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Gesture restriction decreases the quality in simultaneous interpreting

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Las Américas
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Concepción
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Concepción
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Concepción
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Abstract
Gestures integrate with speech and support planning and delivery. This study examined whether restricting gesture degrades simultaneous interpreting quality. Eight L1-Spanish interpreters rendered two matched English speeches (EN→ES) in a within-subjects design: gestural (as usual) and non-gestural (hands holding a table-mounted bar). Outputs were rated on accuracy, terminology, cohesion and prosody; pauses and self-repairs indexed fluency. Inter-rater reliability for total scores was acceptable (Spearman ρ = .614, p < .01). Quality declined without gesture: total weighted score 8.2 vs. 7.0, t test p = .0003. All criteria fell (accuracy p = .0001; prosody p = .0012; cohesion p = .0072; terminology p = .0185). Fluency worsened, with more pauses/self-repairs (21.3 vs. 27.6 per speech), t(7) = 3.58, p = .009. No participant improved on any criterion. Findings indicate that preventing gesture removes a resource that supports management of parallel demands on comprehension, memory, and production in a complex language task.
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Gestures
    • Simultaneous interpreting
  • Methodology
    • Experimental design
    • Participants
    • Discursive material
    • Device to restrict gesture
    • Procedure
    • Guidelines to measure the quality of SI
    • Reliability
  • Results
    • Statistical analysis
  • Discussion
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (79)
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