A large body of evidence shows an animacy effect on memory in that animate entities are better remembered than inanimate ones. Yet, the reason for this mnemonic prioritization remains unclear. In the survival processing literature, the assumption that richness of encoding is responsible for adaptive memory benefits has received substantial…

Material development is important for training beginner student interpreters, as it guides the direction of interpreting learning. One key principle is difficulty progression, which requires a good knowledge of the indicators of difficulty. Since text structure outweighs words and sentences in the information processing of consecutive…

This article proposes a model for teaching interpreting for tourism purposes. It shows the aims of the model, interpreting materials, training strategies, training environment and assessment techniques. The model aims to train students to interpret in English with or without prior preparation or knowledge of the topic and without taking or reading…

Interpreting, especially simultaneous interpreting, is a complex cognitive processing task that has special requirements for the interpreter's memory resources. To date, interpreting scholars have not yet reached a consensus about the interrelationship between memory and interpreting quality, but it is generally acknowledged that memory is one of…

Many words have more than one translation across languages. Such "translation-ambiguous" words are translated more slowly and less accurately than their unambiguous counterparts. We examine the extent to which word context and translation dominance influence the processing of translation-ambiguous words. We further examine how these factors…

Memory-based language processing (MBLP) is an approach to language processing based on exemplar storage during learning and analogical reasoning during processing. From a cognitive perspective, the approach is attractive as a model for human language processing because it does not make any assumptions about the way abstractions are shaped, nor any…

This article reports findings from 3 experiments examining whether 2nd language (L2) words are represented in episodic memory, as originally proposed by Jiang and Forster (2001). Experiment 1 was a direct replication of Jiang and Forster, testing highly proficient Chinese-English bilinguals. Masked translation priming was obtained in an episodic…

The present research tested the hypothesis that the age at which one's first language (L1) words are learned influences language processing in bilinguals. Prior research on bilingual language processing by Kroll and colleagues has suggested that memory links between L1 words and conceptual representations are stronger than memory links between…

Bilinguals must focus their attention to control competing languages. In bilingual aphasia, damage to the fronto-subcortical loop may lead to pathological language switching and mixing and the attrition of the more automatic language (usually L1). We present the case of JZ, a bilingual Basque-Spanish 53-year-old man who, after haematoma in the…

The research reported here examines the influence of knowledge of two languages on the organization of semantic information in long-term memory. Eight English-French bilingual adults were presented pairs of letter strings and had to decide whether both strings were words. Half of the trials contained English-French word pairs which required a…

Describes a study which sought to determine whether memory for input language is affected by proficiency in the nondominant language. The subjects were native Hebrew speakers with varying degrees of proficiency in English. Basic and advanced subjects did not score higher with input in their dominant language. (SED)

The skilled performance of conference interpreters has aroused some interest of late, both on the part of interpreters interested in studying their own complex skills, and of psychologists interested in cognitive behavior. Recent theories in this field have concentrated on information processing aspects of the task, and on the role of anticipatory…

A comprehension model of simultaneous interpretation activity raises three types of problems: structure of semantic information stored in long-term memory, modalities of input processing and specific restrictions due to situation. A useful concept of semantic mnesic structures includes: (1) a componential-predicative lexicon; (2) a propositional…

Orthogonally manipulated three word characteristics in Dutch and English--word imageability; word frequency; and cognate status--and obtained similar data patterns for three groups of bilinguals different from one another in second-language fluency. Findings indicate that "concept mediation" is a universal process in translating words…

The author is presenting a program that she designed for teaching liaison interpreting to translation students in their fifth semester of the translation program at the College of Languages and Translation (COLT), who are starting their training in liaison interpreting. The students never had any interpreting or translation training before. The…