Investigating Effects of Syntactic Interference in Interpretation: a Case of Sight Translation From English to French

Abstract

This project was set to investigate syntactic interference during sight translation of medical discharge instructions. The main objective was to analyze the effect of syntactic interference on the quality of the interpretation performed by inexperienced professional interpreters; those with less than one year of experience. The study also looked at sight translation and translation strategies applied during the interpretation. Through the analysis of the data collected from the participants, it was found that the quality of interpretation is negatively affected when the interpreters carried out word-for-for interpretations and failed to apply necessary change in grammatical categories during meaning transfer from English into French. However, it was highlighted that literal interpretation is sometimes a default strategy because of similarities between both languages. As for the coping strategies, interpreters resorted to strategies such as transposition, modulation of syntax, expansion of meaning and also equivalence in order to maintain the quality of interpretation, especially in cases where literal translation would have led to unclear and unnatural expressions.