Abstract
The present study investigates the prosody training benefits for interpreter trainees in perception vs. production skills in simultaneous interpreting. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were assigned to groups at random. The control group received routine instruction in interpreting skills. The experimental group spent 20 minutes less time per session on the routine curriculum and instead received awareness training on prosodic features of English. The total instruction time was the same for the students in two groups, i.e., 15 hours. Students then took a posttest in interpretation skills. The results showed that the experimental group performed better than the control group in simultaneous interpretation performance. Moreover, the study revealed that prosody training enhances the students’ perception skills more than that of the production skills. These results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, interpreter training programs, and all who are involved in language study and pedagogy.
Highlights
Language interpreting or interpretation is the intellectual activity of facilitating oral communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between two or more users of different languages (e.g., Chen & Dong, 2010; Gile, 1995)
The results showed that the effect size of the prosody training program was significantly higher in perception skills than that of the production skills for interpreter trainees
The emphasis on comparing perception vs. production skills of interpreter trainees was addressed because of the contribution it could have on developing standard curriculum in training qualified future interpreters which has been pointed out in practitioners’ beliefs (Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven, 2019b)
Summary
Language interpreting or interpretation is the intellectual activity of facilitating oral communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between two or more users of different languages (e.g., Chen & Dong, 2010; Gile, 1995). Earlier studies had shown that the consecutive interpreting quality improved significantly when a portion of the instruction time was devoted to the explicit teaching of the differences between the sound systems of Persian and English (Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven, 2020). The key to building simultaneous interpreting expertise lies in improving the efficiency of the interpreter’s perception and production skills to facilitate the communication of the message (e.g., Hu, 2010; Qianxi & Liang, 2019). The previous research (e.g., Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven, 2019a, 2020) has shown that prosody training enhances the quality of consecutive interpreting performance. The present study addresses the effect of the prosody training benefits for interpreter trainees in perception vs production skills in simultaneous interpreting
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