Do first impressions matter? The effect of first impressions on the assessment of the quality of simultaneous interpreting

Abstract

The aim of this study is to gauge the opinion of potential users of simultaneous interpretation (SI) services as to the impact of first impressions (FI) on their assessment of the quality of SI, and the grounds on which these impressions are based. The investigation had two parts. The first part aims at testing if the opinions formed by users about an interpreter during the first listen affect their final assessment of his/her work and if there are a number of specific criteria which to a greater or lesser extent help to form these opinions. The second part focuses on making a vertical analysis of FI by assessing the relative importance that the users give a priori to the different aspects that help to form these impressions within the field of interpreting. A high proportion of the sample population acknowledged that they had formed a first impression of the interpreters they had listened to and accepted that it had influenced their assessment. They also stated that nonverbal aspects were responsible for these impressions. The vertical analysis has shown that in different situations users adopt different approaches when assessing the relative importance of a range of criteria in impression formation processes.