JAITS

Research Note

Perception of American English “can” and “can’t” by Japanese
professional interpreters*1

Kinuko TAKAHASHI

Tomohiko OOIGAWA(Doctoral Program in Linguistics, Graduate School of Foreign Studies,
Sophia University) In the present research, we conducted a questionnaire survey and a perception
experiment on the identification of American English “can/can’t” contrast with JapaneseEnglish-Japanese interpreters. The present research was initiated by the personalcomments that were made by a staff member of an interpreter agency and by professional
interpreters. The results of the questionnaire indicate that almost all the professional
interpreters have had difficulty identifying the contrast in their careers. According to theresults of the experiment, the professional returnee interpreters identified the contrast
perfectly while the professional non-returnee interpreters did not do so perfectly.

1. Introduction
1.1 Purpose of the present study
The present research explores perception of American English “can” and “can’t” by
Japanese professional English-Japanese interpreters. The present research was initiatedby the personal comments that were made by a staff member of an interpreter agency andby professional interpreters. According to the comments, clients of interpreterssometimes make complaints about the interpreting service to the agency. In most cases,
their complaints are concerned with accuracy, among which there are cases where themeaning of interpretations was opposite to that intended. That means source speeches that
had positive meanings were switched into ones with negative meanings and vice versa.
Often interpreters complain about difficulties discriminating “can” and “can’t”
while interpreting, particularly at the time when they were not well informed in advance

TAKAHASHI Kinuko and OOIGAWA Tomohiko, “Perception of American English “can” and“can’t” by Japanese professional interpreters,” Interpreting and Translation Studies, No.12, 2012.
pages 249-262. © by the Japan Association for Interpreting and Translation Studies249

『通訳翻訳研究』No.12 (2012)of the background of the conversations to be interpreted. They insisted that they had toconfirm the meaning of the speech, asking whether the speaker said “can” or “can’t”,
before starting to interpret, when they were allowed to do so or when they were able to do
so at the time of consecutive interpretations. According to their comments, there are cases
where the meaning of the source speeches can be perceived as both positive and negative
because of the lack of adequate background knowledge. However, such complaints were
only from personal comments, not actual data obtained from an empirical study.
In English, the contracted form of the auxiliary verb “can’t” accompanies only thephoneme /t/ while the other contracted forms of the auxiliary verbs accompany the cluster/nt/, such as “shouldn’t” and “couldn’t” (Nakayama, 2000). According to a pronunciation
dictionary edited by John Wells (2008), the pronunciation of “can” is [kən] for the weakform and [kæn] for strong form and that of “can’t” is [kɑ:n(t)] in RP (i.e., Received
Pronunciation, or British English)* 2 . In American English, pronunciation of “can” is[kən] for the weak form and [kæn] for strong form, and that of “can’t” is [kæn(t)]. For thestrong form, the only difference of the contrast in American English is the consonantal
segment /t/. However, the alveolar consonant /t/ is not clear when “can’t” is followed by aconsonant. The contrast is clearer in RP because the vowels are different for each case.
To our knowledge, two previous studies on perception of American English “can”
and “can’t” by native speakers of Japanese have been done: Matsui (1998) and Nakayama(2000). The first paper indicated the difficulty of the identification by untrained Japaneselisteners of “can’t” with unreleased [t] in “I can’t go.” Unfortunately, the second paper
about perception did not show clear results. Moreover, the two studies did not deal withthe perception of Japanese interpreters. In other words, to our knowledge, there has been
no research on the perception of “can” and “can’t” by interpreters.
We conducted the present study partly because there are complaints againstinterpreters by clients, which may result from poor discrimination of “can” and “can’t”,
and because there is no research on this theme. We used the contrast of “can” and “can’t”
in American English because the contrast in American English may be more difficult todiscriminate than that in RP.
1.2 Research questions
When one combines personal comments collected from the agent staff and professional
interpreters, one can conclude that professional interpreters have difficulty identifying“can” and “can’t” while interpreting. However, the claims are only within the range of
personal comments. In order to examine the actual phenomena regarding theidentification of the contrast, we raised two research questions and intended to verify thecomments by the present research.
The research questions are the following; “Have professional interpreters ever had
250Perception of American English “can” and “can’t” by Japanese professional interpreters

difficulty identifying “can” and “can’t” while interpreting?” and “How accurately do
professional interpreters identify “can” and “can’t”?”
The first question is whether they have ever had difficulty identifying the twowords. In order to answer the question, a survey was conducted by means of aquestionnaire. In doing so, the personal comments would be verified. Also, the results of
the questionnaire would tell us whether professional interpreters are aware of thecloseness of the pronunciations of the two words in conversations, realizing a risk of
mis-identification. In order to answer the second question, we intended to examine theidentification of the two words by professional interpreters under the experimental
condition, and to compare the results with the ones obtained from the questionnaire.
The aim of the study is to examine whether the two words are phonologicallydifficult to identify even for Japanese interpreters; if so, there is always a risk ofmisunderstanding in the interpretations in case the source speech includes either of thetwo words. The ultimate goal of the study is to examine the relationship between
interpretation and perception.
2. Questionnaire
2.1 Purpose of the questionnaire
The purpose of the questionnaire was to verify the informal comments. In order tocompare with the results of the professionals, we also asked student interpreters anduntrained returnee students to participate in the research. We divided the participants into
two groups: “returnees” and “non-returnees” because our previous studies (Ooigawa &Takahashi, 2010; Takahashi & Ooigawa, 2010) indicated that perception of English
consonants and vowels is significantly different between returnee and non-returnee
interpreters.
2.2 Research participants
The participants were five returnee professional interpreters (39-46 years old), six
non-returnee professional interpreters (42-49 years old), two returnee student interpreters(21 and 22 years old), ten non-returnee student interpreters (20-22 years old), and ten
untrained returnee students (20-24 years old). As for professional interpreters, the lengthof interpreting service was from 5 to 11 years. The language combination of theinterpreting was English and Japanese.
All the participants were Japanese nationals. In the present research, a returnee isdefined as a student who had spent at least one year outside Japan before reaching 12
years old due to his or her parents’ job, and had returned to Japan before the age of 19
years old. The returnees in the present research were educated in English either at local251

『通訳翻訳研究』No.12 (2012)

schools in the case of English-speaking countries, or international schools in the case of
non-English-speaking countries. The definition of a student interpreter in the present
research is a university student who had received at least one semester ofEnglish-Japanese interpreter training.
2.3 Procedures
Before the perception experiment, the participants answered a question in a questionnaire
form. The question was different for each group. For the professionals, the question was“Have you ever had difficulty identifying can/can’t in your interpreter assignment?” For
the student interpreters, the question was “Have you ever had difficulty identifying
can/can’t in your interpreter training?” For the untrained returnee students, the question
was simply “Have you ever had difficulty identifying can/can’t?” Though the participants
had to mark either “Yes” or “No”, some participants answered “No” for British English
and “Yes” for American English. In this case, we counted it as “Yes”.
2.4 Results of the questionnaire
Figure 1 shows the rate of the answer “No” for the questionnaire. The rate given by the
returnee professional interpreters is 20%, while that given by the non-returnee
professional interpreters is 0%. In other words, only one professional interpreter said
“No”. As for the students, the rate given by returnee student interpreters is 100% whilethat given by non-returnee student interpreters is 30%. All the untrained returnee students
said “No”. More professionals answered “Yes” than students did, and all the returnee
students replied “No”.

% No
100

100

100

80
60
40
20

30
20
0

0

Pro_Rtrn

Pro_NonRtrn

Stu_Rtrn

n=5

n=6

n=2

Stu_NonRtrn Returnees
n=10

n=10

Figure 1. The results of the questionnaire. The percentages indicate each rate of the answer

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Perception of American English “can” and “can’t” by Japanese professional interpreters“No”. The labels at the bottom of the figure, Pro_Rtrn, Pro_NonRtrn, Stu_Rtrn,
Stu_NonRtrn and Returnees, indicate returnee professional interpreters, non-returnee
professional interpreters, returnee student interpreters, non-returnee student interpreters,
and untrained returnee students, respectively. “n” indicates the number of the participants.

3. Experiment
3.1 Purpose of the experiment
The purpose of the experiment was to compare the results of the identification test of
American English “can” and “can’t” embedded in sentences among returnee/non-returnee
professional interpreters, returnee/non-returnee student interpreters and untrained
returnee students. The procedures of the present experiment were the same as those
applied in our past studies Ooigawa & Takahashi (2010) and Takahashi & Ooigawa(2010).
3.2 Material stimuli
3.2.1 Words and sentence
We used the paired words “can” and “can’t”. Each word was embedded in the same
passage: “We know that there are a great variety of systems in place in the world. In thecase of Japan, however, we have a large population in such a small country. So thissystem can(’t) work”. This passage makes sense with either word’s selection. As the aimof the research was to examine phonological perception, it was decided to eliminate
contextual information that might possibly help the listeners identify the target words
through inferring. The materials were proofread by a native speaker (a university lecturerof English language in Japan) and a Japanese university professor of English education.
3.2.2 Recording
A male native speaker of American English participated in the recording. He was 20 years
old from the state of Pennsylvania. He asserted that he had no difficulties in speaking andhearing.
The speaker produced these stimuli in the soundproof room belonging to thePhonetics Laboratory of Sophia University. The speaker was asked to read out thematerials including distracters in a random order at least five times. The utterances wererecorded onto a digital recorder (Sony Linear PCM Recorder PCM-D50) through a
microphone (Sony ECM-MS957) and digitized at 48 kHz with 16 bits. Two tokens pertype (the passage) were selected from the recorded materials.

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3.2.3 Acoustic analysis
In order to investigate the acoustic cues to identify “can” and “can’t”, we conductedacoustic analyses of the portions “can(’t) work” of each token, using a computer software
program Praat Ver.5.1.17. We analyzed the spectrograms referring to Ladefoged (2003)
and (2006).
According to the previous studies, in American English, “can” can be realized ash[k æn], and “can’t” can be realized as [kh æ̃ ʔ] (Ladefoged, 2006; Shockey, 2003; Wells,
1982). The spectrograms in “can work” show the clear [n] between [æ] and [w] while
those in “can’t work” do not have a clear [n] (see, Figure 2). In other words, each soundof /æn/ was realized as a nasalized vowel without nasal consonant: [æ̃ ]. In the waveforms
and spectrograms in “can’t work”, we found gaps between [æ̃ ] and [w]. The gaps indicatethat each /t/ was realized as a glottal stop: [ʔ].
In addition to the segmental differences, there are pitch and durational distinctions.
The waveforms indicate that the pitch pattern of “can work” is HL (high low) and that of“can’t work” is either LH (low high) or HH (high high). As indicated by the waveform of“can work”, the number of pulse waves in “can” is larger than that in “work”. In “can’twork”, “can’t” has as many pulse waves as “work”. Unfortunately, the precise
fundamental frequencies of each word token are not available because some parts of thevowels are too creaky to detect the fundamental frequencies by using Praat.
As for the duration, “can’t” is longer than “can”. The lengths of “can’t” are 324 ms
and 265 ms for each token, and those of “can” are 230 ms and 212 ms.
The two tokens of the vowel in “can” were realized as [æ], not [ə]. In other words,
these “can” tokens were produced as a strong form. These clearly pronounced “can”
tokens and the pitch pattern distinctions between “can” and “can’t” might result from the
speaker’s focus on “can”. The speaker might be pronouncing “can” clearly in order toavoid the confusion between “can” and “can’t” though we had not asked to do so in therecording.

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Perception of American English “can” and “can’t” by Japanese professional interpreters

Figure 2. Examples of the waveforms and spectrograms in “can work” (upper) and “can’twork” (lower). The total duration of the each waveform is 800 ms. The settings of each
spectrogram are as follows: the view range is 0.0-5000.0 Hz, the window length is 0.005
seconds, the dynamic range is 50.0 dB.

3.3 Listeners and procedures
The listeners were the research participants who had answered the questionnaire (see,255『通訳翻訳研究』No.12 (2012)section 2.2). In order to ensure the validity of the test, we asked seven native speakers ofAmerican English (20-34 years old) who had not participated in the recordings to do thesame task individually. All the listeners asserted that they had no difficulties in speaking
and hearing.
The procedures of the present experiment were the same as the ones applied in ourpast studies (Ooigawa & Takahashi, 2010; Takahashi & Ooigawa, 2010). The perception
experiment was conducted in the soundproof room where the stimuli had been recorded.
We used a computer software program Praat Ver.5.1.17 as an interface. The listeners
individually participated in the experiment. First, they sat at the lap top personal
computer wearing headphones. They saw two buttons on the screen that indicated thepaired words (i.e., can/can’t), and 0.5 seconds later they listened to the short spoken
passage or the single sentence on the headphones which were connected to the computer.
The listeners were asked to click the button indicating the word that they thought they
heard. The listeners repeated the same procedure in each trial. They were allowed tomake a correction to their responses before clicking the “OK” button to proceed to thenext trial. Once they clicked “OK”, they were not allowed to return to the previous trial.
When one play was not convincing enough to make a choice, they were permitted to play
the recording one more time by clicking the “Repeat” button for each trial. The
experiment included 176 trials. In this paper, we report the results of 4 trials (2 words x 2
tokens x 1 speaker) which included “can” and “can’t”. In other words, in 176 trials, theparticipants listened to the four tokens of the following passage: “We know that there area great variety of systems in place in the world. In the case of Japan, however, we have alarge population in such a small country. So this system can(’t) work”. The listeners wereasked to take a short break after finishing 44 trials. The stimuli were presented in arandom order. Prior to the experiment, the listeners were provided with a warm-up
session consisting of 12 trials with a break after six trials. The stimuli used for the
warm-up session were not included in the materials used in the experiment. During thewarm-up session, the volume was adjusted to a comfortable listening level for eachlistener.
3.4 Results of the experiment3.4.1 Comparisons among the listener groups
Figure 3 shows the results of each listener group. The native speakers, the returnee
professional interpreters, and returnee students performed perfectly in the identification
test of “can” and “can’t”. The mean rate of accurate identification of non-returnee
professional interpreters is 75.0%, that of non-returnee student interpreters is 67.5%, andthat of untrained returnee students is 95.0%. These results indicate that, except for
returnee professional and student interpreters, native speakers of Japanese can confuse
256Perception of American English “can” and “can’t” by Japanese professional interpreters“can” and “can’t” without any contextual information even in a comfortable listening
environment.
% Correct
100

100

100

100
95.0

90
80

75.0
67.5

70
60
50
40

Natives

Pro_Rtrn

Pro_NonRtrn

Stu_Rtrn

Stu_NonRtrn

Returnees

n=7

n=5

n=6

n=2

n=10

n=10

Figure 3. The results of the “can” and “can’t” identification experiment. The error bars
indicate the standard deviations. The labels at the bottom of the figure, Natives,
Pro_Rtrn, Pro_NonRtrn, Stu_Rtrn, Stu_NonRtrn and Returnees, refer to natives(Americans), returnee professional interpreters, non-returnee professional interpreters,
returnee student interpreters, non-returnee student interpreters, and untrained returnee
students, respectively. “n” indicates the number of the listeners.

3.4.2 Comparison among the stimuli
Figure 4 shows the identification results for each stimulus. The results for natives,
returnee professional and student interpreters are not shown since they identified eachstimulus correctly (100%).
As for the first token of “can”, the correct identification rates obtained from thenon-returnee professional interpreters, the non-returnee student interpreters, and theuntrained returnee students are 50% (i.e., chance level), 50%, and 100%, respectively. For
the second token of “can”, the correct rates are 50%, 60%, and 90%, respectively. For the
first token of “can’t”, the correct rates are 100%, 70%, and 90%, respectively. For thesecond token of “can’t”, the correct rates are 100%, 90%, and 100%, respectively.
The mean rates of accurate identification of “can’t” are always higher than “can”
except the rate for untrained returnee students. These results suggest that to identify “can”
was more difficult than “can’t” for all the non-returnees, suggesting that clearly
pronounced “can” might be difficult to distinguish from “can’t”.

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『通訳翻訳研究』No.12 (2012)

100

90

100

90

100

90

100

Pr_NnR
St_NnR
R

70
60
50 50

50

can_token#01

can_token#02

can't_token#01

can't_token#02

Figure 4. The correct identification rates of each stimulus. Pr_NnR, St_NnR and R
indicate non-returnee professional interpreters, non-returnee student interpreters, anduntrained returnee students, respectively.

4. Discussion and conclusion
4.1 The questionnaire
The results of the questionnaire indicate that almost all the professional interpreters have
had difficulty identifying “can” and “can’t” in their careers (see, Figure 1). Even the
returnee professionals have such difficulty. However, all the returnee student interpreters
and untrained returnee students have never had such difficulty. These phenomena might
result from the professional experiences, their longer exposure to English, professional
responsibility and pressure as a professional interpreter. The returnee student interpreters
and returnee students are much younger than the professionals (see, section 2.2), and they
have no career as professional interpreters. Therefore, there is the possibility that theirlimited exposure did not allow mis-perceiving this pair of words. Moreover, it is possiblethat they did not notice their mis-perception. Since they were not professionals, they had
no responsibility. The lack of professional responsibility might result in a lack ofself-awareness.
The results of the questionnaire also indicate that the majority of the non-returnee
student interpreters have had difficulty identifying “can” and “can’t”. It must be due tolower exposure to English during childhood.
4.2 The experiment4.2.1 Among the listener groups
The results of the experiment indicate that all the returnee professional interpreters
identified the contrast and that untrained returnee students performed almost perfectly(see, Figure 3). Perhaps this is because of their much greater exposure to English duringchildhood than non-returnees. The correct identification rate of the non-returnee student258

Perception of American English “can” and “can’t” by Japanese professional interpretersinterpreters was the worst. It might be because they had the least exposure to English.
Overall, returnees performed better than non-returnees.
4.2.2 Among the stimuli
The results of the experiment also indicate that “can” was more difficult to identify than“can’t” for all the non-returnees. As mentioned in 3.2.3, the two tokens of “can” werepronounced as a strong form. The weak form of “can” is [k h ən]. If the speakerpronounced [k h ən] for “can”, it might be easier to discriminate from “can’t”. The contrastof [k h æn] and [kh æ̃ ʔ] seems more difficult to discriminate than that of [kh ən] and [k h æ̃ ʔ]
for non-natives because the first contrast has more common sounds than the second
contrast does.
4.3 The questionnaire and the experiment
Figure 5 is a combined graph of Figure 1 and Figure 3. We can see the gaps between the
results of the questionnaire and the experiment. The biggest gap is observed in the results
given by returnee professionals. The returnee student interpreters have no gap.
The two results of each non-returnee group are consistent. Both results indicate thatthe contrast is difficult to discriminate for non-returnees. However, as for the returnees,
while the two results of each student returnee group are consistent, those of returnee
professional interpreters show a big gap. This gap may be due to differences in length of
exposure to English. If one can perform the identification perfectly in the experimental
condition, longer life experience gives one the possibilities of mis-perception in the realworld.

100

100

100 100

80

95

100

75
67.5

60

% Correct
% No
40

30
20

20

0

0

Pro_Rtrn

Pro_NonRtrn

Stu_Rtrn

n=5

n=6

n=2

Stu_NonRtrn Returnees
n=10

259

n=10

『通訳翻訳研究』No.12 (2012)

Figure 5. The combined graph of the results of the questionnaire and the experiment.
Pro_Rtrn, Pro_NonRtrn, Stu_Rtrn, Stu_NonRtrn and Returnees indicate returnee
professional interpreters, non-returnee professional interpreters, returnee student
interpreters,

non-returnee

student

interpreters,

anduntrained

returneestudents,

respectively.

4.4 Conclusion
In the present research, we conducted a questionnaire and perception experiment on theidentification of American English “can” and “can’t” with Japanese professional
interpreters. The research questions were “Have professional interpreters ever haddifficulty identifying “can” and “can’t” while interpreting?” and “How accurately do
professional interpreters identify “can” and “can’t”?” The answer for the first question is“Yes”. Almost all the professional interpreters marked “Yes” in the questionnaire. The
answer for the second question is “under the experimental condition, the returnee
interpreters identified the contrast perfectly while the non-returnee interpreters did not doso perfectly. Especially, the identification of strong formed “can” seemed to be difficult
for the non-returnees.” It is interesting that there was a gap between the results of thequestionnaire and the experiment for the returnee professional interpreters. The
phenomenon might result from their long careers as “professional” interpreters.
5. Future research
5.1 Remaining Questions
The following questions are left unanswered. The first one is “Why have the returnee
professional interpreters had difficulty identifying “can” and “can’t” in their assignments
despite their high performance in the experiment?” The answer for this question may
guide us to the answer of the other question: “What is the relationship between‘perception’ and ‘interpreting’?” The second question is “What is the most important
acoustic cue(s) to discriminate “can” and “can’t”?” The present study showed somedifferences in the contrast, but the most important cue(s) that help(s) non-natives identify
the contrast is/are still unknown.
5.2 What we should do in the future
In order to answer to the question as to “What is the relationship between ‘perception’and ‘interpreting’?”, we should conduct research studies about correlation between
interpretation performance scores and perception scores, segment identification tests innatural conversation, and expected effect of phonetic education in interpreter training.
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Perception of American English “can” and “can’t” by Japanese professional interpreters

In order to know the acoustic cue(s) for the identification of “can” and “can’t”, weshould use more varieties of the stimuli such as including a sentence-final “can” and“can’t”, the contrast before consonant/vowel, a sentence with/without of a focus on thecontrast, and the contrast in other English accents. We should also ask more varieties oflisteners such as naive listeners, all kinds of English learners, and native speakers withother English accents.
…………………………………..
Acknowledgment
We would like to express our gratitude to the professional interpreters, the students and thenative speakers who were willing to participate in the research. We would like to thank Dr.
Nobuko Koyama who helped us find native speakers of American English. Our thanks also go
to Prof. Masahiko Komatsu of Kanagawa University for his insights and to Prof. Frank Scott
Howell and Prof. Donna Erickson of Sophia University for reviewing our drafts. Without
their kindness, we could not have done the research. Thank you very much.
......................................................
About the Authors
TAKAHASHI Kinuko（髙橋絹子）: Freelance interpreter and graduate student of Ph. D.
Course in Linguistics of Sophia University, also a member of the Phonetics Laboratory ofSophia University. Her major is applied linguistics.
OOIGAWA Tomohiko（大井川朋彦）: Graduate student of Ph. D. Course in Linguistics ofSophia University, also a member of the Phonetics Laboratory of Sophia University. His
majors are phonetics and phonology.
......................................................
Notes
1. The present paper is the modified and developed version of our working paper: Takahashi,K., & Ooigawa, T. (2011). A pilot study on perception of American English “can” and“can’t” by Japanese professional interpreters. Sophia University Working Papers in
Phonetics 2011, 37-52.
2. The contracted forms have no weak form (Collins & Mees, 2008).
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