Article published In:
Translation and Interpreting StudiesVol. 11:2 (2016) ► pp.202–224
The effect of informational load on disfluencies in interpreting
A corpus-based regression analysis
This article attempts to measure the cognitive or informational load in interpreting by modelling the occurrence rate of the speech disfluency uh(m). In a corpus of 107 interpreted and 240 non-interpreted texts, informational load is operationalized in terms of four measures: delivery rate, lexical density, percentage of numerals, and average sentence length. The occurrence rate of the indicated speech disfluency was modelled using a rate model. Interpreted texts are analyzed based on the interpreter’s output and compared with the input of non-interpreted texts, and measure the effect of source text features. The results demonstrate that interpreters produce significantly more uh(m)s than non-interpreters and that this difference is mainly due to the effect of lexical density on the output side. The main source predictor of uh(m)s in the target text was shown to be the delivery rate of the source text. On a more general level of significance, the second analysis also revealed an increasing effect of the numerals in the source texts and a decreasing effect of the numerals in the target texts.
Keywords: rate model, disfluencies, cognitive load, corpus linguistics, interpreting
References (53)
Agresti, Alan. 2013. Categorical Data Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Alessandrini, Maria S. 1990. “Translating Numbers in Consecutive Interpretation: An Experimental Study.” The Interpreters’ Newsletter 31: 77–80.
Arnold, Jennifer E., Thomas Wasow, Anthony Losongco, and Ryan Ginstrom. 2000. “Heaviness vs. Newness: The Effects of Structural Complexity and Discourse Status on Constituent Ordering.” Language 76 (1): 28–55. 
Arnold, Jennifer E., Maria Fagnano, and Michael K. Tanenhaus. 2003. “Disfluencies Signal Theee, Um, New Information.” Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2003 (3): 25–36.
Bachy, Sylviane, Anne Dister, Michel. Francard, Geneviève Geron, Vincent Giroul, Philippe Hambye, Anne-Catherine Simon, and Régine Wilmet. 2007. Conventions de Transcription Régissant les Corpus de la Banque de Données VALIBEL. [Transcription Conventions of the Corpora Included in the VALIBEL Database] <[URL]>
Baker, Mona. 1993. “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications.” In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, ed. by Mona Baker, Gill Francis, and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, 233–250. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Barik, Henri C. 1975. “Simultaneous Interpretation: Qualitative and Linguistic Data.” Language and Speech 18 (3): 272–297.
Bortfeld, Heather, Silvia D. Leon, Jonathan E. Bloom, Michael F. Schober, and Susan E. Brennan. 2001. “Disfluency Rates in Conversation: Effects of Age, Relationship, Topic, Role, and Gender.” Language and Speech 44 (2): 123–147.
Broadbent, Donald E. 1958. Perception and Communication. London: Pergamon Press.
Cecot, Michela. 2001. “Pauses in Simultaneous Interpretation: A Contrastive Analysis of Professional Interpreters’ Performances.” The Interpreters’ Newsletter 111: 63–85.
Chmiel, Agnieszka, and Iwona Mazur. 2013. “Eye Tracking Sight Translation Performed by Trainee Interpreters.” In Tracks and Treks in Translation Studies, ed. by Way, Catherine, Sonia Vandepitte, Reine Meylaerts, and Magdalena Bartłomiejczyk, 189–205. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Clark, Herbert H., and Jean E. Fox Tree. 2002. “Using uh and um in Spontaneous Speaking.” Cognition 841: 73–111.
Dillinger, Mike. 1994. “Comprehension during Interpreting: What do Interpreters know that Bilinguals Don’t?” In Bridging the Gap: Empirical Research in Simultaneous Interpretation, ed. by Sylvie Lambert and Barbara Moser-Mercer, 155–189. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Faraway, Julian J. 2006. Extending the Linear Model with R. Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall/CRC.
Flesch, Rudolph. 1948. “A New Readability Yardstick.” Journal of Applied Psychology 32 (3): 221–233.
Fox, John. 2003. “Effect Displays in R for Generalised Linear Models.” Journal of Statistical Software 8 (15): 1–27.
Fox, John, and Sanford Weisberg. 2011. An R Companion to Applied Regression, Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, London and New Delhi: SAGE Publications.
Gerver, David. 1969. “The Effects of Source Language Presentation Rate on the Performance of Simultaneous Conference Interpreters.” In Proceedings of the 2nd Louisville Conference on Rate and/or Frequency Controlled Speech, ed. by Emerson Foulke, 162–184. University of Louisville: Centre for Rate-Controlled Recordings.
. 1975. “A Psychological Approach to Simultaneous Interpretation.” Meta 20 (2): 119–128.
. 1976. “Empirical Studies of Simultaneous Interpretation: A Review and a Model.” In Translation: Applications and Research, ed. by Richard W. Brislin, 165–207. New York: Gardner Press.
Gibson, Tim. R. 1993. Towards a Discourse Theory of Abstracts and Abstracting. Nottingham: University of Nottingham.
Gile, Daniel. 1995. Regards sur la recherche en interprétation de conférence. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille.
. 1997. “Conference Interpreting as a Cognitive Management Problem.” In Cognitive Processes in Translation and Interpreting, ed. by Joseph H. Danks, Gregory M. Shreve, Stephen B. Fountain, and Michael McBeath, 196–214. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
. 1999. “Testing the Effort Model’s Tightrope Hypothesis in Simultaneous Interpreting – A Contribution.” Hermes 221: 51–79.
. 2008. “Local Cognitive Load in Simultaneous Interpreting and its Implications for Empirical Research.” Forum 61: 59–77.
. 2009. Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goldman-Eisler, Frieda. 1967. “Sequential Temporal Patterns and Cognitive Processes in Speech.” Language and Speech 10 (3): 122–132.
Haeseryn, Walter, Kirsten Romijn, Guido Geerts, Jaap de Rooij, and Maarten C. van den Toorn. 1997. Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst. [General Dutch Grammar.] Groningen/Deurne: Martinus Nijhoff/Wolters Plantyn.
Kintsch, Walter, Ely Kozminsky, William J. Streby, Gail McKoon, and Janice M. Keenan. 1975. “Comprehension and Recall of Text as a Function of Content Variables.” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 14 (2): 158–169.
Levelt, Willem. 1983. “Monitoring and Self-Repair in Speech.” Cognition 141: 41–104.
Mazza, Cristina. 2001. “Numbers in Simultaneous Interpretation.” The Interpreters’ Newsletter 111: 87–104.
Mead, Peter. 2000. “Control of Pauses by Trainee Interpreters in Their A and B Languages.” The Interpreters’ Newsletter 101: 89–102.
Mizuno, Akira. 1999. “Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Simultaneous Interpretation from English into Japanese.” Interpreting Research 8 (2): 31–41.
Moser-Mercer, Barbara. 1978. “Simultaneous Interpretation: A Hypothetical Model and its Practical Application.” In Language interpretation and communication. Proceedings of the NATO symposium, Venice, Italy, September 26–October 1, 1977, ed. by David Gerver and Wallace Sinaiko, 353–368. New York and London: Plenum Press.
Oostdijk, Nelleke. 2000. “The Spoken Dutch Corpus: Overview and First Evaluation.” In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, ed. by Maria Gravilidou, George Carayannis, Stella Markantonatou, Stelios Piperidis, and Gregory Stainhaouer, 887–894. Paris: ELRA.
Paradis, Michel. 1994. “Toward a Neurolinguistic Theory of Simultaneous Translation: The Framework.” International journal of psycholinguistics 9 (3): 319–335.
Pinochi, Diletta. 2009. “Simultaneous Interpretation of Numbers: Comparing German and English to Italian. An Experimental Study.” The Interpreters’ Newsletter 141: 33–57.
Pio, Sonia. 2003. “The Relation Between St Delivery Rate and Quality in Simultaneous Interpretation.” The Interpreters’ Newsletter 121: 69–100.
Riccardi, Alessandra. 1998. “Interpreting Strategies and Creativity.” In Translator’s Strategies and Creativity, ed. by Ann Beylard-Ozeroff, Jana Kralova, and Barbara Moser-Mercer. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Seeber, Kilian. 2011. “Cognitive Load in Simultaneous Interpreting: Existing Theories – New Models.” Interpreting 13 (2): 176–204.
. 2013. “Cognitive Load in Simultaneous Interpreting: Measures and Methods.” Target 25 (1): 18–35.
Setton, Robin. 1999. Simultaneous Interpretation: A Cognitive-pragmatic Analysis. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Shlesinger, Miriam. 1995. “Shifts in Cohesion in Simultaneous Interpreting.” The Translator 1 (2): 193–214.
. 1998. “Corpus-based Interpreting Studies as an Offshoot of Corpus-based Translation Studies.” Meta 43 (4): 486–493.
. 2003. “Effects of Presentation Rate on Working Memory in Simultaneous Interpreting.” The Interpreter’s Newsletter 121: 37–49.
Straniero Sergio, Francesco, and Caterina Falbo. 2012. Breaking Ground in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies. Bern: Peter Lang.
Swerts, Marc. 1998. “Filled Pauses as Markers of Discourse Structure.” Journal of Pragmatics 301: 485–496.
Tissi, Benedetta. 2000. “Silent Pauses and Disfluencies in Simultaneous Interpretation: A Descriptive Analyzes.” The Interpreters’ Newsletter 101: 103–127.
Tommola, Jorma, and Marketta Helevä. 1998. “Language Direction and Source Text Complexity: Effects on Trainee Performance in Simultaneous Interpreting.” In Unity in Diversity? Current Trends in Translation Studies, ed. by Lynne Bowker, Michael Cronin, Dorothy Kenny, and Jennifer Pearson, 177–186. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Van de Kauter, Marjan, Geert Coorman, Els Lefever, Bart Desmet, Lieve Macken, and Veronique Hoste. 2013. “Lets Preprocess: The Multilingual Lt3 Linguistic Preprocessing Toolkit.” Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands journal 31: 103–120.
Voor, John B., and Joseph M. Miller. 1965. “The Effect of Practice on the Comprehension of Worded Speech.” Speech Monographs 321: 452–455.
Watanabe, Michiko, Keikichi Hirose, Yasuharu Den, and Nobuaki Minematsu. 2008. “Filled Pauses as Cues to the Complexity of Up-Coming Phrases for Native and Non-Native Listeners.” Speech Communication 50 (2): 81–94.
Welford, Alan T. 1952. “The ‘Psychological Refractory Period’ and the Timing of High Speed Performance — A Review and a Theory.” British Journal of Psychology 431: 2–19.
Cited by (34)
Cited by 34 other publications
Chmiel, Agnieszka, Przemysław Janikowski, Danijel Koržinek, Agnieszka Lijewska, Marta Kajzer-Wietrzny, Dariusz Jakubowski & Koen Plevoets
2024. Lexical frequency modulates current cognitive load, but triggers no spillover effect in interpreting. Perspectives 32:5 ► pp. 905 ff. 
Chmiel, Agnieszka, Marta Kajzer-Wietrzny, Danijel Koržinek, Dariusz Jakubowski & Przemysław Janikowski
2024. Syntax, stress and cognitive load, or on syntactic processing in simultaneous interpreting. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 7:1 ► pp. 22 ff.
Jiang, Xinlei, Yue Jiang & Xiaopeng Zhang
2024. Assessing effects of source text complexity on L2 learners’ interpreting performance: a dependency-based approach. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
Moratto, Riccardo & Zhimiao Yang
2024. Probing the cognitive load of consecutive interpreters. Translation and Interpreting Studies 19:2 ► pp. 234 ff.
Shao, Zhangminzi & Bart Defrancq
2024. Fundamental frequency as an acoustic mirror of interpreters’ cognitive states. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting
Zorlu, Beyza Nur & Esra Özkaya
2024. Evaluation of Remote Interpreting in Terms of Stress and Burnout. Trakya Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 14:28 ► pp. 139 ff.
Gu, Chonglong & Binhua Wang
2023. From “Within” to “Beyond” in interpreting studies. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation / Revista Internacional de Traducción
Shen, Mingxia, Yumeng Lin, Qianxi Lv & Junying Liang
2023. A corpus-based analysis of the effect of syntactic complexity on disfluency in consecutive interpreting. Lingua 291 ► pp. 103562 ff.
姜, 琰
2023. The Research Status and Trends of International Corpus Translation (1993~2022): Visual Analysis Based on CiteSpace. Modern Linguistics 11:11 ► pp. 5396 ff.
ARZİK ERZURUMLU, Özüm & Perihan DEMİR
2022. Taking Stock of the COVID-19 Working Conditions on the Performance of the Interpreters: Rendering the Numbers in the 2020 American Presidential Debates. Çeviribilim ve Uygulamaları Dergisi 2022:32 ► pp. 25 ff.
Cheung, Andrew K. F.
2022. Remote Simultaneous Interpreting from Home or Hub: Accuracy of Numbers from English into Mandarin Chinese. In Translation and Interpreting in the Age of COVID-19 [Corpora and Intercultural Studies, 9], ► pp. 113 ff.
Chmiel, Agnieszka & Nicoletta Spinolo
2022. Testing the impact of remote interpreting settings on interpreter experience and performance. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 5:2 ► pp. 250 ff.
Vranjes, Jelena & Bert Oben
2022. Anticipation and timing of turn-taking in dialogue interpreting. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 34:4 ► pp. 627 ff.
Baekelandt, Annelies & Bart Defrancq
2021. Elicitation of particular grammatical structures in speeches for interpreting research: enhancing ecological validity of experimental research in interpreting. Perspectives 29:4 ► pp. 643 ff.
Bartłomiejczyk, Magdalena
2021. Review of Korpal (2017): Linguistic and Psychological Indicators of Stress in Simultaneous Interpreting. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 33:1 ► pp. 163 ff.
Dayter, Daria
2021. Variation in non-fluencies in a corpus of simultaneous interpreting vs. non-interpreted English. Perspectives 29:4 ► pp. 489 ff.
Dayter, Daria
2021. Strategies in a corpus of simultaneous interpreting. Effects of directionality, phraseological richness, and position in speech event. Meta 65:3 ► pp. 594 ff.
Gieshoff, Anne Catherine
2021. The impact of visible lip movements on silent pauses in simultaneous interpreting. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 23:2 ► pp. 168 ff.
Kajzer-Wietrzny, Marta, Ilmari Ivaska & Adriano Ferraresi
2021. ‘Lost’ in interpreting and ‘found’ in translation: using an intermodal, multidirectional parallel corpus to investigate the rendition of numbers. Perspectives 29:4 ► pp. 469 ff.
Kajzer-Wietrzny, Marta, Ilmari Ivaska & Adriano Ferraresi
2024. Fluency in rendering numbers in simultaneous interpreting. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 26:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Lin, Yumeng, Duo Xu & Junying Liang
2021. Differentiating Interpreting Types: Connecting Complex Networks to Cognitive Complexity. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Shen, Mingxia & Junying Liang
2021. Self-repair in consecutive interpreting: similarities and differences between professional interpreters and student interpreters. Perspectives 29:5 ► pp. 761 ff.
胡, 敏霞
2021. Investigating the Cognitive Effects of the Interpreter’s Gestures in Multi-Modal Processing. Modern Linguistics 09:04 ► pp. 912 ff.
Albl-Mikasa, Michaela, Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Andrea Hunziker Heeb, Caroline Lehr, Michael Boos, Matthias Kobi, Lutz Jäncke & Stefan Elmer
2020. Cognitive load in relation to non-standard language input. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 3:2 ► pp. 263 ff.
Jiang, Xinlei & Yue Jiang
2020. Effect of dependency distance of source text on disfluencies in interpreting. Lingua 243 ► pp. 102873 ff.
Lv, Qianxi & Junying Liang
2019. Is consecutive interpreting easier than simultaneous interpreting? – a corpus-based study of lexical simplification in interpretation. Perspectives 27:1 ► pp. 91 ff.
Shen, Mingxia, Qianxi Lv & Junying Liang
2019. A corpus-driven analysis of uncertainty and uncertainty management in Chinese premier press conference
interpreting. Translation and Interpreting Studies 14:1 ► pp. 135 ff.
Song, Shuxian & Andrew K. F. Cheung
2019. Disfluency in relay and non-relay simultaneous interpreting. FORUM. Revue internationale d’interprétation et de traduction / International Journal of Interpretation and Translation 17:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Wang, Feng (Robin) & Philippe Humblé
2019. Corpus-Informed Translation Studies– Looking Backward and Forward: A Chinese Perspective. Studia Neophilologica 91:1 ► pp. 119 ff.
Bernardini, Silvia, Adriano Ferraresi, Mariachiara Russo, Camille Collard & Bart Defrancq
2018. Building Interpreting and Intermodal Corpora: A How-to for a Formidable Task. In Making Way in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 21 ff.
Defrancq, Bart & Koen Plevoets
2018. Over-uh-Load, Filled Pauses in Compounds as a Signal of Cognitive Load. In Making Way in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 43 ff.
Lin, Yumeng, Qianxi Lv & Junying Liang
2018. Predicting Fluency With Language Proficiency, Working Memory, and Directionality in Simultaneous Interpreting. Frontiers in Psychology 9
Plevoets, Koen & Bart Defrancq
2018. The cognitive load of interpreters in the European Parliament. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 20:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Magnifico, Cédric & Bart Defrancq
2017. Hedges in conference interpreting. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 19:1 ► pp. 21 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 7 november 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.