Expertise Impact on English into Arabic Simultaneous Interpreting: A Cognitive Approach

Abstract

Simultaneous interpreting is considered one of the demanding tasks that requires comprehending the source message, retaining it in the working memory, translating and producing it in the target language. All these mental processes occur at the same time which pose cognitive load on interpreters. In simultaneous interpreting, expertise is resulted from the appropriate use of strategies in the main mental processes: comprehension, translation, and production. Furthermore, the interplay between these processes, tailored to meet the requirements of a simultaneous interpreting task. The interpreters' capacity to effectively manage cognitive resources, especially how they allocate their attention, enables the coordination of comprehension, transformation, and production processes. To investigate the effect of expertise on the interpreters’ performance when rendering simultaneously from English into Arabic, 10 student interpreters and 2 professionals participate in SI task from English into Arabic. The analysis in this study is based on Gile’s Efforts Model which suggests that interpreting process includes four efforts; listening and analysis, memory, production, and coordination. It also uses a retrospection protocol (questionnaire) to verbalise data from the subjects regarding their interpretations. The study hypothesizes that, due to expertise gained from continuous training, high skills, and long experience, experts perform more appropriately in the main interpreting processes comprehension, translation and production than students.