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Observations on Anomalous
Stress in Interpreting
a
Sarah Williams
a
Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm
University
Published online: 21 Feb 2014.
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The Translator. Volume 1, Number 1 (1995), 47-64
are indicated most by pitch and least by loudness. Pitch concerns the vary-
ing height of the pitch of the voice over one syllable or over a number of
successive syllables: in other words, the voice goes up and down; length
concerns the relative durations of a number of successive syllables or the
duration of a given syllable in one environment relative to the duration of
the same syllable in another environment (i.e. when one syllable or word
is longer than others); loudness concerns changes of loudness within one
syllable or the relative loudness of a number of successive syllables, that
is it concerns changes in volume (ibid:2). Very generally speaking, stress
falls into two categories, which I will refer to as word-related stress and
discourse-related stress. Word-related stress can be delimitative, serv-
ing to mark beginnings and endings of words and thus aiding segmentation
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That anomalous stress occurs in interpreting, and that it may well have
a detrimental effect on listener comprehension, then, is clear. What is not
so clear is why and when this phenomenon occurs. When listening to the
recorded performance of a professional interpreter at a conference, I no-
ticed that anomalous stress in the interpreter's production (which I refer
to here as output) sometimes appeared to be immediately preceded by
particularly salient stress in the speaker's production or input. The stress
in the output and the input however did not seem to be semantically or
pragmatically related, such that, roughly speaking, anomalous stress oc-
curring in output Al seemed to be a reflection of speaker stress occurring
in B, as can be seen in Figure 1. In other words, the speaker first produced
Sentence A, and then the interpreter rendered Sentence A in the target
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SPEAKER:
[!]~
----~~----------
--------~~~~~~--~~~
INTERPRETER:
GJ~~
time scales for both speaker's track and interpreter's track have been syn-
chronized.
2. Results
In all the examples analyzed here, the interpreter was listening to a new
message at the same time as producing a version of the previous message.
In each case, the anomalous stress produced by the interpreter while inter-
preting the previous message was immediately preceded by salient stress
in the input that the interpreter was listening to. Since the stress in the
input belonged to a new message that the interpreter had not yet rendered
in the target language, it was neither semantically nor pragmatically re-
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lated to the word which the interpreter actually stressed. Hence the
occurrence of instances of anomalous stress in the interpreter's output.
Example 1
Speaker: somnar monopolisten forr eller senare in ................................ och sussar gott .. .
Interpreter: doing this ....................... and .... therefore ...... the person who has a monopoly
..... och levererar daIig service till ett hogt pris .... Detta ar ett ....... er ................. ett
will more or less go to sleep ............. and ..... will deliver very bad services to a very
Gloss: ... the monopolist will sooner or later go to sleep and sleep well and
deliver bad service at a high price. This is an empirical and scientif- ....
In this example, the anomalous stress is on the word price. The correspond-
ing word in the original,pris, was unstressed, and there is no discourse-related
reason for stressing price. The anomalous stress follows a stressed item in
the input, detta, with a time lag of approximately 2.802 seconds (See
Graphs la and Ib).5
Example 2
kvinnor som har blivit iildrevard dom ldg tju/em procent battre an stans enheter
... er ...... on .... the .. side ......... for instance WOMEN who've been employed in the ge-
Gloss: ... companies with women who had previously been employed by
the municipality and local councils which have now become old folks'
homes they were twenty-five per cent better off than the city's institutions
when the process ...
'" 300
,=~250
:;: r- 200 della
[-;.
i5 ~ 150
:;:'"
2 g 100
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z:~
~ ~ 50
price
2 4
TI~IE IN SECONDS
",300
~250
<:>
tjufem
~~ 200
domJag
i5 ~ 150
:;:'"
2
z:~
g 100
~ ~ 50
TIME IN SECONDS
Graphs 2a and 2b. Upper Section: Speaker stress on dom ldg tjufem
Lower Section: Interpreter stress on WOMEN
Sarah Williams 53
the stress in the input. It seems likely that the interpreter's third syllable
would have occurred simultaneously with the speaker's next syllable had
the speaker not produced a syllable group, tjufem, with an unstressed syl-
lable before the main stressed syllable (see Figure 2).
Example 3
Speaker: ... pa ...... sig .... for att komma fran ............. ett ............. typ .... .
Interpreter: .. one who looks at ....... a ......... five year period and one looks
av system till ett annat .... er ............ sa er .... har man nu i fOrvaltningarna
from .. one ............................ er ... from one system, getting from one system
.... mycket ambitiOst tycker jag och de fiesta har varit mycket bra gatt igenom vad iir det
to another one one has decided IN the administration in a very ...... er ... ambitious way ... .
Gloss: ... in order to change over from one type of system to another, they
have now, in the administration, I think very ambitiously, and most of
Anomalous Stress in Interpreting 54
them have been very good, looked in detail at what can be exposed to
competition and ...
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TIME DI SECONDS
Here, the anomalous stress is on the word in. The corresponding word in
the input, i, was unstressed, and there is no discourse-related reason for
stressing in. The anomalous stress follows a stressed item in the input,
mycket ambitiOst, with a time lag of approximately 0.79 seconds.
Example 4
Speaker: ... egen utsaga ligger de inte mer an atta tio procent battre beroende
Interpreter: ... they'll allow .. twenty-five .. per cent higher ........ but now ...... .
pa .. att ... de .................... kommunala enheterna (xxx) har nu b6rjat tillampa en del
they're ....... only ............... about ....... er ... eight .................... ten ...... per cent better
av deras arbetsmetoder och fiiljaktligen sankt sina kostnader och fiiljaktligen ar inte
.............. only ........................ than .. the ...... municipal .. sector .... it's because the
skillnaden lika star ........... langre mellan den privata ........... och den egna
municipal sector have FOLLOWED them and lowered their costs .............. .
egen energiverksamhet .. .
........ er ....................... .
Sarah Williams 55
Gloss: ... their own statement they are no more than eight or ten per cent
better, as the municipal institutions have now begun to apply some of
their methods and consequently lowered their costs and consequently the
difference is no longer as great between the private and their own con-
cerns.
In this example, the intonation of the item carrying anomalous stress in the
output sounded perceptually very similar to that of an item stressed earlier in
the input, rather than to the intonation of the immediately preceding item.
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'N' 300
C 250 I
~ 1Z 200
1-;..-
slor
~:;::'"~ 150
~ g 100
z'"
f:: e: 50
'N'
C 400 followed
...l<::
~ ~ 300
Zu
~ ~ 200
<=-
co
!§ ~ 100
......
2 4
TIME 1:\ SECO:-;DS
Graphs 4a and 4b. Upper Section: Speaker stress on kommunala and star
Lower Section: Interpreter stress on FOLLOWED
This may indicate the existence of two mechanisms. The anomalous stress
on followed sounds perceptually very much like the intonation in the in-
put kommunala, which occurs quite a bit earlier than followed. However,
it will be noted that followed is immediately preceded by rising pitch and
increase in breath pressure in the input star (see Graphs 4c and 4d in the
Appendix). This may trigger anomalous stress in much the same way as
was suggested in discussing Example 3, except that the stress pattern pro-
duced in this case does not seem to be based on an anticipation pattern set
up by star, but is perceived to reflect the stress pattern from the earlier
input kommunala. The time lag between kommunala and followed is ap-
proximately 6.832 seconds; the time lag between star and followed is
0.341 seconds.
Anomalous Stress in Interpreting 56
3. Discussion
First, it must be pointed out that any discussion based on a limited number
of examples, as in this case, must necessarily be somewhat speculative.
However, the examples analyzed above suggest that while the anomalous
stress in the interpreter's output does not directly correspond, semanti-
cally or pragmatically, to stressed elements in the input, it does appear to
reflect or be preceded by salient stress in the input, although exactly how,
why and when this happens is still unclear. Indeed, the analysis indicates
that there may be several different mechanisms involved, which mayor
may not be related. In Example 1, anomalous stress is produced slightly
after salient stress in the input; in Example 2, it is produced immediately
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after the onset of salient stress in the input and may in fact anticipate
forthcoming salient stress, whereby increasing loudness may playa role;
in Example 3, the anomalous stress in the output sounds similar to that
which has just occurred in the input, and in Example 4, it appears to be
immediately preceded by salient stress in the input but sounds similar to
salient stress that occurred considerably earlier in the input.
Clearly, much more work needs to be carried out before anything more
definite can be said. However, two areas of research may offer some in-
sight into this phenomenon, namely the tendency, in certain circumstances,
for a person to adapt his/her pitch to that of the person s/he is talking to
(referred to here as Fo mirroring) and the tendency to use the sound of
one's own voice to automatically monitor and adjust subsequent speech
production (referred to here as proprioceptive audial control).
It has been noted in the literature that identification with the speaker is
an important factor in conference interpreting. Cary (1962:5), for exam-
ple, suggests that "the essence of conference interpretation as compared
with other forms of translation is not so much a scrupulous analysis of a
text, but rather an immediate identification with the speaker" (my transla-
tion;6 see also Andronikof 1962 and Garcia-Landa 1985). Ironically, this
identification with the speaker, which is felt to provide a basis for good
interpreting, may be precisely what leads to the kind of anomalous stress
that is detrimental to listener comprehension (possibly via Fo mirroring).
In a study in which pairs of subjects met for the first time, were recorded
in conversation and afterwards independently reported their feelings to-
wards the other person, Buder (1993) was able to show that in cases in
which there was a mutual feeling of affinity, there was also a tendency for
rhythmic and F0 matching to take place; in other words, subjects adapted
their intonation to that of the other person. Indeed, there is reason to be-
lieve that Fomatching may actually be innate; infants' Fo in babbling is
higher in the presence of the female caretaker and lower in the presence of
Sarah Williams 57
the male caretaker (Weir 1962). Fo matching may also constitute part of
the more global matching mechanism seen in reciprocal body language in
dyads that is well documented in research on interpersonal behaviour (for
instance in Morris 1977).
A related problem may be the perceptual mixing of the speaker's
prosody and the interpreter's own prosody. Spiller & Bosatra (1989) dis-
cuss various problems involved in co-ordinating the perception of the
speaker's input and the interpreter's own input, and point out that the
audiophonatory reflex is very important in monitoring output; delayed
audio feedback, for example, can cause stuttering, and the higher volume
input sometimes favoured by students can also interfere with this
audiophonatory reflex. Gran (1989:95) also mentions that when students
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at the initial stage of their training turn up the volume for fear of missing
part of the original speech, they then tend to speak "in a very loud voice,
in a flat and monotonous tone, while making syntactic and pronunciation
errors because of auditive interference with the source language" and dis-
play "an almost total lack of control of their output in the TL". If, perhaps
because of energy and attention constraints, the interpreter is (momentar-
ily) unable to keep the two incoming channels separate, i.e. the speaker's
voice and hislher own, then the speaker's input at that point may act as
audial control for the interpreter's output, creating an automatic adjust-
ment. It may, then, be the ability to block this posited automatic matching
mechanism that students have to acquire, and it may be this blocking that
sometimes fails to operate in professional interpreters under certain cir-
cumstances.
It is by now perhaps clear that this study raises more questions than it
answers, such as, for example:
SARAH WILLIAMS
Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm University, S-J069J
Stockholm, Sweden. Sarah. Williams@biling.su.se
Sarah Williams 59
Notes
1. The amplitude of the speech signal is measured in volts (V), the sound
pressure level is measured in decibels (dB), and the fundamental frequency
is measured in Hertz (Hz).
2. It would obviously be extremely helpful to know more about the frequency
and distribution of this phenomenon, induding how many instances of
anomalous stress occurred in the first fifteen minutes. Although such an
extensive investigation is beyond the scope of this particular paper, it is
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my intention to carry out more detailed research in this area in the near
future.
3. In the graphs that follow, the upper curve Fo extraction is not perfect; peaks
above 250-300 Hz probably reflect the second harmonic rather than Fo.
4. Because of technical reasons, the text given in the graphs is an approxi-
mation of where the stress occurs; in order for the text to fit exactly over
the graph lines, either it would have had to have been reduced to an illeg-
ible size, or I would have had to enlarge the graph itself to such an extent
that it would not have been possible to present this length of excerpt.
5. The time lag was measured from the beginning of the rise in Fo in the
stressed element in the input to the beginning ofthe rise in Fo in the stressed
element in the output.
6. ''l'originalite essentielle de !'interpretation de conference par rapport aux
divers genres de traduction consiste en ce qu'elle suppose non une ana-
lyse minutieuse d'un texte, mais !'identification instantanee a un homme
qui parle".
7. Personal communication, Anna-Lena Nilsson, sign language interpreter,
Stockholm University.
References
Barik, Henri (1972) 'Interpreters Talk a Lot, Among Other Things', Babe118(1):
3-9.
Bolinger, Dwight (1986) Intonation and Its Parts: Melody in Spoken English,
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
------ (1989) Intonation and Its Uses: Melody in Grammar and Discourse, Lon-
don: Edward Arnold.
Buder, Eugene (1993) Synchrony of Speech Rhythms in Conversations. Paper
presented at the Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University, 17th
March, 1993.
Cary, E. (1962) 'Noblesse de la parole', Babel 8(1): 3-7.
Cruttenden, Alan (1986) Intonation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cutler, Anne (1987) 'Speaking for Listening', in A. Allport, D. G. Mackey, W.
Orinsz and E. Scheerer (eds), Language Perception and Production, Lon-
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Appendix
4
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-20
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'N'
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~~ 150
Ci g 100
~~ 50
TIME IN SECONDS
4
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..
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iI
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TIME 1:'0 SECO:'ODS
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women
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TI~IE 1:'0 SECO:'ODS
4
2
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T1~IE I~ SECONDS
4
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--~-----------------------------------
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2 4 6 8 10 12 14
TIME L'I SECONDS