The role of advance preparation

in simultaneous interpreting
A comparison of professional interpreters
and interpreting students

Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla* and

María Teresa Bajo*
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso / *University of Granada

Current comprehension models recognize the role of prior topic-specific knowl-

edge in the processing of general and specialized discourse (e.g. Gernsbacher
1990; Johnson-Laird 1983; Kintsch 1988). In interpreting, there is widespread
consensus that interpreters work better when they prepare in advance. However,
research on how preparation affects interpreting has encountered such method-
ological challenges as high variability and the need for appropriately sensitive
measures and tasks (Gile 2005). This article reports an experimental study to
assess the effect of advance preparation on simultaneous interpreting of special-
ized speeches, comparing seven professional interpreters and sixteen interpret-
ing students. All participants did two simultaneous interpretations, into Spanish
(their ‘A’ language) from English, of presentations from scientific congresses: one
with preparation materials provided half an hour beforehand, the other with-
out preparation. Each source text contained both ‘neutral’ and ‘difficult’ speech
segments (the three types of difficulty being terminology, syntactic complexity
and lack of redundancy). Dependent variables were accuracy of interpretation
and length of ear-voice span (EVS), the rationale being that longer EVS probably
reflects processing difficulties. The results show that both groups worked signifi-
cantly better after advance preparation, this being reflected both in accuracy and
in ability to maintain a shorter EVS. Interaction between preparation and type of
difficulty was also examined.

Keywords: simultaneous interpreting, advance preparation, expertise,

specialized speeches

Interpreting 17:1 (2015), 1–25. doi 10.1075/intp.17.1.01dia

issn 1384–6647 / e-issn 1569–982X © John Benjamins Publishing Company
2 Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla and María Teresa Bajo

Introduction

The role of prior knowledge in comprehension

Comprehension is one of the complex cognitive processes that co-occur in simul-
taneous interpreting (for a review, see Christoffels & de Groot 2005). Currently ac-
cepted comprehension models, such as the Mental Models Theory (Johnson-Laird
1983), the Construction-Integration Model (Kintsch 1988) and the Structure
Building Framework (Gernsbacher 1990), describe comprehension as a dynamic
process that encompasses micro- and macroprocessing operations aiming at the
construction of an internal (linguistic or abstract) representation of a particular
event. Microprocessing includes low-level operations allowing the recognition
and decoding of linguistic information explicitly provided in the text, while mac-
roprocessing entails high-level strategies to integrate textual information with pri-
or knowledge and with details of the communicative situation (Ericsson & Kintsch
1995; Kintsch 1998; van Dijk & Kintsch 1983).
In the comprehension of scientific discourse, there is a great deal of empirical
evidence supporting the key role of prior topic-specific knowledge in discourse
processing and related measures of performance (for a review, see McNamara et
al. 2007). This issue has been investigated by comparing individuals with different
degrees of knowledge about a certain domain, discipline or theme, such as sports
(Chiesi et al. 1979; Kendeou et al. 2003), physics (Chi et al. 1981; Kendeou et al.
2007) or Star Wars (Means & Voss 1985). Research based on this paradigm has
made it possible to determine, for example, that prior topic-specific knowledge
was a strong predictor of text comprehension even in participants who were not
experts in the domain concerned (Alexander et al.1994). More recent studies show
that such knowledge contributes to the enrichment of comprehension processes
in a number of ways. These include, at the microprocessing level, interaction with
text structure and verbal ability; and, at the macroprocessing level, the manage-
ment of meta-cognitive inferencing strategies (McNamara & O’Reilly 2009; Ozuru
et al. 2009).
Comprehension is a fundamental component of most cognitive models
representing translation and interpreting (Gerver 1975; Gile 2009; Moser 1978;
Seleskovitch 1976; Setton 1999). According to these accounts, not only is transla-
tion equivalence established at the lexical/semantic level, but functional equiva-
lence too must be attained in order to produce an acceptable target text. Translators
and interpreters must therefore continuously integrate the information presented
in successive sentences into the text/speech and create a representation of the situ-
ation in which this occurs, so as to reformulate the information in the target lan-
guage (Zwaan & Radvansky 1998).
 The role of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting 3

Several interpreting scholars have applied the tenets of these comprehen-

sion models to interpreting. Robin Setton (1999) takes the mental model theory
of Johnson-Laird (1983) as a basis for his pragmatic-cognitive model of simulta-
neous interpreting (SI), since the dynamic nature of the mental structures thus
identified would enable interpreters to address such requirements as the need to
maintain cohesion throughout the conference. Mackintosh (1985) suggests apply-
ing Kintsch’s model (1988) of comprehension to consecutive and simultaneous in-
terpreting. She proposes that many interpreting errors can be attributed to failures
in macroprocessing operations such as deletion of irrelevant propositions or the
construction of macro-propositions from the source speech.
Against this background, there is clearly much scope for further research into
the role of topic-specific knowledge in SI.

Previous empirical studies of preparation in simultaneous interpreting

Preparation of interpreting assignments is a typical feature of professional practice
among interpreters (AIIC 2004, 2006, 2009; Diriker 2004; Gile 2002). As men-
tioned above, both interpreting students and professional interpreters usually de-
vote time before an interpreting exercise or assignment to acquiring a general idea
of the topics to be covered, familiarizing themselves with the specific terminology
and other relevant information. The final product of this preparation is usually
a glossary that contains specialized terms and their target language equivalents
(Donovan 2001; Martin 2002; Moser-Mercer 1992; Seleskovitch 1978). Several
authors have hypothesized that this acquisition of prior topic-specific knowledge
could have a positive effect on SI, by facilitating the anticipation and prediction of
information (de Groot 2011; Moser 1978; Seleskovitch 1976).
Some empirical studies have operationalized the construct of prior topic
knowledge as “reference information” or “background information”, provided in
the form of a speaker’s script or notes. However, research on this topic has so
far not given very conclusive results. In Anderson’s study (1979, 1994), profes-
sional interpreters working into their ‘B’ language had advance access to a script,
to a summary, or to no prior information about the source speech. The author
observed no significant effect of the access to reference materials on the infor-
mativeness and intelligibility of target speeches. One reason for this, the author
explains, might be the limited number of participants and the variability in their
performance. As Gile (2005) points out, the dependent variables measured in this
study might have not been sensitive enough to capture the effect of studying the
related materials prior to interpreting.
In similar studies, Lamberger-Felber (2001, 2003) measured the effect on ac-
curacy of preparation with a script. Three experimental conditions were compared:
4 Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla and María Teresa Bajo

one group of participants had a script and time to prepare; a second group also had
a script, but no time to prepare; and a control group had no script at all. The two
groups that had access to the script showed a higher percentage of correctly inter-
preted figures and names, and a lower percentage of errors and omissions.
On the other hand, Alonso Bacigalupe (1999) found the opposite trend in a
study of eight interpreting students. The author measured interpreting errors in
SI in four experimental conditions: advance preparation with a script; advance
preparation with no script; availability of the script in the booth, but not before-
hand; and no preparation or script. Contrary to expectations, the students who did
not have the possibility of advance preparation or access to the script were the ones
that made fewest errors.
However, preparation and interpreting actually entail different cognitive
processing requirements according to whether they are done with or without a
script. Recent studies have shown that interpreting with text presents an increased
level of difficulty, and that the need to manage visual input from the text can af-
fect the interpreter’s fluency and accuracy (Agrifoglio 2004; Lamberger-Felber &
Schneider 2009; Shreve et al. 2010).
While the effect of background information on performance has proved diffi-
cult to observe, empirical data related specifically to the interpreting process (rath-
er than the product) only partially support the assumption that prior knowledge
facilitates the translation process. Griffin (1995) used a within-subject design in a
study of ten professional translators. All participants performed the same word-
translation task in two conditions: with related background information, and with
unrelated background information. The researcher measured production times,
i.e. the latency between a word’s initial appearance on screen and the moment
when each participant began to type its translation on a computer keyboard.
While the accuracy and acceptability of translated words were significantly higher
when participants had access to relevant background information, their produc-
tion times were longer. Bajo and Macizo (2009) found similar results: in their
study, production times were longer when professional translators had previous
access to a summary of the source text in two sight translation tasks: simultaneous
(with ‘real-time’ production of an oral target text, while reading the source text)
and consecutive (with production of the target text after reading the source text).
However, word translation and sight translation in both these conditions
probably entail different cognitive requirements and processes from simultaneous
interpreting. As explained above, for example, Agrifoglio (2004) found that one
added difficulty of sight translation is the interference of visual input. Moreover,
the unrelated information condition in Griffin’s study does not replicate a situ-
ation of non-preparation, since analyzing and discarding irrelevant information
 The role of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting 5

do not imply the same cognitive processes as when no information whatsoever is

available.
To explore the role of prior topic knowledge in interpreting, it should be stud-
ied in a task which is representative not only of real-life simultaneous interpreting
(Ericsson 2000/2001), but also of the conditions commonly experienced in actual
practice with regard to availability of materials for preparation.

The role of expertise in simultaneous interpreting

The development of expertise in simultaneous interpreting has received a great
deal of attention from researchers who have explored the cognitive processes in
translation and interpreting. While the study of differences in working memory
capacity has produced mixed results (Chincotta & Underwood 1998; Christoffels
et al. 2006; Köpke & Nespoulous 2006; Liu 2001; Padilla et al. 1995; Signorelli et al.
2012), studies that have focused on other memory and executive tasks have identi-
fied two areas in which experienced interpreters are at an advantage over those of
limited experience: lexical and semantic processing (Bajo et al. 2000; Padilla et al.
2005), and overall cognitive processing (Yudes et al. 2012).
Studies comparing experienced and inexperienced interpreters in representa-
tive tasks, such as the simultaneous interpreting of real speeches, also show that
skilled (professional) interpreters perform significantly better than inexperienced
(student) interpreters: this is seen in the overall quality and accuracy of interpret-
ing, as well as in the strategies used to overcome source text difficulties (Sunnari
1995; Tiselius & Jenset 2011); in the ability to distinguish between more important
and less important information (Liu 2001; Liu et al. 2004); and in the management
of syntactic density and complexity (Hild 2011).
Liu (2001; Liu et al. 2004) measured the accuracy of main and secondary ideas
in simultaneous interpreting by experienced interpreters (with at least two years
of professional experience), advanced students (two years of interpreter training)
and novice students (one year of interpreter training). Experienced interpreters
did best in terms of overall accuracy. They also interpreted more main ideas than
inexperienced interpreters, whose interpretation included main and secondary
ideas to the same degree. These results showed that skilled interpreters had de-
veloped an ability to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information. The study
also manipulated the difficulty of critical sentences, measured by their degree of
readability. Although both groups showed poorer accuracy with difficult critical
sentences, the experienced interpreters still did better than the students in this
respect.
A more recent study by Hild (2011) supports the hypothesis that experienced
interpreters have less difficulty than inexperienced interpreters in managing the
6 Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla and María Teresa Bajo

linguistic complexity of source speeches. In this study of eight professional inter-

preters and eight interpreting students, Hild measured the accuracy of simultane-
ous interpreting from Bulgarian to English in relation to four parameters of lin-
guistic difficulty: sentence density, syntactic complexity, type of clause, and type of
subordination. Accuracy significantly worsened in relation to these difficulties, es-
pecially for the students. In addition, the performance of experienced interpreters
was unaffected by the level of syntactic complexity, the type of clause or the type
of subordination. This would suggest that the role of high-level macroprocessing
operations increases with experience.
More recently, Tiselius (2013) also found significant differences between ex-
perienced and inexperienced interpreters in a between-groups study: experienced
participants (interpreters with more than 25 years’ experience) encountered fewer
processing problems, and had more strategies to solve them, than interpreters
with little or no experience.
Overall, research to date on the development of expertise in simultaneous in-
terpreting shows that skilled interpreters not only make fewer errors and produce
faster responses than inexperienced interpreters, but are also more efficient in the
management of their cognitive resources (for a recent review, see Liu 2008). We
therefore believe that it is important to continue exploring these differences, espe-
cially in specific tests such as interpreting with or without advance preparation of
relevant materials.

This study

Against this background, the aim of the present study was to investigate the role
of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting. Specifically, the study aims
at exploring (1) the role of advance preparation in overcoming difficult features of
the source speech; and (2) the relationship between the effects of advance prepara-
tion and interpreting experience.1
Our first specific hypothesis on the role of prior topic-specific knowledge in
discourse comprehension was that advance preparation would be reflected in bet-
ter processing and performance, to be measured on the basis of ear-voice span

1. A pilot study conducted with interpreting students was previously published by Diaz-Galaz
(2011). In the present study, we took part of the data from the pilot study and completed the
sample with a few more interpreting students and a new group of experienced interpreters.
While the aim of the pilot study was essentially to validate our methodology, in the present
experiment we wanted to explore the effect of preparation as a function of experience in simul-
taneous interpreting.
 The role of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting 7

(EVS) and accuracy with difficult features like scientific terminology, complex
syntax and lack of redundancy. In comparing professional interpreters and inter-
preting students, we expected the former to benefit more from preparation.

Methodology

Study design
The experiment involved independent variables in relation to four parameters:
(1) preparation vs. non-preparation; (2) level of difficulty of source speech seg-
ments (neutral vs. difficult); (3) type of problem in difficult segments (terminology
vs. syntactic complexity vs. low redundancy); (4) experience (professional inter-
preters vs. interpreting students). Three of the resulting comparisons (nos. 1–3)
were within-subject, while the fourth (no. 4) was between-subject.

Participants
Twenty-three subjects participated in the study: sixteen students about to com-
plete a two-year undergraduate programme in English-Spanish conference inter-
preting, and seven professional interpreters who, at the time of the study, had been
working regularly on the institutional and private markets in Spain for an average
of 11.13 years (min. 4 years — max. 20 years). In the year when the study was con-
ducted (2011), the interpreters had worked an average of 43.83 days (min. 25 days
— max. 88 days) in the booth, including an average of 15.33 days at scientific and
technical conferences (min. 5 — max. 44). The mean age of professional interpret-
ers at the time of participation in the study was 37.14 years (SD = 6.74). Since pro-
ficiency in a second language and working memory capacity are both predictors of
L2 listening comprehension performance (for a recent review, see Bloomfield et al.
2010), they were measured in order to establish a profile of participants.

Proficiency in L2
Participants were asked to fill out a language history questionnaire with a self-as-
sessment of their fluency in Spanish (L1, i.e. the ‘A’ language) and English (L2, i.e.
a ‘B’ or ‘C’ language), rating their skills in reading, listening, speaking and writing
on a scale from 1 to 10. The students gave their general skills in L1 and L2 ratings
of 9.31 (SD = 0.65) and 7.63 (SD = 0.82) respectively; for the professional interpret-
ers, the level of self-assessed proficiency in L1 and L2 was 9.85 (SD = 0.19) and
8.9 (SD = 0.95) respectively. Comparison by ANOVA showed significant between-
8 Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla and María Teresa Bajo

groups differences in both L1 (F (1, 21) = 4.635; MSE = 0.312; p = 0.043) and L2
(F (1, 21) = 11.89; MSE = 0.735; p = 0.024).

Working memory span

Participants were also asked to perform the Spanish version of the reading span
test (Daneman & Carpenter 1980), to assess their working memory span. In this
test, sets of sentences are shown on a computer screen and participants are in-
structed to read each sentence aloud and to recall the last word of each sentence at
the end of the set. The number of sentences in the set is increased gradually from
two to six. The size of the largest set of sentences in which all last words were re-
called correctly represents the participant’s memory span. Participants with scores
of 3.5 or higher are usually considered to have a high memory span (Miyake et
al. 1994). In this study, the mean scores for the students and the professional in-
terpreters were 3.46 (SD = 0.59) and 4.2 (SD = 0.75) respectively. In this case too,
an analysis of variance showed a significant difference between the two groups
(F (1, 21) = 8.91; MSE= 0.365; p= 0.007).

Background knowledge
After completing the interpretation, participants were asked to fill out a question-
naire on their degree of familiarity with the source speech topic, as well as with
the ideas and terminology it contained. This assessment was to be expressed on
a scale from 1 (“very low level of knowledge”) to 5 (“very high level of knowl-
edge”). The mean scores for familiarity with the topic were 1.88 (SD = 0.89) and
2.21 (SD= 0.76) for students and interpreters respectively; familiarity with the
ideas expressed was rated as 2.09 (SD = 0.95) and 2.07 (SD = 0.61) respectively;
while prior knowledge of the terminology used was rated as 1.97 (SD = 0.90) and
2.64 (SD = 0.99) respectively. T-tests showed no significant differences between the
groups in terms of familiarity with the topic (t = −0.88; p = 0.388), ideas (t = 0.06;
p = 0.96) or terminology (t = −1.60; p = 0.124).
Since the two groups of participants differed significantly in terms of their
L1 and L2 skills and working memory span, these were taken into account as co-
variates in a between-groups ANCOVA of the dependent variables on which the
interpretations were assessed.

Experimental material
Selection of speeches
Each group was required to do two simultaneous interpretations, from English
into Spanish: one with prior preparation, the other without. With a view to ensur-
ing that the two source speeches differed in topic but not in terms of difficulty,
 The role of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting 9

they were selected by a panel of five interpreting lecturers from the Department of
Translation and Interpreting at the University of Granada. The selection was made
from six speech transcripts which were accessed on the Internet, all of them taken
from scientific seminars. Rating was on a scale from 1 (“very easy”) to 7 (“very
difficult”), the idea being to assess the probable level of difficulty for a final year
interpreting student without specific knowledge of the topic. The two speeches
selected for the experiment were the ones that were most similar in terms of dif-
ficulty. A full description and transcription of the speeches can be found in Díaz-
Galaz (2012).
Comparison by ANOVA showed no statistical difference in the ratings provid-
ed by the five judges (F (4, 25) = 1.627; MSE = 1.255; p = 0.2), with two pairs of texts
showing a significant correlation (r = 0.93; p = 0.012). The pair actually selected
was the one with the higher degree of concordance among judges (Kendall W = 1),
the topics of the two speeches being “The genetics of schizophrenia and bipolar
disorder” (Sklar 2008) and “Neuroscience of visual perception” (Ramachandran
2003).

Identification of neutral and difficult segments

The judges selecting the texts were asked to mark the terms or segments that they
considered would cause the interpreting students difficulty, and also to indicate
why they considered each of these items difficult.
For each experimental speech, the judges identified 46 ‘difficult’ points.
Without any manipulation of the original script, the items concerned fell into
three categories: (i) terminology; (ii) syntactic complexity; (iii) presence of non-
redundant items (such as proper names, figures and acronyms). Texts were then
segmented into smaller units (phrases or clauses) around these difficult elements.
For each of the two speeches, the frequency of segments in these three categories
was as follows: terminology, 16 occurrences; syntactic complexity, 18; non-redun-
dant items, 12. Segments which the judges did not mark as difficult were classified
as ‘neutral’, indicating that they were not expected to pose a particular challenge
in terms of general knowledge, linguistic competence or interpreting proficiency.
Examples are “It is a great honor for me to be here today”, “How do we know this?”
or “The answer is obvious”. There were 34 of these in each experimental text.
The following excerpts from the experimental speeches show examples of
segments classed as difficult (in square brackets and bold type) and as neutral
(in italics):
Speech 1
Today psychiatrists are stuck with a distinction that started over a hundred years
ago, when the [psychiatrist Emil Kraeplin] was able to define or identify a
10 Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla and María Teresa Bajo

constellation of symptoms that he called [dementia praecox], what we would

now call Schizophrenia. He identified the [thought disorder] and the [delusions]
and [hallucinations], and something that he called [manic-depressive insanity],
that we would now call [bipolar disorder] or more commonly [manic-depressive
disease].

Speech 2
Well, the most striking evidence comes from patients with tiny lesions that dam-
age just [V4], the color area, or just [MT], the motion area. So, for example, when
V4 is damaged on both sides of the brain, you end up with a syndrome called [cor-
tical color blindness] or [achromatopsia]. Patients with [cortical achromatop-
sia] see the world in shades of grey, like a black and white movie, but they have no
problem reading a newspaper or recognizing people’s faces or seeing the direction of
movement.

Table 1 shows the number of words, paragraphs and segments in each of the two
texts. In addition, the Coh-Metrix 3.0 program (McNamara et al. 2013) was used
to analyze such features as the mean length of each speech segment, lexical di-
versity and lexical density. Lexical diversity (type-token ratio) is a measure of the
number of new versus repeated words in a text; lexical density indicates the pro-
portion of content words in relation to the total number of words in the text.

Table 1. Textual characteristics of the experimental speeches

Speech 1 Speech 2
Number of words 1121 1311
Number of paragraphs 18 17
Number of segments 80 80
Length of segments (mean number of words per segment) (SD) 13.84 (7.33) 15.99 (8.1)
Lexical diversity (type-token ratio, all words) 0.382 0.344
Lexical density (content words/total) 0.49 0.48

Speed of delivery
A number of studies show the effects of input rate on simultaneous interpret-
ing, the optimal speed probably being in the range of 100–120 words per minute
(wpm) (Barik 1973; Gerver 1969/2002; Liu 2001; Shlesinger 2003). Research on
L2 listening comprehension shows that the speech rate to which the listener is
exposed interacts with other factors, such as proficiency in L2, the speaker’s accent
and text length, the combination of which tends to affect subjective perception of
difficulty and the level of comprehension (Bloomfield et al. 2010).
 The role of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting 11

Since the interpreters and interpreting students in our study differed in work-
ing memory capacity, L2 proficiency and interpreting expertise, it was necessary to
avoid the confounding effect of either too fast or too slow a speed of delivery. With
this in mind, the experimental speeches were recorded by a female native speaker
of English and the audio files were digitally manipulated to achieve two versions of
each speech, with differing speeds of delivery: 100 wpm for the students, and 120
wpm for the interpreters.
All four of the recordings to be interpreted were analyzed using Praat©, version
5.3.77 (Boersma & Weenink 2014), a package for processing data on quantitative
parameters such as speech rate and pausing time. Table 2 shows that phonation
time (total speaking time, excluding pauses), speech rate (measured in syllables
per second, including pauses) and articulation rate (in syllables per second, ex-
cluding pauses) remained broadly similar in all four recordings, thus making them
comparable for the purposes of our study.

Table 2. Speed-of-delivery measures for the two experimental speeches

Speech 1 Speech 1 Speech 2 Speech 2
100 wpm 120 wpm 100 wpm 120 wpm
Number of syllables 2630 2381 2493 2244
Duration (seconds) 696.9 600.02 745.2 600.02
Phonation time (speaking time,
597.2 517.9 575.3 471.18
excluding pauses; seconds)
Articulation rate (syllables per
4.40 4.60 4.33 4.76
second, excluding pauses)
Speech rate (syllables per sec-
3.78 3.97 3.35 3.74
ond, including pauses)

Preparation materials
For each speech, the preparation materials consisted of a 250-word summary;
a biosketch of the speaker (about 80 words); nine slides based on the speech; a
conference programme including the speech (for communicative context); and
an English-Spanish glossary containing 30 specialized terms, in some cases with
additional information about the term or concept. Our purpose in preparing these
items was to recreate the type of research and reading done by a professional inter-
preter before an actual conference (for example, see Abril & Ortiz 1998; Donovan
2001; Gile 2009; Moser-Mercer 1992).
12 Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla and María Teresa Bajo

Procedure
The experimental sessions were conducted at the University of Granada, in two
different facilities: in the School of Translation interpreting laboratory (for the
students), and in the Experimental Psychology Department behavioral science
laboratories (for the professional interpreters). All participants completed their
interpretations individually, with no audience. The speeches were presented as au-
dio recordings. Participants interpreted one speech after 30 minutes’ preparation
based on the materials above, and one without any prior preparation or knowledge
of the topic. Participants were not allowed to access the Internet, or to consult any
materials other than those provided. To ensure that speech content would not act
as a confounding variable in the comparison of the two experimental conditions
(preparation vs. no preparation), the order of the preparation conditions and the
presentation of the speeches was counterbalanced. A 15-minute break was allowed
between the two interpretations.

Dependent variables
The variables measured in this study were EVS and accuracy of interpretation.
Research on cognitive processing has traditionally used mental chronometry mea-
sures, such as latencies and reaction times, to infer mental operations and measure
cognitive demand (see Posner 1978). In simultaneous interpreting research, this
latency has traditionally been measured by EVS. Research suggests that this may
be a reliable measure of cognitive processing in simultaneous interpreting tasks
(Timarová et al. 2011). EVS was measured at the beginning of the 80 source speech
segments, the theoretical overall total of EVS measurements from the entire sam-
ple in the two experimental conditions being 3,680.
In the event, some source speech segments were omitted in the target speech.
For the purposes of this study, this was considered to be the case only when there
was no trace whatsoever in the target speech of a given source text segment. For
the 220 segments (7.14%) in this category, EVS values could not be calculated. In
addition, EVS values of more than two standard deviations from the mean were
considered as outliers and were excluded from the analysis (n = 471, i.e. 15.3%
of total observations). This meant that EVS was actually measured on 2,989 seg-
ments.

Scoring
Three criteria were assessed by one of the authors, in order to obtain a multivari-
ate measure of the interpreters’ accuracy: (i) use of vocabulary and terminology;
 The role of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting 13

(ii) content; (iii) absence of syntactic interference from the source language. Other
features of delivery, such as fluency, intonation and voice quality, were not assessed.
The interpretation of each of the 80 source speech segments was rated on the
above criteria, on a scale from 1 to 3. For terminology and content, the rating was
as follows: 1 = omission; 2 = some inaccuracy; 3 = correct/appropriate. For interfer-
ence, the scoring covered a range from clear interference (1) to none (3). Overall
accuracy was defined as the mean value of the scores for terminology, content and
control of interference. For purposes of validation, two independent judges (PhD
students from the Department of Translation and Interpreting at the University
of Granada, with practical and theoretical training in translation and professional
experience as English-Spanish translators) assessed interpretation samples from
four participants (16% of the total sample). Comparison between their assess-
ment and ours showed that Kendall’s coefficient of concordance was significant
(W = 0.92, p < 0.05).

Results

Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were conducted on the study data.
Student’s t-tests for dependent samples were used to assess the effect of prepara-
tion on the dependent variables (EVS and accuracy of target speeches). To test
the significance of main effects and interactions among more than two dependent
variables, repeated-measures analyses of variance were conducted. Statistical sig-
nificance was established at p < 0.05.

Effects of advance preparation in interpreting students

Table 3 shows the results for EVS (in milliseconds) and overall accuracy, accord-
ing to whether the interpreting students prepared. EVS was significantly shorter
(t = −3.13; p = 0.007), and overall accuracy significantly higher (t = 5.819; p < 0.001),
after preparation.

Table 3. Interpreting students (n=16): mean EVS and overall accuracy, with and without
prior preparation
Preparation No preparation
Mean (SD) Mean (SD)
EVS (ms) 2425.05 (349.96) 2540.67 (379.70)
Overall accuracy 2.48 (0.33) 2.10 (0.26)
14 Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla and María Teresa Bajo

Regarding the effect of advance preparation on difficult and neutral speech seg-
ments, Table 4 shows that, irrespective of preparation, EVS was consistently and sig-
nificantly longer for difficult segments (ANOVA: F (1, 15) = 17.397; MSE = 38302;
p < 0.001); the interaction between preparation and level of difficulty was not sig-
nificant (F < 1). For accuracy too, scores differed significantly according to the level
of difficulty, with lower accuracy in difficult segments (ANOVA: F (1, 15) = 334.29;
MSE = 0.006; p < 0.001); in this case, the interaction between preparation and level
of difficulty was significant (F (1, 15) = 27.494; MSE = 0.016; p < 0.001). Though
the increase in the level of difficulty had a significant effect in both conditions, it
was greater when the students did not prepare (F (1, 15) = 185.891; MSE = 0.012;
p < 0.001).

Table 4. Interpreting students (n=16): mean EVS and overall accuracy in neutral and dif-
ficult segments, with and without prior preparation
Neutral segments Difficult segments
Preparation No preparation Preparation No Preparation
Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)
EVS (ms) 2295.57 (340.31) 2449.50 (433.50) 2534.83 (413.58) 2618.38 (371.64)
Overall accuracy 2.56 (0.31) 2.36 (0.27) 2.37 (0.36) 1.84 (0.28)

Table 5 shows EVS and overall accuracy for difficult speech segments. While EVS
was longer in segments with terminological and syntactic difficulties than in seg-
ments containing non-redundant information, these differences were not signifi-
cant (ANOVA: F (1, 15) = 2.447; MSE = 95634; p = 0.104); in addition, there was no
significant interaction between preparation and type of difficulty (F < 1). In other
words, the students maintained a fairly steady EVS throughout the difficult seg-
ments in both experimental conditions.

Table 5. Interpreting students (n=16): mean EVS and overall accuracy in difficult seg-
ments, with and without prior preparation
Specialized terminology Complex syntax Lack of redundancy
Prep. No prep. Prep. No prep. Prep. No prep.
Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)
EVS (ms) 2621.56 2636.57 2663.10 2626.31 2392.35 2584.71
(512.90) (446.80) (545.45) (549.12) (549.12) (439.55)
Overall 2.40 1.72 2.28 1.91 2.39 1.89
accuracy (0.35) (0.35) (0.37) (0.37) (0.41) (0.30)

For accuracy too, there were no significant differences related to the type of dif-
ficulty (ANOVA: F (1, 15) = 1.412; MSE = 0.036; p = 0.259). On the other hand, the
 The role of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting 15

effect of preparation was significant (F (1, 15) = 44.649; MSE = 0.146; p < 0.001), as
was the interaction between preparation and type of difficulty (F (1, 15) = 4.365;
MSE = 0.048; p = 0.027). In segments containing specialized terminology, accu-
racy was significantly lower in the absence of prior preparation (F (1, 15) = 9.51;
MSE = 0.037; p = 0.008).
Three general trends thus emerge among the interpreting students: (i) prepa-
ration had a significant effect on both EVS (reduced) and accuracy (increased);
(ii) EVS was significantly longer, and accuracy significantly lower, in difficult
speech segments than elsewhere; (iii) the effect of preparation was consistent,
showing no significant interaction with the level of difficulty.

Effects of advance preparation in experienced interpreters

Table 6 shows that preparation was associated with shorter mean EVS and greater
accuracy: Student’s t-test showed that data for both these variables differed sig-
nificantly according to whether the interpreters had prepared beforehand (EVS,
t = −2.53, p = 0.045; accuracy, t = 3.085, p = 0.022).

Table 6. Experienced interpreters (n=7): mean EVS and overall accuracy, with and with-
out prior preparation
Preparation No preparation
Mean (SD) Mean (SD)
EVS (ms) 2411.01 (287.30) 2568.29 (305.55)
Overall accuracy 2.81 (0.15) 2.62 (0.26)

Table 7 shows that EVS and accuracy did not differ significantly between neutral
and difficult segments (ANOVA, F < 1 for both variables); in addition, the interac-
tion between preparation and level of difficulty was not significant (F < 1 for both
variables).

Table 7. Experienced interpreters (n=7): mean EVS and overall accuracy in neutral and
difficult segments, with and without prior preparation
Neutral segments Difficult segments
Preparation No preparation Preparation No preparation
Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)
EVS (ms) 2378.01 (372.85) 2574.90 (360.10) 2436.65 (229.22) 2567.35 (348.62)
Overall accuracy 2.84 (0.14) 2.74 (0.24) 2.79 (0.20) 2.53 (0.30)

Trends for EVS and overall accuracy in difficult speech segments can be seen in
Table 8. EVS was significantly shorter in segments containing non-redundant
16 Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla and María Teresa Bajo

information such as figures and acronyms (F (2, 12) = 20.204; MSE = 27179;
p < 0.001); the interaction between preparation and type of difficulty was not sig-
nificant (F < 1). In terms of accuracy, results were significant neither for differences
related to the type of difficulty nor for the interaction between preparation and
type of difficulty (for both these analyses, F < 1).
The interpreters’ preparation was therefore efficient, helping them achieve ac-
curacy even in difficult segments. As for the students, mean EVS was significantly
shorter following prior preparation. Overall trends for the professional interpret-
ers thus overlap only to a limited extent with those for the students. There were
two similarities: (i) the professionals’ EVS and accuracy were significantly related
to preparation; (ii) the effect of preparation was consistent, showing no signifi-
cant interaction with the level of difficulty. On the other hand, the professionals’
EVS and accuracy showed no significant differences between neutral and difficult
speech segments.

Table 8. Experienced interpreters (n=7): EVS and overall accuracy for difficult segments,
with and without prior preparation
Specialized terminology Complex syntax Lack of redundancy
Prep. No prep. Prep. No prep. Prep. No prep.
Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)
EVS (ms) 2603.88 2790.61 2476.89 2620.02 2256.20 2353.70
(314.73) (420.42) (262.07) (351.17) (268.33) (341.71)
Overall 2.78 2.50 2.77 2.54 2.82 2.52
accuracy (0.24) (0.37) (0.30) (0.31) (0.15) (0.33)

Interpreting expertise
Differences between the two groups of participants were tested by ANCOVA.
Since the groups differed in terms of working memory capacity and L2 (English)
skills, these two variables were factored in as covariates. Table 9 shows that once
this had been done, the experienced interpreters were seen to have been more
accurate than the students (F (1, 39) = 12.227; MSE = 0.079; p = 0.001). This main
effect of expertise remained significant after conducting a factorial ANOVA (i.e.
not controlling for working memory capacity and L2 skills) (F (1, 42) = 27.332;
MSE = 2.078; p = 0.001).
 The role of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting 17

Table 9. Experienced and inexperienced interpreters: mean EVS and overall accuracy,
with and without prior preparation
Inexperienced interpreters Experienced interpreters
Preparation No preparation Preparation No preparation
Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)
EVS (ms) 2425.05 (349.96) 2540.70 (379.70) 2411.01 (287.30) 2568.29 (305.55)
Overall accuracy 2.48 (0.33) 2.10 (0.26) 2.81 (0.15) 2.62 (0.26)

EVS in the two groups was also tested by ANCOVA. In this case, the difference
between the groups was not significant (F < 1). Comparison by factorial ANOVA
also showed no significant difference between them (F < 1). In addition, there was
no significant interaction between preparation and group (F < 1). In other words,
regardless of the differences in participants’ interpreting experience, L2 compe-
tence and working memory capacity, both groups maintained similar EVS values.

Discussion

The results of this study reinforce the idea that advance preparation supports the
SI process, resulting in shorter EVS and greater accuracy: for the students, this was
seen even in difficult segments with specialized terminology, complex syntactic
structure and non-redundant information; for the professional interpreters, seg-
ments with non-redundant elements were managed better after preparation.
How does advance preparation facilitate the interpreting process? Previous
research shows that the ability to simultaneously comprehend and produce speech
could be related to the ability to use lexical knowledge efficiently in support of
these tasks: in a study by Padilla et al. (2005), professional interpreters avoided
the articulatory suppression effect when dealing with L1 words, but not when
processing non-words. The authors explain that efficiency might be related to the
role of familiarity and to the ability to access language-specific long-term knowl-
edge during the simultaneous interpreting process, either via the episodic buffer
(Baddeley 2000) or through domain-specific knowledge structures such as a long-
term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch 1995). Indeed, when preparing for an
interpreting assignment, special attention is given to preparing glossaries of spe-
cific terms and their target language equivalents. According to Gile’s Gravitational
Model of language availability (2009), advance preparation activates and increases
the frequency or familiarity of relevant source and target language information
in the long-term memory. The items concerned thus remain available for prompt
access and retrieval during SI. Advance preparation should therefore facilitate the
18 Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla and María Teresa Bajo

balancing of comprehension and production, arguably one of the greatest sources

of difficulty in simultaneous interpreting (Christoffels & de Groot 2005; de Groot
2011).
These data are also consistent with a processing capacity account of simulta-
neous interpreting such as the Effort Model (Gile 2009). According to this model,
the different cognitive operations involved in SI must share limited attentional
resources. If any of these operations take(s) too much of this limited capacity, the
other operations will not have sufficient resources to carry on and the entire pro-
cess will stall. In the present study, lack of preparation increased processing capac-
ity requirements, this being reflected in longer EVS and lower accuracy for both
groups. Longer EVS places increasing strain on the overall interpreting process,
making it hard for the interpreter to maintain comprehension and production at a
good enough level (Gile 2009).
With regard to differences between the professional interpreters and students,
the results indicate that both groups benefited greatly from prior access to related
sources of information. The participants in our study differed in years of expe-
rience in SI, working memory capacity and knowledge of L2. The professionals
interpreted more accurately, while EVS was comparable in the two groups, even
when controlling for WM capacity and skills in L2. These results might suggest
that greater accuracy is in part a function of experience and expertise, allowing
faster access to (prior) knowledge and efficient use of cognitive resources for better
performance in the limited time available.

Methodological implications for future research

One main conclusion of this study is that familiarity with the topic affects both
processing (EVS) and performance (accuracy) in simultaneous interpretation. The
work described above has methodological implications for future research, high-
lighting the need to control as far as possible for participants’ prior knowledge.
One possible way of doing so is to select topics that are not commonly dealt with in
class or in professional interpreting. This is probably easier achieved with interpret-
ing students than with professionals, but gauging participants’ prior knowledge is
not easy and relies largely on rather subjective methods of assessment. Control of
this variable might be helped by adding a briefing or similar preparation to the
experimental task, so that all participants have at least minimum prior knowledge
of the topic(s) involved. This may make it possible to reduce performance vari-
ability in experimental designs, thus helping isolate the effects produced by the
experimental manipulations and variables.
As in previous works that measured EVS (Bajo et al. 2000; Barik 1973;
Christoffels et al. 2006), mean EVS in this study was about 2–3 seconds. While
 The role of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting 19

interpreters may adapt EVS when dealing with problems in SI, the trend in this
study was to lengthen or shorten it according to the difficulty of any given seg-
ment, but not according to the interpreter’s experience. Even when the effect of
skills in L2 and working memory capacity was accounted for, no appreciable dif-
ference in EVS was found between professional interpreters and students. This
may mean that: (i) as suggested by Timarová et al. (2011), EVS is a reliable indi-
cator that varies according to local fluctuations in the difficulty of simultaneous
interpreting; (ii) EVS may tend not to exceed a certain duration, reflecting a natu-
ral limit in a simultaneous interpreter’s processing capacity. This of course would
need to be further explored in future research.
Another important methodological implication of our study is related to the
source speech presentation rate. In this study, the speed of delivery was digitally
manipulated to avoid the confounding effect of too high or too low a rate of deliv-
ery. Speech rate (including pauses) and articulatory rate (excluding pauses) nev-
ertheless remained similar between the two groups. Admittedly, while speech rate
in w.p.m. provides a rough indication of content expressed in a given amount of
time, it does not account for variations in word length. Calculating speech rate and
articulation rate in syllables per minute could provide a more sensitive measure of
speech rhythms and pausing behaviour in discourse-length materials (Bloomfield
et al. 2010) such as those used in interpreting research.

Conclusions

The findings of this study indicate that both inexperienced and experienced inter-
preters can benefit from advance preparation, usually done by identifying reliable
sources of information, extracting relevant information from them, and drawing
up a glossary. By the same token, interpreting students should find preparation of
specific background knowledge useful before any form of interpreting practice or
test on a given topic.
With regard to professional conditions, the findings of this study indicate
that interpreters are fully justified in asking for access to conference materials in
order to prepare for an assignment. Although tight professional schedules may
make it very difficult to prepare at length for any given assignment, the profes-
sional interpreters in this study benefited significantly from fairly limited advance
preparation. The habit of preparing in advance for interpreting assignments could
also be evidence of deliberate practice leading to expert performance (Ericsson
2006).2 Deliberate practice tasks are specifically designed to improve performance,

2. The authors thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

20 Stephanie Díaz-Galaz, Presentación Padilla and María Teresa Bajo

with immediate feedback and, where appropriate, repetition. In the case of ad-
vance preparation, interpreters study conference materials with the specific aim
of improving their performance, and can often obtain immediate feedback as to
whether this was effective. In this way, they can refine their methods of prepara-
tion and gain insight into what helps them best, thus enabling them to improve
performance on subsequent assignments.
Users of interpreting services, such as conference organizers, can learn from
this study how important it is to provide interpreters with relevant information,
like the topic of the conference and presentations and, if possible, other materials
like speakers’ slides. Conference organizers, in particular, will surely not fail to ap-
preciate that this is in their interest, helping set the scene for better interpretation
and thus contributing to the success of the event.

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Authors’ address
Stephanie Díaz-Galaz
Instituto de Literatura y Ciencias del Lenguaje
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
Av. El Bosque 1290, Edificio C, Oficina 7–16, Campus Sausalito
Viña del Mar
Chile
stephanie.diaz@ucv.cl
ppadilla@ugr.es
mbajo@ugr.es
 The role of advance preparation in simultaneous interpreting 25

About the authors

Stephanie Díaz-Galaz is an Assistant Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso,
Chile. Her research interests are cognitive processes in translation and interpreting, the acquisi-
tion of translation and interpreting skills, and the development of expertise in translation and
interpreting.
Presentación Padilla is a Full Professor in the Department of Translation and Interpreting at the
University of Granada, Spain. Her main fields of research are interpreter training and cognitive
processes in interpreting.
Teresa Bajo is a Full Professor in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University
of Granada, Spain. She carries out research on inhibition in memory control and in language
selection, cognitive processes in language translation and interpretation, and individual differ-
ences in working memory.
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