Mária Bakti: The development of interpreting competence
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13 The analysis of students’ retrospective evaluative comments
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13.1 Retrospective protocols in interpreting

13.1 Retrospective protocols in interpreting

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Retrospection has been used widely in experimental psychology and second language research (Ericson & Simon, 1993; Gass & Mackey, 2000). Ericson and Simon describe retrospective reporting as follows: “cognitive processes leave in LTM [long-term memory] a subset of the originally heeded information in the form of a retrievable trace of connected episodic memory. Retrospective reporting involves retrieval of these episodic memories and verbalization of content” (Ericson & Simon, 1993, p. 149).

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The roots of the use of retrospection in Interpreting Studies can be traced back to the use of think-aloud protocols (TAPs) in translation process research, which started in the 1980’s (Jääskeläinen, 2002), however, as the interpreting process does not allow for concurrent verbalization, retrospective protocols include verbal data that have been collected immediately after the completion of the interpreting task. These verbal data are based on information stored in long-term memory (Ericson & Simon, 1993). The use of retrospective protocols in interpreting studies started in the middle of the 1990’s. Instead of isolation, retrospective protocols have mostly been used as a secondary method of gathering information in order to triangulate quantitative data (Hild, 2015).

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Retrospective research in Interpreting Studies has addressed four main questions, all related to simultaneous interpreting. These four areas are 1) expert-novice differences, 2) strategies, 3) directionality and 4) norms (Hild, 2015).

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As a method, retrospection has its inherent weaknesses. Gumul (2020) mentions four such weaknesses. First, because of their nature, reports are incomplete. Second, the representational validity of retrospective verbal reports is limited, and, because retrospection happens after the interpreting task, it is not feasible to tap into short term memory. Lastly, it might happen that there is contamination with other contents of the long term memory, which might result in the installation of false memories (Gumul, 2020, p. 153). Gumul also mentions that, even though many studies use retrospection, the results are difficult to compare as the research designs themselves are divergent (Gumul, 2020).

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When designing methodology using retrospection, researchers are faced with numerous choices (Gumul, 2020). First, the choice between immediate or postponed retrospection (the so called immediacy condition) should be made. Second, a decision should be made on the cueing methods, for example using the source language text transcript or the recording of the target text. Next, a decision should be made on the extent of the researcher’s involvement and intervention. The researcher can conduct retrospective interviews or can opt for allowing self-retrospection orally or in writing. In addition, researchers have a choice regarding prior training in retrospective methods and instructions given to participants. A further choice is linked to the transparency of data-handling procedures. Finally, Gumul (2020) mentions that the researcher can decide upon combining retrospection with other research methods (Gumul, 2020, p. 153).

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Studies related to retrospection in Interpreting Studies mostly focus on the simultaneous mode. The first studies described the method itself and its applicability in SI (Ivanova, 1999; Vik-Tuovinen, 2002). Tiselius and Jenset (2011) compared the performance of experts and novices, while Gumul (2020) tested the effect of retrieval clues in retrospection following a SI task.

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Ivanova (1999) found that there were considerable differences between experts and novices in their complexity of problem analysis, the range and type of strategies used, monitoring and metacognition. Results related to the differences between experts and novices also show that beginners focus more on the SL text and linguistic expression (Tiselius & Jenset, 2011), and that beginners have more problems with lexical access (Tiselius & Jenset, 2011).

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Similarly to SI, Ribas (2012), when analysing problems and strategies in consecutive interpreting, found that novice students reported problems related to the understanding of the SL text and taking and decoding notes. As concerns students’ perception of the effectiveness of their problem-solving, it was found that novices reported a greater ability of solving problems related to understanding the SL text, while advanced students reported that they had felt their problem solving was not satisfactory, for example in the case of problems related to numbers. In addition, it was found that novices tend to add wrong information (as a strategy), while advanced students use more omissions and they use summarizing and paraphrasing more often. According to Ribas (2012), these strategies require more practice and a greater mastery of discourse analysis (Ribas, 2012, p. 830).

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This leads to the following research questions:

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    1. What problem areas or achievements do students mention in their retrospective comments?
    2. How does the focus of the retrospective comments change as students progress in their training?

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My presuppositions, based on Bakti (2021) and Gumul (2020), are that the focus of the retrospective comments will change and will reflect the development of interpreting competence.
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