dem Motto: dans la langue maternelle on dit ce-qu’on veut, dans une langue étrangère ce que l’on peut)? Und die Übersetzerin, wie kann sie einen natürlich und idiomatisch klingenden Zieltext verfassen, wenn der Ausgangstext vielleicht das ganze Gegenteil ist? Besteht ihre Aufgabe im “creating the illusion of the non-hybrid text” (Pym 2001: 11)? Ist es überhaupt Sinn und Zweck des Dolmetschens und Übersetzens, Kompensations- und Optimierungsmaßnahmen zu ergreifen und anzuwenden? Ist das vielleicht das künftige Alleinstellungsmerkmal von Dolmetschenden und Übersetzenden, ihr Wettbewerbsvorteil? Aber was bedeutet es für Dolmetschqualität, Nutzererwartungen, Skopos und Adressatenorientierung? Würden Ausgangstextproduzenten einer Aufbereitung und Optimierung Ihrer Texte zustimmen? Wollen und – in Anbetracht der begrenzten Ressourcen – können Dolmetscher überhaupt den Zusatzaufwand für Normalisierungsmaßnahmen auf sich nehmen oder Übersetzer mehr Zeit in den gleichen Zeilenpreis investieren? Auf diese etwas zugespitzt formulierten Fragen geht der Vortrag im Rahmen der bisherigen, sehr begrenzten Forschungsergebnisse ein, um ein Bild zu zeichnen von einer sich schnell wandelnden Situation, die einem Paradigmenwechsel in der Translationswissenschaft gleichkommt.

Since English has become the dominant global language, research efforts have mostly concentrated on spoken English as a lingua franca (ELF). Written ELF is largely under-researched both in relation to translation and otherwise. This study examines ‘before and after’ texts made available by the European Parliament’s Editing Unit. The original texts were written by non-native English speakers (before) and subsequently revised by native English editors (after) with a view to delivering consistent edited source texts as a basis for translation into different EU languages. In a pre-study, 12 texts (and their edited versions) were scrutinised for potential translation problems. In the main study, three of the 12 originals and their three edited counterparts were translated by six professional translators. A mixed-method approach was adopted: product-based analysis of the translations for actual translation problems combined with screen-recording-prompted retrospective translator comments and screen-recording-based indicators for the time taken to translate edited and non-edited segments. The results suggest that there is a sufficiently large number of challenges arising from non-standard source segments to prolong translational decision-making and provoke inadequate solutions.

Erworben im Rahmen der Schweizer Nationallizenzen (http://www.nationallizenzen.ch), In ELF research, ample evidence has been collected to show that communication in (dialogic) ELF interactions works and that it does so in intriguingly creative ways. In a questionnaire survey and an in-depth interview study, simultaneous conference interpreters present a less optimistic view with regard to (monologic) mediated multilingual settings, which are increasingly shaped by a growing number of non-native English-speaking participants. Moreover, the interpreters put the adverse effects of ELF speaker output on their cognitive processing down to the speakers’ restricted power of expression. This is paralleled by empirical evidence from ELF speakers in TELF (the Tübingen English as a Lingua Franca corpus and database), who put into perspective their general feeling that they can cope in ELF interactions (which is in line with the ELF study findings mentioned above) by voicing dissatisfaction with their restricted capacity of expressing what they want to convey with the required or desired degree of precision. In a theoretical discussion, the Express-ability Principle is introduced to capture the nature of the human effort for expression (complementary to Bartlett’s effort after meaning). In the subsequent presentation, sociocultural and psycholinguistic research sheds light on express-ability in the context of ELF by applying Slobin’s Thinking for Speaking (TFS) hypothesis to second-language contexts. It reveals the interface between verbal (L1) thinking and externalized (L2) speech and explains expression-related problems in terms of transfer effects in connection with age of acquisition and linguistic environment. This directs further ELF research into the nature of express-ability towards an examination of production processes, developmental and procedural aspects in early and late bilingual ELF speakers, a shared languages benefit to compensate for cross-linguistic transfer and the (relative) effectiveness of unmediated and mediated ELF communication.