Strategic Assessment of EVS Regulation during Simultaneous Interpreting

Abstract

As a temporal aspect of simultaneous interpreting (SI) and a variable susceptible to source language (SL) factors, ear-voice span (EVS) has been used as a reliable measure of both interpreter's cognitive processing and the quality of his output (Barik, 2002; Gile, 2008; Goldman-Eisler, 1980). This study sets out to measure temporally and linguistically the EVS patterns adopted by a professional interpreter during Persian-English SI alongside a strategic assessment of his EVS regulation. The speaker’s and interpreter’s outputs were collected in a real conference setting. With the aid of Sound Forge, a comparative analysis was made on synchronized SL-TL wave files to detect different EVS patterns adopted by the interpreter. Following the detection of EVS patterns, an intertextual assessment of interpretations was carried out to detect the types of EVS regulation strategies. Quite commensurate with Goldman-Eisler’s (1972) findings, the results from linguistic EVS measurement indicated that the SL verb is a main determinant of meaning and a reliable point of departure for the interpreter to commence interpreting. However, shorter EVS patterns like NP, NP+NP and NP+PP were also found to act as interpretation openers and the interpreter facing the verb-last structure of Persian input did not always give out long EVS patterns, but strategically opted for short and optimal VP-less EVS patterns with reliance on a set of regulation strategies to eschew insidious cognitive overload and present a successful SI performance. From didactic optique, it is recommended that the EVS regulation strategies detected in this study like skipping, filtering, generalization, stalling, chunking and anticipation could be wisely incorporated into an interpreter training syllabus.