Structural asymmetries and cognitive load in SI between English and Slavic languages - a pilot study
Structural asymmetries and cognitive load in SI between English and Slavic languages - a pilot study

Summary/Abstract: Much of the research in simultaneous interpretation ('SI'), from its inception to this day, has been inspired by a fierce debate between two schools. One claims that SI is not affected by the structural asymmetries of the two languages, since what is transferred is meaning and not structures. The other claims that language‐specific differences lead to additional processing difficulties and a larger cognitive load in SI. Numerous experiments in support of the latter mostly involve a number of Germanic and Romance languages. This pilot study sets out to explore the impact of morpho‐syntactic asymmetries between English – a Germanic language – and three Slavic languages – Montenegrin, Russian and Bosnian – on the overall cognitive load in SI. The asymmetries selected for this experiment have to do primarily with aspect, but also a number of additional problem triggers, such as composite nominal phrases, names and numbers, are addressed. Input speeches and output audio recordings made by professional interpreters are analysed using two‐track recording in Audacity, a digital audio editor and recording software application. The insights are further refined by the authors' direct observation using audio recordings and their transcripts. The results point to a positive correlation between morpho‐syntactic asymmetries and the cognitive load in SI between English and the three Slavic languages. The pilot offers ideas for future, more extensive studies and shares observations on the processing difficulties and control of attentional resources in SI, with the potential pedagogical implications.

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