Variation in non-fluencies in a corpus of simultaneous interpreting vs. non-interpreted English

The present study aims to investigate the occurrence of various non- fl uencies (mispronounced words and hesitations; self-repairs and editing terms; silent pauses; repetitions; fi llers) in interpreted and non-interpreted, spontaneously produced English. The material for the study is the English component of a parallel bidirectional corpus of Russian-English interpreting of political discourse, consisting of approx. 130,000 words from 77 speech events. The instances of non- fl uencies have been automatically extracted from the corpus, with the exception of self-repair, which was subject to manual annotation. The fi gures for the two subcorpora were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test, chi-square test, and Fisher ' s exact test, as appropriate. The results show that (1) interpreted English has more dis fl uencies overall, and serial truncations speci fi cally; (2) the number of repaired dis fl uencies is lower in interpreted English; (3) and interpreted English has fewer fi llers and dis fl uent repetitions than non-interpreted English. The results on editing terms are inconclusive. While the fi rst fi nding conforms to the predictions in the literature on SI, the other two can be ascribed to di ff erences in style among interpreters

A Corpus-Based Analysis of Pauses in Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting of Chinese English Majors

This study aims to investigate pause characteristics and probe into the main reason for unnatural pauses in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting. The data were from the Parallel Corpus of Chinese EFL Learners-Spoken (PACCEL-S), which includes phonetic materials in the interpretation part of TEM-8. Forty interpreters were divided into four groups according to their scores and gender. Their recordings and transcribed texts were annotated and analyzed to provide a comprehensive overview of pausing. The findings are: (1) Pauses often occur in C-E CI. Interpreters use more UPs and unnatural pauses. (2) There is no interaction between proficiency and gender in pause duration and frequency, as well as the two indicators of unnatural pauses. (3) UP duration is affected by proficiency, and females tend to produce more FPs and unnatural pauses. (4) FP and UP invariably occur together but do not show linear correlation. (5) Interpreters tend to pause before content words, and unnatural pauses are mainly induced by notional word retrieval difficulty. By discussing pauses and explaining the leading motivation for unnatural pauses from the perspective of lexical retrieval, this study informs readers of the nature and features of pauses and provides suggestions for stakeholders

A task segment framework to study keylogged translation processes

The Task Segment Framework (TSF) is a tool to analyze full typing flows of translation tasks as keylogged with timestamps recorded for keydown, keyup, mouse clicks and moves, and actions performed in other applications. The TSF assumes that intentional pauses flag stretches where subjects concentrate on unrecorded cognitive processes such as planning and assessment. The interspersed typing stretches are task segments, with or without text, where basic subtasks may be observed, mainly adding new text, changing existing text, and searching for information. Accumulated experience and planning allow translators to lump strategically similar activities together, in order to spare efforts and task switching costs while maximizing efficiency. Hence, task segments may contain activities of just one such subtask or many. Translation fluency is a key notion of the TSF, operationalized through many indicators such as typing speed, prior pause length, TS (task segment) length in events, text length as full words, number of typos and respites (=mid inter-keystroke intervals), subtask(s), and the like. The approach seems particularly sensitive to translation expertise levels and may be applied with variations to other multilectal mediated communication tasks. This article lays down the conceptual basis of the TSF and summarizes its basic notions and constructs

Ear–voice span and pauses in intra- and interlingual respeaking: An exploratory study into temporal aspects of the respeaking process

Respeaking involves producing subtitles in real time to make live television programs accessible to deaf and hard of hearing viewers. In this study we investigated how the type of material to be respoken affects temporal aspects of respeaking, such as ear–voice span and pauses. Given the similarities between respeaking and interpreting (time constraints) and between interlingual respeaking and translation (interlingual processing), we also tested whether previous interpreting and translation experience leads to a smaller delay or lesser cognitive load in respeaking, as manifested by a smaller number of pauses. We tested 22 interpreters, 23 translators, and a control group of 12 bilingual controls, who performed interlingual (English to Polish) and intralingual (Polish to Polish) respeaking of five video clips with different characteristics (speech rate, number of speakers, and scriptedness). Interlingual respeaking was found to be more challenging than the intralingual one. The temporal aspects of respeaking were affected by clip type (especially in interpreters). We found no clear interpreter or translator advantage over the bilingual controls across the respeaking tasks. However, interlingual respeaking turned out to be too difficult for many bilinguals to perform at all. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine temporal aspects of respeaking as modulated by the type of materials and previous interpreting/translation experience. The results develop our understanding of temporal aspects of respeaking and are directly applicable to respeaker training

A kognitív terhelés hatása a beszédben megjelenő temporális és megakadásjelenség-mintázatokra – A konszekutív tolmácsolás és blattolás bizonyítékai

Dolgozatomban magyar szerzők, Bóna Judit és Bakti Mária egyik angol nyelvű cikkét fordítottam magyarra. Külön érdekességet jelentett számomra, hogy egy magyar szerzőpáros angol nyelvű írását kellett „visszafordítanom”. Természetesen más kihívások is vártak rám, de talán minden akadályon sikerrel átjutottam. Munkám során felhasználtam a képzésen tanultakat, de néha improvizálnom is kellett. Remélem, ez a szabadság munkám előnyére vál

Processing of Garden-Path Sentences Containing Silent and Filled Pauses in Stuttered Speech: Evidence From a Comprehensive Study

Disfluency is common in spontaneous speech. Self-correction is a type of disfluency that consists of reparandum, filler, and repair (Levelt, 1989). Little is known about the processing of self-corrections in a normally disfluent speech, and even less is known about its processing in atypically disfluent speech (e.g. speech in patients with autism spectrum disorder, hearing impaired, patients with brain damage, and stuttered speech; see: Lake, Humphreys, & Cardy, 2011; Lind, Hickson, & Erber, 2004; Plexico et al., 2010; Rossi et al., 2011; Yairi, Gintautas, & Avent, 1981). This study focuses on self-correction disfluencies in garden-path sentences and employs a behavioral data collection method to investigate how disfluencies are processed as they are heard. This experiment examines spoken language comprehension by measuring accuracy and response time to comprehension questions. The data was gathered and analyzed. Two experimental conditions were presented where in the first one normal speakers listened to typically disfluent speech, and in the second one normal speakers listened to atypically disfluent stuttered speech. The information about the speakers in the recorded stimuli was kept from the listeners. Fillers, such as uh and um are common in stuttered speech because of their helpful role in starting an utterance. In stuttered speech, the uhs, ums and pauses tend to be longer and in odd places, relative to the speech of people who do not stutter. Therefore, the hypothesis of this study was that the fillers and pauses made by people who stutter affect the dynamics of processing, particularly in garden-path sentences. Namely, the accuracy rate for the comprehensive questions was predicted to be lower for the garden-path filled pause sentences, particularly for atypical speaker condition. Reaction time was predicted to be longer for the same condition. The analysis revealed an accuracy measure dependence on the speaker condition but no significant time correlation. This study provides significant information about how normal speakers’ comprehension is affected by disfluency such as pauses in general, and how speech impairment, such as stuttering, affects the processing of filled and silent pause disfluecies

Disfluencies affect language comprehension: evidence from event-related potentials and recognition memory

Everyday speech is littered with disfluencies such as filled pauses, silent pauses, repetitions and repairs which reflect a speaker’s language production difficulties. But what are the effects on language comprehension? This thesis took a novel approach to the study of disfluencies by combining an investigation of the immediate effects on language processing with an investigation of the longer-term effects for the representation of language in memory. A series of experiments is reported which reflects the first attempt at a systematic investigation of the effects of different types of disfluencies on language comprehension. The experiments focused on the effects of three types of disfluencies—ers, silent pauses, and repetitions—on the comprehension of subsequent words. Critical words were either straightforward continuations of the pre-interrupted speech or a repair word which corrected the pre-interrupted speech. In addition, the effects that occur when er, repetition, and repair disfluencies themselves are processed, were assessed. ERPs showed that the N400 effect elicited in response to contextually unpredictable compared to predictable words was attenuated by the presence of a pre-target er reflecting a reduction in the standard difference where unpredictable words are more difficult to integrate into their contexts. This finding suggests that ers may reduce the extent to which listeners make predictions about upcoming words. In addition, words preceded by an er were more likely to be correctly recognised in a subsequent memory test. These findings demonstrate a longer-term consequence for representation which may reflect heightened attention during processing. Silent pauses did not affect the N400 but there was some indication of an effect on recognition memory. Repetition disfluencies did not affect the N400 or recognition memory. These findings demonstrate the importance of the nature of the disruption to speech. For all types of disfluent utterances, unpredictable words elicited a Late Positive Complex (LPC), possibly reflecting processes associated with memory retrieval and control as listeners attempted to resume structural fluency after any interruption. Ers themselves elicited standard attention-related ERP effects: the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and P300 effects, supporting the possibility that ers heighten attention. Repetition disfluencies elicited a right posterior positivity, reflecting detection of the disfluency and possibly syntactic reanalysis. Repair disfluencies elicited an early frontal negativity, possibly related to the detection of a word category violation, and a P600 effect, reflecting syntactic reanalysis. The presence of an er preceding the repair eliminated the early negativity, but had no effect on the P600 suggesting that ers may prepare listeners for the possibility of an upcoming repair, but that they do not reduce the difficulty associated with reanalysis. Taken together, the results from the studies reported in the thesis support an account of disfluency processing which incorporates both prediction and attentio