Abstract
It is widely known that sight-interpreting, one of the typical forms of conference interpreting, requires the interpreters to exert great effort in transforming one language into another. Due to the difference between Chinese and English, some sentence structures such as relative clauses prove to be even more difficult to render. Some experienced interpreters are able to do such strenuous task with ease. Uncovering what is going on during information processing is enlightening in that it would shed light on how human brain uses certain types of mechanism to process information, which is conducive to the artificial intelligence. Eye-tracking experiment is designed, 31 subjects are recruited with an average age of 22 and comparable linguistic competence to participate in a 40-50 min experiment, during which each subject is required to sight-interpret the self-designed, expert-proven sentences which differ only in the role of the relative pronoun in the relative clauses. Data analysis clearly indicates that the cognitive effort of processing complex sentences as evidenced by two types of relative clauses (one is called OR because the relative pronouns function as object in the relative clause, the other SB because the relative pronouns function as subject in the relative clause) are different, the former requiring more cognitive effort than the latter, as shown in several key eye-movement measures such as regression-in, regression-out, first fixation duration, gaze duration, regression duration, and total reading duration. These differences are statistically significant within the AOIs such as the antecedent, relative clause. The finding further substantiates the hypothesis that sight-interpreting is more strenuous and thus requires more cognitive effort than the common readers. Besides, different structure of the relative clauses also plays a role in consuming the cognitive effort of the interpreters. However, it remains unclear whether the length of the relative clause plays a decisive role in influencing the cognition of whole sentence while sight-interpreting. Besides, whether the research results are applicable to other types of complex structure remain unanswered. More data should be collected to incorporate more complex structure in order to uncover the possible cognitive effort during sight-interpreting.
Highlights
Introduction and Literature ReviewIn the process of transforming concepts encoded in one form into another, a lot of efforts have to be exerted
T-test shows that the difference between these two types of relative clauses is statistically significant because p-value is less than 0.05, namely, the total reading duration of the OR relative clause exceeds that of the SR relative clause
From the perspective of behavioral data, the reason may be that the long distance between relative pronouns and their antecedents contributes to the cognitive effort of interpreters when they judge the relationship between antecedents and other parts of relative clauses
Summary
In the process of transforming concepts encoded in one form into another, a lot of efforts have to be exerted. In order to truly uncover the possible mechanism of sigh-interpreting, this article will try to explore the cognitive processing of complex sentences as evidenced by relative clauses in the English-Chinese sight interpretation under the framework of eye movement experiments, hoping to provide some possible enlightenment for the study of interpretation process. The sight interpretation in this paper is defined as a process in which subjects produce an interlinguistic output from English sentences present on screen to Chinese at their own speed. It can be assumed that the different grammatical roles relative pronouns play would affect the understanding of the source language and influencing the output of the target language during English-Chinese sight interpretation. Based on the special syntactic nature of relative clauses [12], a preliminary hypothesis is put forward: during sight interpretation, there exist some differences in the degree to which the two types of relative clauses affect the understanding of the original text
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
