Questions related to assessment and evaluation inevitably lead to the issue of quality in interpreting. It is rather difficult to compare results related to user expectations regarding interpreting quality, because researchers have used different methods and surveyed different target groups when mapping users’ expectations, users’ responses or professional interpreters’ expectations (Kurz, 2001). Bühler (1986) surveyed 47 professional interpreters, asking them to rate the importance of 16 criteria, while Kurz (1993) investigated the expectations of conference participants. Results indicate that both interpreters and participants have similar priorities: fidelity, logical cohesion, terminology, and fluency ranked first among both groups. However, different user groups have different expectations. In summary, research into user expectations in interpreting has produced a stable order of preferences, including fidelity of content, fluency and correct terminology, which dominate over factors related to delivery, such as lively intonation, pleasant voice, and a native accent (Pöchhacker, 2015). Professional interpreters also share these preferences (Bühler, 1986); however, interpreters are much stricter than conference delegates when it comes to expectations towards interpreting and interpreters (Kurz, 2001).

The above results are for simultaneous interpreting; fewer studies have investigated users’ expectations and responses in CI. Marrone’s (1993) results show that substance, fidelity and completeness of information are more important for users than the prosodic features of delivery. Andres (2000), quoted in Kurz, 2001) found that potential users of CI consider rhythm, intonation and voice less important than completeness, correct terminology and clarity when evaluating consecutive interpreting. Users found incomplete sentences in the TL and the nervousness of the interpreter irritating.

Fluency is one of the most important quality criteria in interpreter assessment, although it is rather difficult to isolate it from related features of speech, such as intonation and prosodic accent (Macarena Pradas Macías, 2015), which might be considered as delivery-related criteria. As concerns delivery or re-expression criteria in consecutive interpreting, Jones notes that the interpreter is a public speaker, who has to exhibit efficient delivery, and who has to speak at a “sustained, steady pace, without hesitation or unnecessary repetition” (Jones, 1998, p. 40). He notes the importance of the interpreter’s intonation and use of pauses in bringing out the meaning of the source language text. He advises that the voice should be dropped at the end of a sentence followed by a short pause, and to hold a rather longer pause at the end of a paragraph (Jones, 1998).

The aim of the investigation presented in this chapter is twofold.

First, I would like to examine if and how the development of interpreting skills is mirrored by the feedback given by interpreter trainers and the members of the target audience of interpreting: in other words, whether the comments reflect development of interpreting skills.

My second aim is to analyze the evaluative comments of the target audience and interpreter trainers and to juxtapose them to the retrospective comments given by the interpreter trainees to see which factors are given preference by trainers and by members of the target audience of interpreting.

My research questions are the following:

1) How does the evaluation of the target audience and the interpreter trainers change as students progress in their training?

2) How is the development of interpreting competence mirrored in the evaluative comments of the target audience, interpreter trainers and the related retrospective comments of the interpreter trainees?

In this investigation, I worked with the following research presuppositions. Based on Liu (2008), the TL segments recorded at a later stage in training will receive better evaluations from the interpreter trainers and the target audience. Both the quantitative and qualitative evaluations will reflect the development of interpreting skills as students progress in their training.