Temporal aspects of English into Korean sight translation by college students

While sight translation is an important part of interpreter training courses, this effective tool is widely used in Korean college English classrooms to enhance foreign language ability of students as well. In this context, this pilot study examines the temporal aspects of sight translation that have been rarely analysed before. Six students attending an interpretation class in a Korean college sight translated an English text and their performance was videotaped. Analysis of the video file using a video editing software revealed that the Eye-Voice Span, the time lag between reading text and uttering the converted version, was 2.9 seconds. As is the case with simultaneous interpretation, variables in the original English text influenced Korean sight translations. While the six subjects showed high correlation in their temporal variables, subjects in the strong group exhibited more efficient processing in sight translation than the weak group did as manifested by higher speech proportion, syllables per minute, and pauses