Cognitive Load in Interpreting and Translation (CLINT)

Description

English has become the first truly global lingua franca. Even in multilingual Switzerland, English as a lingua franca (ELF) is replacing the four Swiss languages not only in international but also in intra-national communication. What appears at first glance to be a practical solution to communication problems in business, science and education can come at a cost, however. Despite the obvious relevance, there has been very little research into the consequences of millions of speakers having to use a foreign language to conduct business, academic, and other professional communication.

As language experts, interpreters and translators play an important role in fostering international communication and have competences and strategies that allow them to cope with speeches and texts that deviate to various degrees from Standard English. Preliminary research nevertheless suggests that the increasing volume of non-native English can lead to cognitive overload and stress for interpreters and translators.

The goal of this project was to gain a better understanding of the effects of this globalisation phenomenon. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the fields of interpreting, translation, and neuropsychology used various methods to assess the actual cognitive demands associated with processing ELF as compared to Standard English.

Results

The results suggest that English as a lingua franca (ELF) affects language processing in various ways. As such, students of interpreting produced less accurate renditions when working from ELF. This effect was also present among professionals, albeit to a lesser extent, which could suggest that professionals have fewer difficulties in coping with ELF speech input. Professional translators also seem to experience increased cognitive load when working from ELF, as suggested by indicators such as number of keystrokes and longer pauses.

A survey gathering feedback from almost 900 professional translators and interpreters further supported these observations. Both interpreters and translators identified a lack of logic as one main difficulty in ELF texts. Translators also highlighted issues such as complex sentence structures and technical terminology, while interpreters pointed to unusual accents, pronunciation, and delivery speed, for example. However, professionals appear to have developed effective coping strategies, such as inferring the meaning, reformulating or asking for clarification. 

Overall, these results indicate that processing ELF generally requires more effort than processing edited English versions of the same material. Professionals seem to be able to effectively manage the challenge by employing specific strategies. These strategies could inform targeted training for future language mediators.

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