The Influence of Speech Delivery Rates on Simultaneous Interpreter's Performance

Abstract

The task of determining the factors that affect simultaneous interpreter's
performance is rather difficult. By comparison with other fields on cognitive
psychology, reported research on simultaneous interpretation (SI) is scarce.
Perhaps the recent advent of this discipline is largely to blame, but also the
complexity of the mental processes involved in SI has been a deterrent to
researchers. It is not straight forward to design controlled experiments for the
study of the cognitive processes concomitant with speech. It is doubly difficult
to design such experiments for the study of simultaneous perception and
production of speech in two different languages and the factors that affect the
successful achievement of both.