The influence of domain knowledge on simultaneous interpreting tasks performed by students: An exploratory study of the interpreting process

Abstract

This senior thesis aims to analyze the role that domain knowledge—as both declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge—plays on the performance and understanding of simultaneous interpreting tasks performed by translation students. The participants of this study were students from two classes of the undergraduate program in Translation of the Federal University of Uberlândia. A questionnaire was applied to assess whether the students’ beliefs about simultaneous interpreting changed after they had acquired theoretical and practical training to perform simultaneous interpreting tasks. Recordings of a simultaneous interpreting session were analyzed to assess whether domain knowledge had an impact on the cognitive effort of the students as measured through six cognitive effort markers, namely: (a) omissions, (b) additions, (c) head starts, (d) pauses, (e) meaning errors, (f) and logical-time sequence errors. The software Sanako 9.3 was used to record the interpreting sessions, and the software ELAN 5.2 was used to analyze these data from the recordings. The results point out that some of the beliefs changed (i.e., regarding the role of interpreter’s training, the importance of domain knowledge to the interpreter’s performances), while others did not (e.g., regarding the need for a special gift to perform an interpreting task). The results also indicate that the students’ declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge changed after they had received theoretical and practical training in simultaneous interpreting. However, it was not sufficient to help them find interpreting strategies to avoid a high level of cognitive effort, which eventually ended up with several errors and problematic renditions in the target language. This research contributes to both translation process research and simultaneous interpreter training. Keywords: Translation Process Research. Simultaneous Interpreting. Domain Knowledge. Interpreter Training. Students’ Beliefs.