On The English-Chinese SI Performance Of Student Interpreters With Higher And Lower Working Memory Span

Working Memory is playing an important role in cognitive processing,especially in complex processing activities.Simultaneous Interpreting,a task requiring heavy processing resources,is supported by Working Memory(WM)in a certain way.Many studies show that WM and SI are highly correlated,and some postulated that interpreters with higher WM perform better in the SI task.This study intends to explore the detailed representation of WM in an English-Chinese(E-C)SI context.First,the study administered two Working Memory tasks,an E-C SI task and a Sight Translation(ST)task of the same material to 10 student interpreters.Second,interpreters are divided into two groups on the basis of their WM tasks performance — the higher WM span group(H-WM)and the lower WM span group(L-WM),the performance of participants’ SI and ST were transcribed,and the errors and omissions at three different significance levels were marked in the transcription.Thirdly,the frequency of errors and omissions at different degrees were counted and the two WM groups’ Trimmed Mean(TM)of the errors and omissions frequency were calculated.The study later compared and analyzed the two WM group’s data.The frequency contrast shows that 1)the H-WM group has fewer omissions than the L-WM group,especially complete and severe omissions;2)the L-WM group tends to be more affected by a high speech rate and therefore omits more and pauses more;3)although the H-WM group has fewer omissions,there is no big difference between their errors frequency and that of the L-WM group.According to the results,WM span and SI performance are correlated,especially in the relationship between WM and omissions in SI.Higher WM enables interpreters to process more information and therefore reduce omissions,especially severe ones.Therefore,the present study suggests that WM training could be added or increased in SI training to improve student interpreters’ information processing capacity,and to better cope with high speech rate in SI.Meanwhile,interpreters with high WM capacity could work more on accuracy,reduce their errors and craft their delivery.Moreover,based on the frequency data as well as Gile’s Effort Model,the studyfurther analyzed the paragraph that stumped both WM groups,with the help of the SI and ST transcription.Effort increase caused by the speaker as well as the interpreters themselves were analyzed: problem triggers caused by the speaker are 1)drastic fluctuation of the source speech rate;2)liaison in a fast speech rate;3)unclear pronouns in oral expression;and by the interpreters are 1)key information missing at the start of a paragraph;2)inaccurate retrieval of the target language.These problem triggers could be included in SI training,and coping tactics for these situations could be further formulated for a better SI performance.