Psycholinguistic errors in signed simultaneous interpreting

Abstract

Abstract In this article, errors and repairs in a corpus of English news broadcasts interpreted simultaneously into South African Sign Language are explored from a psycholinguistic perspective according to Levelt’s (1989) cognitive levels (comprehension, conceptualisation, formulation, morphological encoding and articulation). Breaking away from traditional perspectives, the study offers a novel approach to empirical research into sign(ed) language interpreting, with applications relevant to spoken-language interpreting. Most slips involved lemma selection, followed by slips in articulation and conceptualisation (syntactic planning). Significantly fewer errors in comprehension compared to production indicate that professional interpreters have excellent listening skills, although reconceptualising is sometimes problematic. The interpreters mainly repaired incorrect lemma selection and reception errors that resulted in mistranslations, suggesting the existence of a true/false error-detection mechanism, with little attention being paid to other forms of error, possibly owing to time and cognitive pressures. Errors do not increase over time, which suggests cognitive overload rather than fatigue as their cause.