JAITSAtricleIdentification of English Consonants by Interpreting Students
and Professional Interpreters
Kinuko TAKAHASHI (Sophia University)
Tomohiko OOIGAWA (Sophia University)
The present study examines the identification of English consonants (i.e. /l/, /r/, /s/
and /θ/) by interpreting students and professional interpreters. The participants (bothinterpreting students and professional interpreters) were asked to listen to English
words and to identify a consonant included in the word for each trial. The results
show that professional interpreters identified better than the interpreting students.
However, there was no significant difference between the results of these two groups.
Few empirical studies on perception of consonants aiming at comparison between
interpreting students and professional interpreters have been carried out. In thisregard, the present study explores a new area.
1. Introduction
The present paper deals with the differences in the perception of English consonants
between professional interpreters and interpreting students. The participants were asked
to listen to a word in a carrier sentence and to identify the consonant included in the word.
The consonants to be identified were /l/, /r/, /s/ and /θ/. The results show that although
there are individual differences among the members of each group, there is no significant
difference between the two groups.
The present study is motivated by the participants’ (i.e., interpreting students)
claims about their poor perception in the previous study (Takahashi, 2009; see section 2
for the details). Therefore, this paper also compares the results of the present study withthose of Takahashi (2009), and discusses the relationship between the result of perception
and the actual interpreting performance.
To the knowledge of the authors, few studies about the differences in perception

T AKAHASHI Kinuko and OOIGAWA Tomohiko, “Identification of English Consonants
by Interpreting Students and professional Interpreters.” Interpreting and Translation
Studies, No.9, 2009. pages 55-69. © by the Japan Association for Interpreting andTranslation Studies55

『通訳翻訳研究』No.9 (2009)

between interpreting students and professional interpreters have been carried out.
Therefore, the present study intends to contribute to the study of interpreting andeducating interpreters.
The present paper is divided into eight sections. The second section provides
previous studies and research question. In the third section, the paper deals with theexperiment, which is followed by results in the fourth section and discussions in the fifth
section. Conclusions are made in the sixth section and the seventh section includes
educational implications. The present paper closes with future research suggestions in theeighth section.
2. Previous Studies and Research Question
In Takahashi (2009), interpreting students were asked to interpret English texts and wereinterviewed after the study. On that occasion, they were asked to reflect upon theirinterpreting performance in the study, referring to the original English texts. It was foundout that omissions in interpreting were one of the common problems of the interpreting
students participating in the study. In the post-study interview, five interpreting students
blamed their poor speech perception for the omissions in interpreting some parts of thetexts. They said, “As I couldn’t identify the word phonetically, I couldn’t interpret”. For
example, one of the participants said, “Since I couldn’t distinguish ‘breeze’ from ‘bleed’,
I couldn’t interpret the part of the text”. Two participants said, “‘within cell’ sounded like‘with itself’”. They insisted that such erroneous identification was one of the causes fortheir omissions in interpreting. In order to verify their claims, the present research was
designed and the experiment was conducted with the same interpreting students as in
Takahashi (2009). Also professional interpreters were asked to participate in the same
experiment and the results were compared with those of the professional interpreters.
The investigation in the area indicates that there is no research regarding speech
perception of either professional interpreters or interpreting students. According to Gile
(1994), interpreters’ level of comprehension goes beyond the recognition of individual
words. Flowerdew and Miller (2005) also indicate that when the listeners decode a verbal
message, they rely on not only the acoustic signal but also the prior contextual knowledge.
As far as investigations made in this area, there is little research dealing with therelationship between speech perception and interpreting performance of interpreting
students. However, as Pöchhacker (2007) indicates, phoneme identification and word
recognition are relevant to interpreting. Rost (2002) also claims that recognition of words
is the basis of comprehending spoken language, and identification of words is one of themain tasks. Ur (1984) also indicates that listeners’ main problem at the early stage issimply to identify the right phoneme(s) and the right word. In this regard, there is a
research study on categorical discrimination of English consonants by native Japanese56

Identification of English Consonants by Interpreting Students and Professional Interpreters

listeners. According to the study by Guion et al. (2000), native Japanese speakers withmore previous exposure identify consonants better than those with little exposure.
However, it is not known whether this can be applied to interpreting students. Therefore,a research question was posed: it is whether poor identification is attributable toomissions in interpretation.
3. Experiment
3.1 The Purpose of the Experiment
The general purpose of the experiment was to examine whether there is a difference in theidentification of consonants, /l/, /r/, /s/ and /θ/, between interpreting students andprofessional interpreters. We used these consonants because native speakers of Japanese
have difficulty in distinguishing the contrasts of English /l/-/r/ and /s/-/θ/. This
experiment aimed at examining whether there is a relationship between interpreting
performance and identification of the consonants.
3.2 Speech Materials
The speech materials were produced by a 41-year-old native speaker of English, who had
been teaching English at a private junior-high school in Tokyo for ten years. The speaker
was from Hartford, CT., USA and he asserted that he had no difficulties in speaking andhearing. He read out 53 words (see, Table 1) and some distractors in a random order at
least five times. These words were in the carrier sentence, “Repeat xxx twice”. The
utterances were recorded onto a digital recorder (Marantz solid state recorder PMD671)
through a microphone (Sony ECM-959DT) and digitized at 48 kHz with 16 bits. The
recording took place in the soundproof laboratory belonging to the Phonetics Laboratoryof Sophia University. Two tokens per word were selected from the recorded words.

57

『通訳翻訳研究』No.9 (2009)

Table 1. Speech materials/l/-/r/
1. CVC (12 words)

2. VCV (8 words)

limb

rim

hilling

hearing

lane

rain

jelly

Jerry

led

red

belly

berry

lime

rhyme

calling coring

long

wrong

load

road

3. VC (6 words)

4. CCV (8 words)

hill

hear

play

pray

call

core

flightfright

wall

war

bland

brand

flock

frock

5. Dummy (1 word)
Betty/s/-/θ/1. CVC (12 words)

2. VC (6 words)

sick

thick

miss

myth

sink

think

pass

path

sing

thing

mouse

mouth

sin

thin

sank

thank

sum

thumb

3.3 Listeners (Participants)
The listeners were seven interpreting students and five professional interpreters. All of
the interpreting students had participated in the previous study for interpreting (Takahashi,2009). They were coded from Stud1 to Stud7. The definitions of “interpreting students”
in the previous research were: 1) mature students who have their own jobs, but arelearning at private interpreting schools after work or on weekends, and 2) graduate
students enrolled in the interpreting courses at post-graduate schools in Japan.
In order to participate in the study, the interpreting students had to fulfill basic
requirements. First, they were required to have completed at least one year of interpreting58

Identification of English Consonants by Interpreting Students and Professional Interpreters

training. Second, at the time of the study, the interpreting students were to have achieved
either Grade 1 of the STEP or Eiken Test offered by the Society for Testing English
Proficiency, or a TOEIC score of 900 or above.
In the previous study (Takahashi, 2009), six participants were graduate students,
and three participants were mature students. At the time of the present study, all of thegraduate students had finished their interpreting courses and four of these graduates
participated in the present study. Out of the four, three had terminated interpreting
training (see, Table 2) and one had become an in-house interpreter for a private firm
while still continuing interpreting training. On the other hand, the three mature students
were still continuing the training under the same conditions. At the time of the present
research, four listeners had achieved a certificate of Grade 1 of the Eiken Test and six
listeners’ TOIEC scores were over 900. Table 2 shows the profiles of the interpreting
students.
As for professional interpreters, there was no requirement to participate in the study.
Table 3 shows the profiles of the professional interpreters.

Table 2. The profiles of the interpreting students
Listeners

Education outside Japan

Ages
while
abroadTraining

Present

periodage

Stud1

University in the US

20 to 21

3 years

31

Stud2

No

N/A

4 years48

Stud3

Japanese school in Australia

8 to 11

Stud4

Local elementary school in the US

5 to 11

Stud5

Local elementary school in Australia

11 to 12

Local junior high school in Australia

13 to 14

University in the US

20 to 21

Stud6

No

N/A

Stud7

Local high school in the US

16 to 1759

3 years
5 months
2 years
4 months
2 years(terminated)

3 years(terminated)
2 years(terminated)

30
24

25

31
26

『通訳翻訳研究』No.9 (2009)

Table 3. The profiles of the professional interpreters
Listeners

Education outside Japan

Ages
while abroad

Length ofinterpreting service

Pro1

No

N/A

6 years 9 months

Pro2

University in the UK

From 28 to 32

8 years

Pro3

American school overseas

From 7 to 11

10 years

Pro4

Local nursery in the US

From 2 to 4

10 years

Local school in the UK

From 7 to10

American school overseas

From 7 to 9

Local school in the US

From 14 to 16

Pro5

15 years

3.4 Procedures
The perception experiment was conducted in the same soundproof room in which thestudy materials had been recorded. The listeners individually participated in theexperiment. They were asked to put on a headphone while sitting at the computer. Prior to
the experiment, the listeners were provided with a warm-up session consisting of 16 trials.
During the session, the volume was properly adjusted. In the experiment, the listeners
were asked to use a computer mouse to click the icon bearing the consonant included in
the word in the carrier sentence (see, Figure 1). The cue was given in a female voice, withthe utterance, “Say” followed by the word to be identified. Also the listeners were asked
to click either a “difficult” icon or an “easy” icon below the consonants’ icons on thedisplay. When the listeners were not able to make an instant decision, they were to click
the “difficult” icon. When the listeners were able to make a choice without a moment of
hesitation, they were to click the “easy” icon. The listeners were allowed to make acorrection to their responses before clicking the “OK” icon to proceed to the next cue.
Once they click “OK”, they were not able to return to the previous screen. The
experiment included 318 trials. (53 words x 2 tokens x 3 repetitions). Upon finishing 108
trials, they were asked to have a break. The stimuli were presented in a random order.

60

Identification of English Consonants by Interpreting Students and Professional InterpretersFigure 1. The display used for the experiment

l

th
r

s

easy

difficult
OK

This display was shown to the listeners. While looking at the display, the listeners
were supposed to choose the consonant that, they thought, was included in the word
and click the icon bearing that consonant. After clicking either the “easy” icon or
the “difficult” icon, the “OK” icon appeared to proceed to the next. The icon “th”
indicates /θ/.
4. Results
We report the results of the identifications of /l/, /r/, /s/ and /θ/ in sections 4.1-4.3, andcompare the results of the present study and those of Takahashi (2009) in 4.4. In addition,
we also report the results of the categorizations of the dummy stimulus “Betty” in 4.5.
4.1 Difference between the Professional Interpreters and Interpreting Students
The mean rate of accurate identification of the professional interpreters is 94.1% and thatof the interpreting students is 86.7% (see, Figure 2). According to the Mann-Whitney U
Test, there is no significant difference (U = 7.00, p = 0.088 > 0.05). However, there is atendency that the mean rate of accurate identification by the professional interpreters who
participated in the research is slightly higher than that of the interpreting students.

61

『通訳翻訳研究』No.9 (2009)

Figure 2. The mean rate of accurate identification

100%
94.1%
90%

86.7%

80%
70%
60%
50%
Pro

Stud

4.2 Differences among the Group of Professional Interpreters
There are individual differences among the professional interpreters (see, Figure 3). Pro3,
Pro4, and Pro5 were able to accurately identify either 99% or more than 99% of the trials.
These three professional interpreters had spent their childhood outside of Japan. Pro3 hadbeen educated at an American school abroad from the age of seven to eleven. Pro4 hadbeen educated at a local elementary school in the UK from the age of seven to ten. Also
she had attended a local nursery in the US from the age of two to four. Pro5 had been
educated at an American school abroad from seven to nine years old. Again from the ageof 14 to 16, she was in the US, attending a local junior high school. Pro2 had lived in
London for four and a half years, doing her master’s degree. Pro1, who is on the bottom,
had never lived abroad.
Looking at the results, the professional interpreters who had been educated in
English outside of Japan identified the consonants better in the experiment than both
listeners who had gone to university in her late twenties and the listener who had neverlived abroad (Pro5, 4 and 3 identified the consonants better than Pro1 and 2).

62

Identification of English Consonants by Interpreting Students and Professional InterpretersFigure 3. Results by an individual professional interpreter
100%

99.0%

99.7%

100%

Pro5

Pro4

Pro3

94.9%

90%

80%

76.9%

70%

60%
50%
Pro1

Pro2

4.3 Differences among the Group of Interpreting Students
Again, there are individual differences (see, Figure 4). Stud6, ranked highest, had never lived
abroad except during a six-month-stay in Germany on vacation, visiting her father assigned
there. Stud5, ranked second from the top, had spent 6 years as an elementary school student
of a local school. Stud4, ranked third from the top, had been in Australia from the age of 11 to
12, and again from the age of 13 to 14. Besides that, he had studied in the US for one year asa college student. Stud7, ranked fourth from the top, had been an exchange student at the ageof 16 years old, staying in the US for one year. These four listeners’ rate of accurate
identification is more than 93%. Stud2, who follows Stud7, had never lived abroad. Stud1,
ranked second from the bottom, had stayed in the US for one year as a college student. Stud3,
ranked lowest, had spent three years in Australia. However, she had attended a Japanese
school instead of a local school.

Figure 4. Results of individual interpreting students
100%
93.9%

94.6%

Stud7

Stud4

98.1%

98.7%

Stud5

Stud6

90%
82.7%
80%
73.1%
70%

66.0%

60%
50%
Stud3

Stud1

Stud2

63

『通訳翻訳研究』No.9 (2009)

4.4 Results of Interpreting Study in Terms of the Interpreting Performance
The following graph (see, Figure 5) shows the result of the study for interpreting
performance that was conducted with the same listeners who participated in the previous
study Takahashi (2009).

Figure 5. Results of interpreting performance

100%

75%

47.4

49.3

57.2

60.5

62.5

63.2

63.8

Chunks withaccurateinterpretations
Errors

50%

13.8

13.8
13.8

10.5

15.1

16.4

27.0

21.7

19.7

Stud4

Stud5

Stud2

28.9

25%
38.8

36.8

28.9
10.5

0%
Stud3

Stud6

Stud1

Stud7

Omissions(Replotted from Takahashi 2009)
The listeners (the interpreting students) are ranked in terms of the rate of accurate
identification as follows (from worse to better):Stud3 < Stud1 < Stud2 < Stud7 < Stud4 < Stud5 < Stud6
The listeners (the interpreting students) are ranked in terms of the rate of omissions
in interpretations as follows (from worse to better):Stud3 < Stud6 < Stud1 < Stud4 < Stud5 < Stud2 < Stud7
The listeners (the interpreting students) are ranked in terms of the rate of accurateinterpretations as follows (from worse to better):Stud3 < Stud6 < Stud1 < Stud7 < Stud4 < Stud5 < Stud2
Except for the fact that Stud3 is ranked lowest both in terms of the interpreting
study and the speech perception experiment, there is no distinct relationship between the
results of the interpreting performance and those of the identification experiment.
64

Identification of English Consonants by Interpreting Students and Professional Interpreters

4.5 Results of the “Dummy”
We also report the results of the categorizations of the intervocalic /t/ in the dummy
stimulus “Betty” (see, Table 1). We carried out this secondary experiment as apreliminary study on categorization of allophonic tap of /t/ in English by interpreting
students and professional interpreters.
As is shown in Figure 6, the professional interpreters categorized the intervocalic/t/ as /θ/ (40.0%), /r/ (33.3%) and /l/ (26.7%). The interpreting students categorized theintervocalic /t/ as /θ/ (14.3%), /r/ (19.0%) and /l/ (66.7%). No listeners categorized theintervocalic /t/ as /s/.
Figure 6. The rate of categorizations of the allophonic tap of /t/ in “Betty”
100%

14.3%

90%
80%

40.0%

19.0%

70%
60%
50%
40%

33.3%
66.7%

30%
20%
10%

θ
r
l

26.7%

0%

Pro

Stud

5. Discussions
5.1 Differences between the Professional Interpreters and Interpreting Students
Although there is no significant difference, there is a tendency for the professional
interpreters’ mean rate of accurate identification to be slightly higher than that of theinterpreting students. However, based on the results of the present experiment, it is notknown whether accurate identification contributes to better interpreting performance,
because there are individual differences among the professional interpreters. This isparticularly indicated by Pro1, ranked lowest of all the professional interpreters andranked second from the bottom out of all the listeners in the present research. Therefore,
in order to establish a relationship, a greater number of interpreters are needed for the
future study: particularly those interpreters who have never stayed abroad and never been
educated in English.

65

『通訳翻訳研究』No.9 (2009)

5.2 Differences among the Group of Professional Interpreters
As is shown by Figure 3, three interpreters, Pro3, Pro4, and Pro5 who have received
primary education in English and Pro2 who went to university in the UK, were able toidentify better than Pro1 who has neither stayed abroad nor been educated in English.
There were no interpreters with the same background as Pro1 in the experiment.
Therefore, it is not possible to draw any conclusion indicating the relationship between
perception and omissions in interpretation performed by professional interpreters basedon the result. There is a need for examining the perception of more professional
interpreters who studied English either only in Japan or mostly in Japan.
5.3 Differences among the Group of Interpreting Students and their Interpreting
Performance
Despite the claims made by the listeners in Takahashi (2009), the rates of identificationby the interpreting students are not as low as they insisted. They said in the post-study
interview, “I have difficulty identifying English sounds. So, I couldn’t interpret the partsof the texts where I couldn’t phonetically identify a sentence/word”. This is particularly
observed in Stud6 and Stud7. However, since they had only listened to and identified theconsonants /l/, /r/, /s/ and /θ/, it is necessary to examine whether they are able to identify
other consonants, and the vowels. Also, since they did not need to think about themeaning of the word and did not need to take notes, it is possible that maximum
concentration placed on the single word contributed to higher rate. In the case of actualinterpreting, they have to perceive speech, comprehend a text and convert the meaning of
the text into the different language. In the present experiment, the listeners were immune
from all these processes and were allowed to concentrate on the identification of a single
word. However, there is the possibility that the omission rate of an interpreting studentwith a low identification rate may be high as is indicated by the result of Stud3. Therefore,
it is necessary not only to increase the number of listeners but also to examine
identification of interpreting students with high omission rates alone in a separate
research study.
Finally, there is a distinct relationship between the length of exposure andidentification. However, the relation was not valid for all the listeners.
5.4 Categorization of Allophonic Tap of /t/
In American English, the phoneme /t/ can be realized as tap in intervocalic position(Ladefoged, 2006: 63). This sound is similar to Spanish /r/ and Japanese /r/ (Hualde,
2005: 150; Vance, 2008: 17). In addition, it is well known that native speakers ofJapanese have difficulty in discriminating English /l/ and /r/ (e.g. Ooigawa, 2008). Some
listeners of the present study might have assimilated the intervocalic /t/ in “Betty” as66

Identification of English Consonants by Interpreting Students and Professional Interpreters

Japanese /r/ and they might categorize the /t/ as English /l/ or /r/. As the majority of thelisteners categorized the intervocalic /t/ as /l/ or /r/ (see, Figure 6), the results support our
discussion. Other stimuli such as “belly” and “berry” might have helped the confusions.
Some listeners categorized the American English intervocalic /t/ as /θ/. They musthave noticed that ‘t’ is the correct answer for “Betty”. However, there was no icon
indicating ‘t’, yet they had to choose an answer by any means in order to continue theexperiment (see, Figure 1). Therefore, they must have chosen the closest answer ‘th’ (/θ/).
As no native speakers of American English participated in the experiment, we can notconclude that the listeners who categorized the intervocalic /t/ as /θ/ are native-like.
However, it is interesting and remarkable that the professional interpreters categorized
the intervocalic /t/ as /θ/ more than the interpreting students did.
6. Conclusions
In Takahashi (2009), the study participants (i.e., interpreting students) complained about
their poor speech perception and insisted that they were not able to interpret, and omitted
interpreting in some areas due to their poor speech perception. In order to verify theirclaims, we asked seven interpreting students and five professional interpreters to listen to
the words in a carrier sentence and to identify the consonants, /l/, /r/, /s/ and /θ/. Partly
because of the small number of listeners, and partly because of their diverse English
educational background, there is no significant difference in identification of theconsonants between the professional interpreters and the interpreting students. However,the professional interpreters were able to identify the consonants slightly more reliably
than the interpreting students.
There is no distinct relationship between the results of the identification of the
English consonants in the experiment and interpreting performance. Those whocomplained about their poor speech perception were more able to identify consonants
than they had claimed. The listener who did best in identification of the consonants is
ranked second from the bottom in terms of interpreting performance, blaming her
erroneous speech perception for omissions in interpreting. However, there are individual
differences among the members of each group.
7. Educational Implications
The present research was inspired by the frequent comments made by the interpreting
students in Takahashi (2009); that is: “As I couldn’t identify the word phonetically, I
couldn’t interpret”. However, there is no distinct relationship between the speech
perception and interpreting performance in the present research. When students complain
about their poor speech perception, we recommend that teachers check their speech
perception by administering a quiz that is similar to the experiment in the present study
67

『通訳翻訳研究』No.9 (2009)and examine whether they are able to identify consonants at the single word level. If they
are able to identify them well, the problem may lie in an area other than speech
perception. Also it would be better to identify which consonants students have a problem
identifying. There is also the possibility that students are too much preoccupied with theirown poor identification and underestimate their ability.
Even if students complain about their poor perception, it may not be exactly an
identification problem. The problem may exist in other phonetic problems thanidentification, such as ignorance of the intonation rule, English prosody, reductions, andallophones. Therefore, we recommend that teachers who teach how to interpret should
examine and identify the problems that students have from a wider viewpoint in order tooffer an appropriate solution to students.
8. Future Research
8.1 The number of Speakers and Listeners
The present research involved only one speaker. The number of the listeners was also
limited to only five professionals and seven interpreting students. The number of bothspeakers and listeners should be increased in future research.
8.2 Background of Listeners
The background of the listeners, the interpreting students in particular, was quite diversein the present study. Future study should be designed to include listeners with moresimilar overseas experiences. In relation to the point, a greater number of professional
interpreters who have neither lived abroad, nor been educated in English, should be
included in future research.
8.3 Native English Speakers
It is necessary to examine to what extent native English speakers are able to identify allof these consonants included in a single word.
8.4 Materials for an Experiment
The present research dealt with only /l/, /r/, /s/ and /θ/. A greater number of consonants
and vowels should be included in the future. In the present research, the listeners were
supposed to listen to only a single word in the carrier sentence and identify the consonant
included. Therefore, the future research is intended to deal with the identification of aconsonant in a word embedded in a sentence.

68

Identification of English Consonants by Interpreting Students and Professional Interpreters......................................................
Acknowledgement
We would like to express our gratitude to the speaker and all of the listeners who kindly tooktime out of their busy schedules and came all the way to the phonetics laboratory.
About the authors
TAKAHASHI Kinuko: Freelance interpreter and graduate student of Ph. D. Course in
Linguistics of Sophia University. A member of Phonetics Laboratory of Sophia University.
Her major is applied linguistics. e-mail: kinuko@dc4.so-net.ne.jp
OOIGAWA Tomohiko: Graduate student of Ph. D. Course in Linguistics of Sophia
University. A member of Phonetics Laboratory of Sophia University. His majors arephonetics and phonology. e-mail: ooigawaferchichi@gmail.com
References
Flege, J. E., Guion S. G., Akahane-Yamada R., and Downs-Pruitt, J. (2000). An investigationof current models of second language speech perception: The case of Japanese adults’
perception of English consonants. Journal of Acoustic Society of America 107 (5),2711-2724.
Flowerdew, J. & Miller, L. (2005). Second Language Listening: Theory and Practice. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Gile, D. (1995). Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training.
Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Hualde, J. I. (2005). The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ladefoged, P. (2006). A course in phonetics. 5th ed., Boston: Thomson Wadsworth.
Ooigawa, T. (2008). Discrimination de /l/-/r/ en français et en anglais chez les auditeurs
natifs japonophones. MA thesis. Sophia University.
Pöchhacker, F. (2007). Introducing Interpreting Studies. New York: Routledge.
Rost, M. (2002). Teaching and Researching Listening. Essex England: Longman.
Takahashi, K. (2009). Identifying the common problems in the interpretations performed by
Japanese Interpreting Students: In a Case of Japanese Interpreting Students. UnpublishedMA thesis. Sophia University.
Ur, P. (1984). Teaching Listening Comprehension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vance, T. J. (2008). The sounds of Japanese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

69

『通訳翻訳研究』No.9 (2009)70