Lexical decisions and related cognitive issues in spoken and signed language interpreting: A case study of Obama’s inaugural address
Abstract
This study examined omissions, errors, and variability in lexical selection across simultaneous interpretations of President Obama’s 2009 inaugural address, in three spoken languages (French, German, Japanese) and in American Sign Language (ASL). Microanalysis of how information conveyed by 39 source speech lexical items was transferred into the target languages assessed to what extent omissions and errors reflected differences in lexical structure (relative frequency of ready lexical correspondents and of shared cognates between the source and target languages; and, for ASL in particular, size of lexicon compared to English). The highest number of errors and omissions was found in ASL, which has the smallest documented vocabulary, fewest lexical correspondents, and no shared cognates with English. If omission/error rates in interpretation of lexical units are taken as a rough indicator of interpreting difficulty, results suggest that it is more difficult to interpret the speech into Japanese than into French or German and, by the same token, more difficult to interpret it into ASL than into the three spoken languages. These findings are consistent with the idea that language structures impact cognitive load during interpreting, and that interpreting effort increases in relation to the degree of difference between the source and target languages.
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More advanced and diverse language allows encoding more complex ideas, which generates higher cognitive load.
“In general, more advanced and diverse language allows to encode more complex ideas (Ellis & Yuan, 2004), which generates a higher cognitive load (Swabey et al., 2016).”
From The fingerprints of misinformation: how deceptive content differs from reliable sources in terms of cognitive effort and appeal to emotions (2022) · cites this paper as Swabey et al., 2016
Improving media literacy to process more complex ideas will likely reduce the cognitive load associated with factual information and therefore the prevalence of misinformation.
“improving media literacy to process more complex ideas will likely reduce the cognitive load associated with factual information (Ellis & Yuan, 2004;Swabey et al., 2016) and, therefore, the prevalence of misinformation.”
From The fingerprints of misinformation: how deceptive content differs from reliable sources in terms of cognitive effort and appeal to emotions (2022) · cites this paper as Swabey et al., 2016
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Carrasco-Farré, C. (2022) · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-022-01174-9 · Cited by 84 · see citing works
- Authors
- Swabey, L., Nicodemus, B., Taylor, M. M., & Gile, D.
- Affiliations
- St. Catherine University (US)
- Gallaudet University (US)
- Interpreting Consolidated
- Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (FR)
- Venue
- Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting
- Publisher
- John Benjamins Publishing Company
- Published
- 2016-04-08
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 34-56
- ISSN
- 1384-6647 (ISSN-L)
- 1569-982X
- OpenAlex
- W2312562468
- Cited by
- 41
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 22 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 5 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 10.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Interpreting International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Translation Studies and Practices
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Hearing Impairment and Communication
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Keywords
- simultaneous interpreting, word choice, interpreting errors, American Sign Language, sign language interpreting, spoken language interpreting, cognates, interpreting difficulties, cognitive load, vocabulary size, French language, German, Japanese
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