2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Study on Coordination between Interpretation and Body Movements in Simultaneous Interpretation
| Project/Area Number |
16500165
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Cognitive science
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| Research Institution | National Institute of Informatics |
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Principal Investigator |
FURUYAMA Nobuhiro National Institute of Informatics, Information and Society Research Division, Associate Professor, 情報社会相関研究系, 助教授 (20333544)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
NOBE Shuichi Aoyama Gakuin University, College of Literature, Associate Professor, 文学部, 助教授 (50289112)
SOMEYA Yasumasa Aoyama Gakuin University, College of Literature, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (40348454)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2004 – 2006
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| Keywords | simultaneous interpretation / gesture / coordination / psycholinguistics |
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| Research Abstract |
This research project has investigated whether or not body movements such as spontaneous speech-accompanying gestures play a role in performing simultaneous interpretation by (semi-)professional simultaneous interpreters and trainees who began training program when the present study started. Towards this end, we started collecting videotaped data of simultaneous interpretation by (semi-)professional interpreters and trainees. All of the utterances were transcribed, and part of the videotapes were coded for different types of gestures. Using the videotape corpus, we started analyzing the data and obtained the following results among others: Professional interpreters produced more spontaneous gestures when the utterances in source language are spontaneous as in question-answer session or discussion session at the end of a formal talk, rather than when the utterances are well prepared (i.e., less spontaneous) as in the formal talk. Regarding the beginning trainee who used gestures in simu
… More
ltaneous interpretation, spontaneous gesture production was much more frequent after two years of training than a few months after the training was begun. These data suggest that spontaneous gesture production becomes more frequent when the cognitive load of interpreters is heavy because of spontaneous speech which makes it hard to "read ahead" of what will be spoken about, or simply because one is not used to simultaneous interpretation itself. We also examined whether or not the types of spontaneous gestures (iconic gestures, pointing gestures, beat gestures, etc.) produced in simultaneous interpretation change as the trainee becomes better or changes strategies of simultaneous interpretation. We found out the following: the trainee employed "immediate response" strategy at earlier stages, while after two years of training "wait-and-see" strategy is more often used. The transition from the immediate response strategy to the wait-and-see" strategy was accompanied by transition in types of gestures produced by the interpreter during interpretation performance. These results suggest that spontaneous gestures have to do potentially with the underlying cognitive processes that make performance in simultaneous interpretation possible. Future studies on this topic need to address the questions on the relationship between the underlying cognitive processes and spontaneous gestures more in detail. Less
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Research Products
(6 results)
