JAITS

Research Note

Identification of English Consonants and Vowels in
Sentence-Embedded Words by Professional Interpretersand Student Interpreters
Kinuko TAKAHASHI
Tomohiko OOIGAWA (Doctoral Program in Linguistics, Graduate School of Foreign Studies,
Sophia University)

The present research examines phonetic perception (i.e., listening skills) of Japanese
professional interpreters and Japanese student interpreters. The research was carried out
in order to verify the results of Takahashi (2009) and Takahashi & Ooigawa (2009). In
the present research, professional interpreters and student interpreters were asked to
identify English consonants and vowels in words embedded in sentences. As in Takahashi& Ooigawa (2009), the results show that there is no significant difference between thetwo groups. However, there is a significant difference between the results of returnees(i.e., kikoku-shijo in Japanese) and non-returnees. The results suggest that the differencesin phonetic perception derive not from the interpreting career, but from the early
residential experience.
1. Introduction
The present research examines phonetic perception (i.e., listening skills) of Japanese
professional

interpretersandJapanese

student

interpreters.

We

conducted

anidentification test (i.e., listening test) of English consonants and vowels with the twogroups. In the test, the participants (i.e., listeners) were asked to listen to recordings andidentify the words embedded in sentences.
The present research aims to verify the results of Takahashi (2009) and Takahashi& Ooigawa (2009). In Takahashi (2009), nine Japanese student interpreters were asked tointerpret English materials into Japanese, and their interpretations were analyzed to
identify the common problems in their interpretations. This study found out thatomissions were one of their common problems. In this case, omissions do not simply


TAKAHASHI Kinuko, OOIGAWA Tomohiko, “Identification of English Consonants and Vowels

in Sentence-Embedded Words by Professional Interpreters and Student Interpreters,” Interpreting
and Translation Studies, No.10. pages 207-217.  by the Japan Association for Interpreting andTranslation Studies.

mean summarization. In case the participants did not phonetically identify a word orwords, they guessed the meaning based on only the words they had heard and made up a
story. Therefore, the meaning of some sentences was distorted. This type of omissions
was referred to as problematic omissions in order to differentiate from summarization. In
Takahashi (2009), after the participants had completed an interpreting task, they wereasked the reason why the problematic omissions had occurred. Eight out of nine students
answered that they had difficulties in identifying English words phonetically. They said
that it was easy for them to understand the meaning of the words when they saw thewords, but they could not identify the words or sentences only by listening. We wondered
whether their claims were true. However, no empirical studies answered our question on
the relationship between listening skills and interpreting performance (or comprehension).
Therefore, we conducted the research, Takahashi & Ooigawa (2009). The purpose of thestudy was to examine whether the students could identify the words that included
minimal pairs. In this study, seven Japanese student interpreters were asked to identify
English consonants (i.e., /l/, /r/, /s/, and /θ/) included in isolated single words by listening.
In order to compare the result to that of the student interpreters, five Japanese
professional interpreters were asked to participate in the same experiment. The results
showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups. However, there
were limitations in the research. First of all, the number of the participants was small(five professional interpreters and seven student interpreters). Secondly, the identification
tasks included only an isolated single word of minimal pairs. Therefore, the tasks may
have been too easy. Moreover, the participants may have been able to identify the words
correctly by concentrating on only a single word. Thirdly, the speaker who produced thematerial was only one native speaker of American English. Fourthly, the paired words
were limited to a small number of minimal pairs and did not include any vowel contrasts.
In order to overcome these limitations, in the current research, we increased theparticipants and the speakers, and we conducted a more complicated identification test
including more consonant and vowel contrasts. The stimuli and procedures of the present
experiment are the same as in Ooigawa & Takahashi (in press).
The research question of the present paper is: Are there any significant differencesin phonetic perception (i.e., listening skills) of English consonants and vowels between
professional interpreters and student interpreters?
The present paper has six sections. The first section is the introduction of thepresent paper, where we present the purpose of the present research, the previous research
and a research question. The second section explains the experiment. The results anddiscussion are in the third and the fourth section respectively. In the fifth section, thepaper deals with future research. The paper ends with the conclusion in the sixth section.

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2. Experiment
2.1 The Purpose of the Experiment
The purpose of the experiment was to compare the results of the identification of English
words in sentences by Japanese professional interpreters with those of Japanese student
interpreters.

2.2 Stimuli
The stimuli were produced by native speakers of American English. In the research, only
American English was targeted because it is the most widely learned form of English in
Japan.
2.2.1 Speakers
Two male and one female native speakers of American English participated in therecording. One of the male speakers was 20 years old and from the state of California.
The other was 21 years old and from the state of Washington. The female speaker was 20
years old and from the state of Kentucky. They asserted that they had no difficulties inspeaking and hearing.
2.2.2 Words and sentences
We used paired words, each of which included the following contrasts: /l/-/r/ (e.g.
lane/rain), /s/-/θ/ (e.g., sink/think), /b/-/v/ (boat/vote), /dz/-/z/ (cards/cars), /ar/-/r/(farm/firm), /o/-/ou/ (e.g., ball/bowl), and /i/-/I/ (sheep/ship). Each of the paired words
was embedded in the same passage or sentence. We used passages and single sentencesthat make sense with either word’s selection. For example, in the case of ‘ball/bowl’, thesentence was “Would you pass me the ball/bowl?” As the aim of the research was to
examine phonetic perception, it was decided to eliminate contextual information thatmight possibly help the listeners identify the target words through inferring. The paired
words, the passages, and the sentences are shown in Table 1. All the materials were
proofread by a native speaker (i.e., a university lecturer of English language in Japan) anda Japanese university professor of English teaching.

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Table 1. List of the materials (i.e., stimuli). In order to avoid some symbol coding troubles(i.e., garbling), we use these phonemic transcriptions instead of IPA (International
Phonetic Alphabet) fonts.
Contrasts of the consonants/l/-/r/lane & rain
1.

I like driving very much, but while I was driving, the lane got on my nerves thatnight.

2.

I like driving very much, but while I was driving, the rain got on my nerves thatnight.
long & wrong

3.

He was anxious to know the answer very much. But as the answer was long, he got
mad.

4.

He was anxious to know the answer very much. But as the answer was wrong, he got
mad.
flight & fright5.

The last time I had a flight, I watched a movie on the plane.

6.

The last time I had a fright, I watched a movie on the plane.
play & pray

7.

Don’t study too much on Sunday. You should play a little bit.

8.

Don’t study too much on Sunday. You should pray a little bit.
pleasant & present

9.

My family came to visit. So they were pleasant.

10. My family came to visit. So they were present.
/s/-/θ/sink & think
11. He seemed to be very depressed. He was sinking in the pool while swimming.
12. He seemed to be very depressed. He was thinking in the pool while swimming.
pass & path
13. The pass over the mountain was open again after the snow.
14. The path over the mountain was open again after the snow.
/b/-/v/
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boat & vote
15. All you need is one more boat; otherwise you wouldn’t be able to win the race.
16. All you need is one more vote; otherwise you wouldn’t be able to win the race.
/dz/-/z/
cards & cars
17. When he passed by the store, he saw a lot of cards inside the store.
18. When he passed by the store, he saw a lot of cars inside the store.
Contrasts of the vowels/ar/-/r/farm & firm
19. I would like you to come and see what I am doing, so please visit our farm.
20. I would like you to come and see what I am doing, so please visit our firm.
/o/-/ou/ball & bowl
21. Would you pass me the ball?
22. Would you pass me the bowl?
hall & hole
23. When I entered the garden, I was very surprised, because I saw a huge hall in thegarden.
24. When I entered the garden, I was very surprised, because I saw a huge hole in thegarden.
/i/-/I/
sheep & ship
25. The sheep I saw while traveling along the coast in Northern France was white.
26. The ship I saw while traveling along the coast in Northern France was white.
2.2.3 Recording
The native speakers of American English mentioned in 2.2.1 produced these stimuli in thesoundproof room belonging to the Phonetics Laboratory of Sophia University. The
speakers were asked to read out the materials in a random order at least five times. The
utterances were recorded 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 per type (i.e., the passages or sentences) were selected from the recordedmaterials.

2112.3 Listeners (Participants)
The listeners were 11 Japanese professional interpreters (39-49 years old) and 11
Japanese student interpreters (20-22 years old). The language combination was English
and Japanese. All the listeners were Japanese nationals. As for professional interpreters,
the length of interpreting service was 5-11 years. The definition of a student interpreter inthe present research is a university student who had received at least one semester ofEnglish-Japanese interpreting training. All the listeners asserted that they had nodifficulties in speaking and hearing.
Each group included both returnees (i.e., kikoku-shijo in Japanese) andnon-returnees. In the present research, a returnee is defined as a person who had spent atleast one year outside Japan before reaching 15 years old due to his/her parents’ job, andhad been educated in English, and had returned to Japan before the age of 19 years old.
The returnees had attended local schools in the case of English-speaking countries, orAmerican or British or international schools in the case of non-English-speaking
countries. Out of 11 professional interpreters, five were returnees. Out of 11 student
interpreters, three were returnees.
2.4 Procedures
The perception experiment was conducted in the same soundproof room where the stimuli
had been recorded. We used a computer software program Praat Ver.5.1.17 (Boersma &Weenink, 2009) as an interface. The listeners individually participated in the experiment.
First, they sat at the laptop personal computer wearing headphones. They saw two buttons
on the screen that indicated the paired words (e.g., lane/rain) included in the forthcoming
recording. 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 wereasked to click the button indicating the word that they thought had been included in eithera single sentence or passage. Also they were asked to click either a “Difficult” button oran “Easy” button below the words on the display. When the listeners were not able to
make an instant decision, they were to click the “Difficult” button. When the listeners
were able to make a choice without a moment of hesitation, they were to click the “Easy”
button. The listeners repeated the same procedure in each trial. The listeners wereallowed to make a correction to their responses before clicking the “OK” button toproceed to the next trial. Once they click “OK”, they were not allowed to return to theprevious trial. When one play was not convincing enough to make a choice, they werepermitted to play the recording one more time by clicking the “Repeat” button for eachtrial. The experiment included 176 trials (26 words x 2 tokens x 3 speakers + 20
distracters). The listeners were asked to take a short break after finishing every 44 trials.
The stimuli were presented in a random 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
contrasts used for the warm-up session were not included in the materials used for the212experiment. During the warm-up session, the volume was adjusted to a listening level thatwas comfortable for each listener. Examples of the displays used for the experiment are
shown in Figure 1. In order to ensure the validity of the test, we asked three native
speakers of American English (20-21 years old) to try the same experiment individually
before the study. They answered all the questions correctly. These native speakers weredifferent from the ones who had participated in the recordings.
Figure 1. The displays used for the experiment in the case of path/pass. After clicking“pass” and “Easy”, the “OK” button appears.

3. Results
We report the rates of accurate identification of the listeners. We do not report the resultsof the Easy/Difficult buttons because we have not finished the analyses of them yet.

3.1 Comparison between the Professionals and Student Interpreters
Figure 2 shows the results of the professional interpreters and student interpreters. The
mean rate of accurate identification of the professional interpreters is 80.0% and that of
the student interpreters is 71.0%. The Mann-Whitney U test showed that the difference inthe scores between the two groups was not significant (U = 35.0, p > .05).

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Figure 2. The mean rates of accurate identifications of the professional interpreters andthe student interpreters. The error bars indicate the standard deviations.

% Correct
100
90
80.0
80
71.0
70
60
50
Professionals

Students

3.2 Additional Comparison between the Returnees and Non-returnees
For further analysis, we reclassified the listeners into returnees and non-returnees. Figure
3 shows the results of the eight returnees (including five professionals and three students)and fourteen non-returnees (including six professionals and eight students). The mean
rate of accurate identification of the returnees is 84.9% and that of the non-returnees is70.1%. The Mann-Whitney U test showed that the difference between the scores of thetwo groups was significant (U = 20.0, p < .05).
Figure 3. The mean rates of accurate identifications of the returnees and thenon-returnees. The error bars indicate the standard deviations.

% Correct
100
90

84.9

80
70.1
70
60
50
Returnees

Non-returnees

2144. Discussion
The results show that there is no significant difference in the scores between theprofessional interpreters and the student interpreters. These results indicate that thestudent interpreters identified the English consonants and vowels in virtually the samemanner as the professional interpreters. That means, there is no difference in phonetic
perception (i.e., listening skills) of English consonants and vowels in short content words
embedded in sentences between the professional and the student interpreters.
The results of further analysis show that the group of returnees consisting of bothprofessionals and student interpreters identified the consonants and vowels significantly
better than the group of non-returnees consisting of both professionals and student
interpreters. Therefore, the results suggest that the differences in phonetic perception
derive not from the interpreting career, but from the early residential experience.
However, we are still wondering why student interpreters in Takahashi (2009)claimed that they had listening problems. Where have the claims come from? The
possible causes of the problematic omissions are still unknown. We intend to discuss thefollowing points as possible causes.
First of all, there is the possibility that the phonetic problems of the students lie inother areas. The current research focused only on the identification of English consonants
and vowels in short content words embedded in sentences. Content words tend to be
stressed in sentences, so that they were pronounced more clearly than function words(e.g., Ladefoged, 2006), which may have helped the participants identify the words in theexperiments. However, the present research did not include any research that examined
the participants’ ability to identify the reduced syllables represented in such function
words as prepositions and conjunctions. The lack of accurate identification of such words
may mislead the students and make it difficult for them to follow the story. Even in thecase of content words, there are unexpected allophones. For example, ‘city’ sounds like‘cidy’ in American and Australian English, and ‘twenty’ sounds like ‘tweny’ in American
English. The students might not have such knowledge regarding phonetics andphonology.
Secondly, another possible listening problem might have been their response time.
In the present experiment, we did not measure the response time, so that it is not known
how fast the participants identified the consonants and vowels. Although we did notmeasure the time required by the participant, it was felt that the professionals might havecompleted the task faster than the students. Therefore, in order to verify our impression,
we should carry out phonetic perception experiments considering these phonetic elements
and the response time.
5. Future Research
In order to identify possible causes for the problematic omissions that we discussed above,
we would like to continue our research by conducting experiments with respect to215

unexpected allophones, reduced syllables, and response time in the next phase. In order toachieve our ultimate goal, that is, to establish the relationship between phonetic
perception (i.e., listening skills) and interpreting performance, we would like to continue
our research from a variety of aspects.
6. Conclusion
We conducted an identification test with Japanese professional interpreters and Japanese
student interpreters. This experiment was carried out in order to examine the differences
in identification of English consonants and vowels between the two groups. The results
showed that there was no significant difference in phonetic perception between theprofessional interpreters and the student interpreters. Although there have been changes
made to the previous experiment, the results of the present research are the same as thoseof the previous research, Takahashi & Ooigawa (2009). According to the results of thetwo experiments, it can be said that there is no significant difference in phonetic
perception between professional interpreters and student interpreters.
We reanalyzed the data, and found that the group of returnees consisting of bothprofessionals and student interpreters identified the consonants and vowels significantly
better than the group of non-returnees consisting of both professionals and student
interpreters. It is likely that early residential experience is more striking for phonetic
perception (i.e., listening skills) than interpreting careers.
Although the results indicate that there is no significant difference in phonetic
perception between professional interpreters and student interpreters, it is assumed thatthe interpreter students may have other phonetic problems that result in problematicomissions. We would like to continue our research in order to identify the real causes of
their problematic omissions.
Lastly, note that we have no intention to say that a returnee professional interpreter
is more qualified than a non-returnee professional interpreter. In addition, it is still
unknown from the results of the present research that a returnee has an advantage overnon-returnees in interpreting. We need to continue our research from a variety of aspects.
…………………………………..
Acknowledgment
First of all, our thanks go to the speakers and the listeners who were willing to participate
in the research. We also thank them for their interest in our research.
We would like to express our gratitude to Prof. Shigeko Shinohara of Sophia
University for her insights. Our thanks also go to Dr. Yoshinori Watanabe of Sophia
University, Mr. Neale Cunningham of Josai International University and Prof. Frank Scott
Howell of Sophia University for reviewing our drafts. We must not forget to extend our
gratitude to Dr. Nobuko Koyama who helped us find native speakers of English. Without216

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 Doctoral
Program in Linguistics of Sophia University. A member of Phonetics Laboratory ofSophia University. Her major is applied linguistics.
OOIGAWA Tomohiko（大井川朋彦）: Graduate student and research assistant of Doctoral
Program in Linguistics of Sophia University. A member of Phonetics Laboratory ofSophia University. His majors are phonetics and phonology.
References
Boersma, P. & Weenink, D. (2009). Praat: doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.1.17)[Computer program]. Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://www.praat.org/
Ladefoged, P. (2006). A course in phonetics. 5th ed., Boston: Thomson Wadsworth.
Ooigawa, T. & Takahashi, K. (in press). Identification of English words embedded insentences by Japanese professional interpreters with different language experiences.
The Interpreters' Newsletter, 15.
Takahashi, K. (2009). Identifying the common problems in English-to-Japaneseconsecutive interpretations performed by Japanese interpreting students: A case ofJapanese interpreting students. Unpublished MA thesis, Sophia University.
Takahashi, K., & Ooigawa, T. (2009). Identification of English consonants by interpreting
students and professional interpreters. Interpreting and Translation Studies, 9, 55-69.

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