The effects of noise on the performance of simultaneous interpreters: accuracy of performance

The effect of noisy listening conditions on the performance of simultaneous interpreters was studied by asking subjects to shadow and simultaneously interpret French prose into English at 3 signal-noise ratios. It was found that while noise had a significant effect on the proportions of texts correctly shadowed and interpreted, there were significantly more errors committed when interpreting than when shadowing at lower signal-noise ratios. This finding, together with analysis of subjects' self-corrections when interpreting, suggested that difficulty in perceiving source language passages reduced the ability of simultaneous interpreters to monitor their interpretations into the target language.