Cognitive Processing Routes In Consecutive Interpreting

This book addresses a controversial issue regarding SL-TL transfer in the translation process, namely the question as to the dominant route in English-Chinese and Chinese-English professional consecutive interpretations, respectively: the form-based processing route or meaning-based processing route. It presents a corpus-assisted product study, in which the interpreting processing patterns of culture-specific items (CSIs) are analyzed. The study reveals that the dominant route in English vs. Chinese consecutive interpreting varies under different circumstances. Four factors are proposed to account for such differences: linguistic variables (e.g., grammatical complexity of the unit), type of CSI, language direction, and extra-linguistic variables (e.g., multilateral or bilateral settings). In summary, the book systematically introduces a corpus-assisted approach to translation process research, which will benefit all readers who are interested in translation process research but cannot employ neuroscientific measures.

This book addresses eye movements and gestures as markers of language comprehension and production in interpreting as the "visible embodiment" of cognitive processing in simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. It discusses conference interpreting as a complex, multimodal activity where language processing is not restricted to auditory perception and oral production, highlighting the complexity of interpreting and exploring possible strategies that can be used by professional interpreters and students to make their work easier and more accurate.

In this landmark project, Moratto and Zhang evaluate how conference interpreting developed as a profession in China, and the directions in which it is heading. Bringing together perspectives from leading researchers in the field, Moratto and Zhang present a thematically organized analysis of the trajectory of professional conference interpreting in China. This includes discussion of the pedagogies used both currently and historically, the professionalization of interpreter education, and future prospects for virtual reality, multimodal conferences, and artificial intelligence. Taken as a whole, the contributors present a rich and detailed picture of the development of conference interpreting in China since 1979, its status today, and how it is likely to develop in the coming decades. An essential resource for scholars and students of conference interpreting in China, alongside its sister volume, The Pioneers of Chinese Interpreting: Insiders’ Accounts on the Rise of a Profession.

This volume focuses on the relationship between translation theory, translation research and translation practice. Applying many of the concepts and methods of cognitive science to translation the contributors provide an improvement in quality.

"Translation and Cognition" assesses the state of the art in cognitive translation and interpreting studies by examining three important trends: methodological innovation, the evolution of research design, and the continuing integration of translation process research results with the core findings of the cognitive sciences. Several of the volume s essays focus on fruitful new process research methods, such as eye tracking and keystroke logging that have arisen to supplement the use of think-aloud protocols. Another set of contributions investigates how some central theories, concepts, and methods from our sister disciplines of psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience can inform our understanding of translation processes and their development in novices and experts. Yet another set of essays argues that methodological innovation and integration with the cognitive sciences can lead to more robust research designs and theoretical frameworks to explain the intricacies of cognitive processing during translation and interpreting. Thus, this timely volume actively demonstrates that a new theoretical and methodological consensus in cognitive translation studies is emerging, promising to greatly improve the quality, verifiability, and generalizability of translation process research."

Reembedding Translation Process Research is a rich collection of empirical research papers investigating important new facets of the relationship between translation and cognition. The common thread running through the collection is the notion of “re-embedding” the acts of translating and interpreting—and the ways we understand them. That is, they all aim to re-situate these acts within what we now know about the brain, the powerful relationship of brain and body, and the complex interaction between cognition and the environment in which it is embedded. Each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of the overall notion of re-embedding, thereby expanding the breadth of empirical research about translating. This book refuses Descartes' distinction between mind and brain, and reaffirms the highly dynamic, emergent, and interactive nature of cognitive processes in translation. The overarching conclusion is that translation studies should reconsider, re-embed, any model of translation processes that arises without properly accommodating the interdependence of brain, body, and environment in the emergence of cognition.

This volume addresses translation as an act and an event, having as its main focus the cognitive and mental processes of the translating or interpreting individual in the act of translating, while opening up wider perspectives by including the social situation in explorations of the translation process. First published as a special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies (issue 8:2, 2013), the chapters in this volume deal with various aspects of translators’ and interpreters’ observable and non-observable processes, thus encouraging further research at the interface of cognitive and sociological approaches in this area. In terms of those distinctions, the chapters can be characterized as studies of the actual cognitive translation acts, of other processes related to the translation acts, or of processes that are related to the sociological translation event.

This volume brings together papers from the areas of psychology, general linguistics, psycholinguistics, as well as from simultaneous interpreting. Their common focus is how theories and methodologies from various disciplines can be applied to the study of simultaneous interpreting, and also to suggest ways in which the study of simultaneous interpreting in its turn might contribute to knowledge in other areas. General topics dealt with include memory, language processing, bilingual processing, and second language acquisition. The articles more specifically focused on simultaneous interpreting discuss implications of the general topics and report on empirical studies on expertise in interpreting and on phonological interference in spoken language interpreting. Requirements for further interdisciplinary research in the context of simultaneous interpreting are considered. There is also a discussion of transcription conventions for simultaneous interpreting.