Experimental Report Of The Effect Of Speech Recognition On Consecutive Interpreting

The author carries out an experiment on consecutive interpreting with automatic speech recognition(ASR)technology.With Daniel Gile’s Effort Model for consecutive interpreting as the theoretical framework,this experimental report explores whether ASR can better the performance of interpreting learners,and further discusses if there is any different effect that ASR exerts on the participants’ performance between English to Chinese(E-C)and Chinese to English(C-E)consecutive interpreting or between short and long paragraphs.The author selects 8 paragraphs,4 for E-C interpreting and 4 for C-E interpreting,and both have 2 long and 2 short paragraphs.All the 4 short paragraphs are chosen from China Accreditation Test for translators and Interpreters(CATTI)Level 3,and all the 4 long paragraphs are chosen from China Accreditation Test for translators and Interpreters(CATTI)Level 2.All the9 participants are the second grade graduate students from Southwestern University of Finance and Economics(SWUFE),majoring in Master of Translation and Interpreting(MTI).The participants have to conduct two groups of experiment.Group A is consecutive interpreting without ASR,while Group B is with the assistance of ASR.Both groups include 2 paragraphs of Chinese and 2paragraphs of English,and one piece is shorter while the other is longer.The author adopts iflyrec,a speech recognition application with high accuracy rate by i Flytek,to recognize the interpreting materials of Group B and videos the recognizing process for the experiment.The participants’ performance will be scored according to the marking sheet,which is adapted from the scoring chart of interpreting test by Yang Chengshu.The results of the experiment show that ASR is able to improve the participants’ performance,and the assisting effect is more evident in interpreting long paragraphs,under the premise of the high accuracy rate and stability of ASR.However,there is no sign that shows which one’s effect is better with assistance of ASR for E-C and C-E interpreting.The author hopes to see more relevant research in the future and looks forward to the application of ASR technology to interpreting one day.