Impact of Working Memory Load on Performance and Strategy Selection in Simultaneous Interpreting A Case Study of Obama's Speech before the UN General Assembly (2015) & David Cameron's Speech before the House of Commons (2015)

Abstract

The study aims to delve into the human mind to understand how the memory functions during the intricate process of simultaneous interpreting (SI), enabling the interpreter to decode the source language and encode the target language in tandem. Theories of prominent psychologists (Alan Baddeley, David Gerver, Henri Barik, etc.) are discussed herein to disambiguate the mystery of the process, understand the factors that might affect it, analyze the resultant output, and define the strategies used by interpreters to cope with the difficulties that might arise. The present study is divided into three chapters, an introduction and a conclusion: Chapter One presents the theoretical framework and unveils the concept of working memory (WM), showing its main components pursuant to Baddeley and Hitch's model (2010). It consists of a "central executive", a supervisory component and attentional system which controls and coordinates mental operations, and two slave systems: the "phonological loop" and the "visuo-spatial sketchpad", responsible for storing verbal information, and visual and spatial material respectively. Baddeley introduces a fourth component, the "episodic buffer", to their model. This buffer is a limited-capacity store that integrates diverse types of information and links the WM with the LTM. The WM is explained as one of the cognitive cornerstones underlying simultaneous interpreting, as it is the workspace where the process of SI is carried out. This chapter also elaborates David Gerver's flow-chart model (1975) which explains that the processing of information in SI is performed in the "operational memory" or "working memory", including decoding of the source language and encoding of the target language. The model also shows that loading the working memory results in a shortage of the processing capacity.