Due to limits on the reallocation of cognitive effort during sight translation, comprehension problems are likely to be more disruptive than they would be in written translation. Eye movements during the processing of “disrupted” experimental texts should reveal important information about the influence of disruptions on cognition. Experiments were conducted manipulating syntactic complexity in stimuli texts in order to determine the effect on cognitive effort. The results showed the predicted syntactic effect and indicated that sight translation is more sensitive to disruption than written translation. The results also indicated that sight translation is extraordinarily sensitive to visual interference because of the continued presence of the source text.