Language specificity in simultaneous interpreting pedagogy : the case of English into Arabic

Abstract

Interpreting studies has witnessed a growing interest in language specificity and its role in cognitive processing during simultaneous interpreting. This thesis is a pedagogy-oriented investigation into seven language-specific problem triggers for the language direction English-Arabic, which has received little scholarly attention to date. Fifteen postgraduate interpreting students were asked to simultaneously interpret two speeches, into which language-pair-specific problem triggers had been incorporated. The product data obtained were used to examine how the participants dealt with the problem triggers. Process data was generated by applying the method of retrospection, the objective of which was to ascertain whether the problem triggers were perceived by the participants as such, and to identify the strategies, if any, that they employed to deal with them. Subsequently, a comparison was drawn between the perceptions that the participants verbalized and their actual performances. The findings indicate that language-specific problem triggers can indeed encumber students’ performances and, as such, merit pedagogical attention. This study underscores the need to raise students’ awareness of this type of problem triggers and devise targeted exercises which would enable interpreters-to-be to develop language-specific strategic competence.