Do experienced conference interpreters process sentences differently from interpreting students?

What is it about?

Interpreters are used to dealing with two languages at work. We want to know if this 'habit' changes the way they understand sentences (for example, do they anticipate the ending of sentences more proactively). Through observing their brainwaves (ERP) when they listen to two Chinese sentences or one Chinese plus one English sentence, we found that, compared to interpreters with a few years of experience and interpreting students, interpreters with more experience seemed to be less affected by this language change. This difference only existed for 200 milliseconds, but it probably shows that experience makes a difference.

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Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash

Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This is one of the very few interpreting studies that adopted the ERP technique (a way to observe how the brain responds to specific events) to study conference interpreters. It also provides neural evidence to show that interpreting training probably makes a difference in how interpreters process sentences within the same language and between two languages.