Effects of directionality on consecutive interpreting between English and Persian

Abstract

The present study investigates the effect of directionality on the quality of consecutive interpreting between English and Persian by interpreting trainees. Two experiments were run in which 62 participants were recruited in two experiments at Arak University, Iran. In the first experiment, the participants (N = 30) interpreted from non-native English into native Persian (‘recto’). In the second experiment, different participants (N = 32) interpreted from native Persian into non-native English (‘verso’). The results showed better overall scores when interpreting was done into the mother tongue of the trainees. In each of the two experiments, the experimental group that had received prosody training outperformed the control group, especially on prosody-related rating scales such as pace (fluency). Finally, the performance by the experimental groups was better (relative to the control group) when the training and testing was done in the recto direction than when done verso. We conclude that the prosodic awareness training helps the interpreters to better decode the non-native input rather than to produce prosodically correct non-native output. The pedagogical implications of the present study may pertain to interpreting programs (at least in Iran). Prosody awareness training should be part of the teaching of listening comprehension in the interpreters’ curriculum.