Identifying the causes of errors in students’ consecutive interpreting performances

The present study describes my experience of teaching undergraduate translation and interpreting (TI) majors how to improve their performance in KoreanintoEnglish (KE) consecutive interpreting (CI). The present study i) offers an account of classroom interactions in a fourthyear KE CI course designated for advanced students in the English Interpretation Translation (EIT) Department at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS); ii) describes

2012년 여름 제10권 2호

Identifying the causes of errors in students’ consecutive interpreting performances*:1)

Looking for hints in student journals & interviews with students

Nam, Won Jun

(Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

I Introduction: why identify causes of errors?

The present study describes my experience of teaching undergraduatetranslation and interpreting (T&I) majors how to improve their performance inKorean-into-English (K-E) consecutive interpreting (CI) The present study i)offers an account of classroom interactions in a fourth-year K-E CI coursedesignated for advanced students in the English Interpretation & Translation(EIT) Department at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS); ii) describes

* This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund of 2012.

how students performed CI in the classroom, focusing on the errors theycommitted; iii) analyzes student journals (retrospections of their CIperformances) and interviews with students; and iv) attempts to identify thecauses of the errors in student CI performances.

In essence, this paper draws on my experience of teaching a course titled

Specialized consecutive interpreting for the past three years; however, the

students and examples of their CI performances mentioned herein will all befrom the spring semester (March to June) of 2012 In my experience, a studenttends to repeat the same errors or mistakes in multiple occasions That is, aparticular error committed by a certain student is repetitive regardless of thevarious factors involved in CI such as the subject matter of the speech, speechtype, the speed and tone of the speaker, and level of difficulty of the speech.Nonetheless, the majority of critiques given in most CI classrooms are focused

on a simple enumeration of the student's errors and a straightforward advice not

to commit them again However, if we view errors as the end result, that is, aneffect or dependent variable of some kind, and there surely has to be a cause orindependent variable that lies behind such errors And I have seen in numerousoccasions how students can greatly improve just by being identified with thecause(s) of their errors; although, of course, this needs to be ensued bycontinuous efforts exerted on the part of the students to rectify or eliminate thecause(s)

For example, a student interpreted as follows

ST: 우리나라의 비약적 경제성장과 국가 발전은 나라를 위해 목숨을 던

진 우리 조상들과 참전용사자들의 희생이 밑바탕이 됐다고 볼 수 있습니다 하지만 이들에 대한 우리 정부의 예우는 턱없이 부족한 형편입니다.

Back translation: Our nation's rapid economic growth and national development owe a great deal to the sacrifices our ancestors and war veterans made However, our government is not doing enough to honor them.

Student 1 CI: The Korean government’s not enough support to war veterans is definitely not helpful to promote/encourage/foster patriotism

In the above, the errors student 1 made are quite evident Although herunderstanding (in the passive forms of listening and reading) of English isrelatively high, she expressed particular difficulties when having to speak andwrite in English And she blames her lack of overseas experience: she hasn'tspent any time abroad as a child and only worked a year as an intern in theU.S in her twenties While most instructions given to her in most CI classeswill tend to focus on correcting her grammatical errors, I took a differentapproach I requested for a retrospective journal so that she can invest time inthinking what caused her to make those errors The answer she provided washer obsession with the lexical items in the speech By all means, as Funayama(2007, p 97) puts it, "[t]rainees in interpreting courses tend to be concernedmore about superficial linguistic expressions than the message, or what isconveyed by those expressions." As, at least, one of the causes of her errorswas identified, I was able to advise her to i) visualize1) during the receptionphase (Dam, 1993, p 297), and ii) re-express using kernel sentences2) in theproduction phase (ibid)

Kernel sentences: Korea has developed its economy very fast It has been able to enjoy rapid development Korea's ancestors and war veterans made great sacrifices Their sacrifice laid the groundwork for Korea's rapid development.

Suggested version: The Korean government is not supporting war veterans enough When we think of the nation’s economic advance and national growth, veterans have played a great role.

1) Jones (1998./2002) advises that when interpreters encounter a word or expression she doesn't know, she has to remember "to understand ideas, not words"(p 11).

2) Kernals "are the basic structural elements out of which the language builds its elaborate surface structures" (Nida & Taber, 1969/2003, p 39).

Although not all may agree with the suggested version given in the above,

my belief is that students make progress in phases, that is, they are not able toleap from one stage to another in a single attempt Thus, suggestions or advicesalso needs to befit the level at which the student is After reaching an agreementthat her obsession with the lexical items in the speech was to be blamed for hererrors, she has practised CI with the goal to eliminate the identified cause andhas experienced significant improvements

Therefore, identifying the causes of student CI errors is productive, which is

the basic rationale and raison d'etre behind this paper Identifying the causes of

errors significantly improves the set pedagogical effect: for instance, by pointingout what their next goal is (which is to eliminate or rectify the identified cause)3), students will know what their next aim should be In almost all occasions,

it seems that students simply aim for perfection or at least believe that theoriginal speech is their target, which is almost always met by disappointmentwhen performing CI under such assumption Additionally, students will be able

to undergo continued self-learning even long after the life of said course is over

as Nam (2008, p 57) points out Lastly, instructors are able to systematicallytrack student CI performance progress, and not just echo the same critique whenthe same errors are repeated

Nonetheless, the causes identified in this study are far from conclusive and

do not bear the intention to generalize The findings are restricted to theparticular students in my classroom In what is to follow, I will summarize thetypical CI errors seen in the classroom and argue that causes of those errors can

be traced back to the reception phase and not the production phase (Nam, 2008,

p 63) Then, I will elaborate on my students' and my collaborative efforts toidentify the causes of errors in student CI performances And lastly, I will go

3) As I've mentioned, any advice or suggestions to improve CI performances should consider the level the student is at Hence, when given a goal that the student can reasonably and realistically reach in a relatively short period of time, the student can avoid being discouraged and will be able to exert efforts to meet the next goal.

over my plans for future research related to this theme.

II About consecutive interpreting

1 Consecutive interpreting as a multi-tasking act

In consecutive interpreting (CI), the interpreter sits at the same table withthe delegates or at the speaker's platform and interprets a speech into the targetlanguage after the speaker has finished his/her remarks In this somewhat simpleexercise, or at least what seems as so especially for those who have never tried

it, a wide variety of tasks are involved Generally speaking, the literature hasdivided CI into two phases: reception and production

Consecutive interpreting is basically an oral translation task divided into two separate phases: a reception and production phase In the reception phase, the interpreter listens to the original speech while taking notes In the production phase, immediately after the reception phase, the interpreter delivers the speech in another language, making use of his notes as well

as his memory Dam (1993, p 297)

The above-described definition and process of CI seems very obvious.However, for the purpose of educating students and not professional interpretersfor whom the above as well as other relevant processes of CI have already beeninternalized, such CI processes need to be further partitioned most importantlybecause what students need in the course of education is an understanding ofhow professional interpreters have arrived at such a point Maybe it was in linewith such an effort that CI processes were further broken down into thefollowing four sub-phases:

Listening ⇒ Understanding ⇒ Analyzing ⇒ Re-expressing/Expressing

Jones (1998/2002, p 11)

Although the above-described process may be still obvious, many,particularly students, seldom realize that such sub-phases are interlinked and thusforce the interpreter to engage him/herself in a multi-tasking act And it is notdifficult to imagine why For instance, i) in the reception phase alone,comprising the sub-phases of listening, understanding and analyzing, theinterpreter needs to listen to the speaker and understand each core idea utteredand distinguish between what is essential and what is accessory In doing so,he/she must also try to connect the dots, if you will, between and among thebits and pieces of the speaker's ideas so as to grasp the overall context of the

intended message At the same time, he/she analyzes and determines what to

interpret And finally in the production phase of (re)expressing, the interpreterdelivers the speaker's intended meaning in the target language during which shemay continue to analyze and engage in decision-making postponed from thereception phase so that an integral discourse is delivered in her interpretation(Alexieva, 1998, p 182) In other words, although the literature has classified CIprocesses into reception and production phases, such phases (or sub-phases) arenever carried out in isolation And thus, the pie graph below illustrates firstlythe overall capacity required for performing CI, and secondly into whatsub-phases such capacity is further divided And such sub-phases are conducted

in both the reception and production phases, hence comprising the multi-taskingact of CI

Therefore, it should be highlighted in the classroom that each of thesub-phases of listening, understanding, analyzing, and (re)expressing do not exist

as separate and thus isolated units, but as intertwined and interlinked entitiesthat influence one another and eventually form the entirety of a CI performance

When to Note Analyze:

What to Note

Where to Note

Understand

Figure 1 CI as a multi-tasking act

In spite of the fact that causes of errors can be traced to the reception phase(Nam, 2008, p 63), the majority of the critiques in the classroom or at leastthose given in CI group study sessions with peers are overwhelmingly focused

on the production phase In recognition of this, the present study draws on Dam(1993, p 297) and Jones (1998/2002, p 11) when identifying causes of errors

2 Typical CI errors & the suggested student journal

In Nam (2008, pp 58-60), an illustration of typical CI errors are offered Tosummarize, he draws on Ficchi's (1999, p 202) analysis of her students' CIperformances and analyzes his students at the postgraduate level Ficchi

enumerates omissions, hesitations, faux-sens 4) , contre-sens 5), TL mistakes,pauses, and unfinished sentences as typical errors seen in her classroom Choi,

J Y (2005, p 210), when proposing a performance assessment tool for CI,suggests to evaluate students' accuracy, opposite sense, false sense, no sense,imprecision, expression, terminological/lexical errors, grammatical errors,

4) "[I]ncorrect reproduction of verb tenses, incoherence and lack of cohesion" (p 213) 5) A mistranslation i.e., an incorrect reproduction of the ST

presentation, speed, and overuse of pause fillers/backtracking Additionally,Riccardi (2002) considers equivalence, accuracy, appropriateness, and usability;and Dam and Schjoldager (2005, pp 227-228) suggests to consider theinterpreter's voice quality, accent, intonation, fluency of delivery, grammaticalcorrectness, stylistic and terminological adequacy, etc Bartlomiejczyk (2007, pp.259-261) identified faithfulness, coherence, style, lexis, presentation,completeness, and grammar And lastly, Lee, J (2008, 172), when exploring theuse of rating scales as a tool for CI performance assessment, focused onaccuracy, TL quality, and delivery.

Drawing on the above-mentioned literature as well as my own observationconducting said course, I have drafted my own list of typical errors in CI andhave used it as a journal format (see Table 1) so that my students can transcribetheir CI performance, retrospect on their errors, and devise strategies or goals toeliminate the cause(s) of errors the next time they're asked to perform CI in theclassroom Here is an example given by one of those students

Student 2 CI: Um, recently, there was one article that was pub… posted

on one online bulletin board And the article was about the inventions Korea first, Koreans first invented There were many remarkable inventions But the most remarkable was, um, MP3 Korea first invented MP3, but Korean couldn’t make money out of it because the patent belonged to the U.S The U.S is called the patent monster, and the U.S made a lot of money from the loyalties If Korea had the patent, it could have made more than three trillions dollars of profit So being the first inventor is not important Having the patent is the most important factor For example, Kodak had invented, um, came up with inventions for the first time, but it delayed commercializing it So it lost the profit And Edison is known for inventing light bulb, but he is not famous for inventing it for the first time, but laying the foundation and infrastructure to commercialize it and make it a patent So when Koreans are more focused, and um, and more focused on making inventions and

making inventions, other countries are innovating by commercializing

it and claiming patents.

Frequency Backtracking 5 Published → posted, Korea → Koreans,

Hesitation 6) 1 Fillers such as um or coughing

Ÿ Wrong logic Sentences are not linked well.

Ÿ Frequent pauses between words.

Ÿ Small grammatical mistakes regarding articles, and awkward usage

of words in the context Statement of Goal(s)

My goal of the interpretation was to talk slow and keep a steady pace Next time, I will try to reduce the number of backtracking and pauses because I found I made a lot of backtracking and pause mistakes after listening to my recorded performance.

Table 1 Student journal of student 2

After every CI performance made in class, students are required to fill outthe above journal and submit it within two days as retrospection only workswhen the student can still remember what went on in her head while she was

6) Here, hesitation is defined as any signs of hesitant moves such as adding fillers or sighs before the student begins to utter her words On the other hand, pause is when nothing is being said I have differentiated them because hesitation tends to occur when students have a difficult time building sentences (production phase problem); however, pauses occur when students find it difficult to remember what was said by the speak (reception phase) Of course, whether or not the above is actually the cause

of hesitation or pause of a certain student can only be told by the student in question.

interpreting She needs to transcribe and count the frequency of each CI error.Then, after thinking about the cause of such CI errors, she will set up a goal(s)for herself that she will aim to achieve the next time she interprets in class.

III Attempting to identify causes of CI errors

1 The class: Specialized consecutive interpreting

The class in question is titled Specialized consecutive interpreting, which is

offered for fourth-year students It is considered to be the most difficult CIcourse in the department as most students attend to familiarize themselves toand thus be better prepared for the second-phase interview of the entranceexams of various graduate schools of T&I at home and abroad The departmentoffers a total of 11 interpreting courses of differing language combinations andlevels of difficulty, and said course is considered to be at the highest level.Although English-into-Korean (E-K) CI is practised from time to time, wemostly focus on K-E CI since students undergo the most difficulty in elevatingtheir abilities to perform CI into their foreign language Subject matters dealtwith in the class range from general topics to those on aging society,information technology, global warming, education, cultural diversity, etc Onething noteworthy is that the subject matters in the course were coordinated yet

with another course titled Advanced English discussion and debate taught by an

international faculty member The rationale behind such coordination was toenable students to attend both courses: they read particular English articles on agiven subject matter and present and discuss/debate with classmates so as tobecome familiar with the subject matter as well as the frequently usedvocabularies and expressions relevant to it; and then, they come to my class onK-E CI and use such vocabularies and expressions

2 Possible causes of CI errors

A total of 21 students attended the course (16 enrolled and 5 audited), at thebeginning of which a survey was given so that their general backgroundinformation be gathered and taken into consideration Because CI performancelevels already acquired at the beginning of the course and CI field experience7)are particularly relevant at a K-E CI undergraduate course, students are groupedinto either: i) group A with lower level CI performance skills; ii) group B eithermiddle level CI performance skills; and iii) group C with high level CIperformance skills Although such a blunt grouping of students may seemarbitrary at first, my experience tells me that each group of students tend tocommit similar errors, that is, group members have a tendency to repeat similarerrors

In an effort to identify the causes of CI errors, I will describe the CIperformances of three students (one from each group)

2.1 Group A: lower level

The first student is in group A The speech given was regarding agingsociety

ST: 대한민국이 10년 새 부쩍 늙었습니다 2000년 당시 국민 평균 연령

은 33세였는데 이제는 39세로 올라갔고 10년 후면 40대 후반에 들

어설 예정입니다 전국에서 약 200여 개 초등학교가 신입생을 받지 못했고, 4000개 초등학교가 문을 닫았습니다 이제는 중고교도 문을

닫기 시작하고 있답니다 노령화에 대한 예측은 많이 나오고 있지

만 어느 누구도 어떻게 될지 정확하게 알 수는 없습니다 노령화에

대한 우리 사회의 반응은 엇갈리고 있습니다 우선은 노령화를 미

래 사회에 대한 어두운 경고로 보는 것인데 늙어가면서 활력을 잃

7) Many would gain real-life CI experience at the undergraduate level through various

part-time job opportunities or through a course titled T&I field training, which is also

offered for fourth-year students at EIT, HUFS.