Collection of Simultaneous Interpreting Patterns byUsing Bilingual Spoken Monologue Corpus†

Shigeki Matsubara＊

Hitomi Tohyama†

Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University＊
Information Technology Center, Nagoya University,
Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya-shi, 464-8601, Japan†＊
hitomi@el.itc.nagoya-u.ac.jp
matubara@itc.nagoya-u.ac.jp
Abstract
This paper provides an investigation of simultaneous interpreting patterns using a bilingual spoken monologue corpus. 4,578 pairsof English-Japanese aligned utterances in CIAIR simultaneous interpretation database were used. This investigation is the largest scaleas the observation of simultaneous interpreting speech. The simultaneous interpreters are required to generate the target speech
simultaneously with the source speech. Therefore, they have various kinds of strategies to raise simultaneity. In this investigation, thesimultaneous interpreting patterns with high frequency and high flexibility were extracted from the corpus. As a result, we collected
203 cases out of aligned utterances in which simultaneous interpreters’ strategies for raising simultaneity were observed. These 203
cases could be categorized into 12 types of interpreting pattern. It was clarified that 4.5 percent of the English-Japanese monologue
data were fitted in those interpreting patterns. These interpreting patterns can be expected to be used as interpreting rules ofsimultaneous machine interpretation.

Table1. Statistics of investigated data

1. Introductions
To achieve the supporting environment for the naturaland smooth multilingual communication, the studies on
the simultaneous machine interpreting has been
conducted at several institutions (Matsubara 1997, Mima
1998). In order to develop the simultaneous interpretation
system with high performance, it is important to observe
how professional interpreters generate simultaneousinterpretation and to make use of their techniques. Theirskills are acquired by tremendous mount of training overmany years (Korrnakov 2000, Osaka 2003). Since there
exited no large-scale data on the English-Japanese
simultaneous interpretation, the study which theorized theEnglish-Japanese simultaneous interpretation based on
the actual data is yet to be done. Therefore, it is actuallyindispensable for us to collect various interpreting
patterns by observing thoroughly a large-scaleinterpretation data.
In this paper, the manual quantitative analysis of
CIAIR simultaneous interpretation corpus and thecollection of interpreting patterns are described. 4,578
pairs of English-Japanese aligned utterances in the corpus
were used (Matsubara 2002). This investigation is thelargest scale as the observation by hand.
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 gives thegeneral information of CIAIR simultaneous interpretation
corpus and the observation tool. In section 3, thestrategies used by professional simultaneous interpreters
are discussed. In section 4, the types of the interpreting
patterns. In section 5, the result of the analysis is shown.

2. CIAIR Simultaneous Interpretation
Corpus
2.1 Outline of the Corpus
At the Center for Integrated Acoustic Information
Research of Nagoya University (following, CIAIR), a
corpus of simultaneous interpretation between Japaneseand English has been constructed over five years(Tohyama 2004). We collected both monologue andSpeaker(English)No.of lectures
recording time (min)utterance time (min)No.of words/morpheme
No.of utterance units
No.of alligening papirs

26
15,627
12,78038,437
1,494Interpreter(Japanese)
26
15,627
11,001
44,3991,977
4,578

dialogue data. The contents of the database are daily
topics. The recording time is 182 hours in total. The
speech data has been all transcribed. The discourse tag
and the utterance time tag were given to the corpus. The
size of transcribed data is about 1 million words, and the
database would deserve to be called the simultaneousinterpretation database of the largest-in-the-world class.

2.2

Investigated Data

In this research, we used English-Japanese monologue
data in the corpus. The contents of speeches are
economics, history, and, culture, etc. Moreover, eachmonologue speech is interpreted by two or four
professional interpreters. The flexibility of a corpus israised by using four interpreters. Therefore, it becomes
possible to compare two or more interpretation examples
in a sample of utterances. The speech was recorded forabout 10 minutes per lecture.
In this research, 4,578 pairs of English-Japanesealigned utterances in the corpus were used. This
investigation is the largest scale as the manual
observationofEnglish-Japanese
simultaneousinterpreting data. Table1 shows the statistics of theinvestigated data.

Figure 2: Sample of time chart

Figure 1: Sample of parallel database

2.3

Tools for Observing the Corpus

We have constructed parallel database as shown in
Figure 1. For a detailed analysis of interpreters’ speech,such as extraction of temporal characteristics ofinterpretation, the acquisition of interpreting patterns, thedetection of translation units, the database consists ofrelatively small units of the utterances of speakers andinterpreters collected manually. Additionally, wedeveloped a time chart for corpus analysis in order tosupport the practical use of the database. Figure 2 shows asample of the time-chart. It visualizes simultaneousinterpreting aspect. They have been developed assoftware which can be performed on the Web server, anda user can refer to the corpus easily by using a browser.

3. English-Japanese SimultaneousInterpretation
3.1 Issue in English-Japanese SimultaneousInterpretation
Simultaneous interpretation is one of the advanced
language processing activities by humans (Mizuno
2005). One important characteristic of simultaneousinterpretation is that the translation begins along the wayof the speaker utterance. As for English and Japanese,
there is a considerable difference in sentence structure. In
linguistic typology, while English has a sentence structureof subject-verb-object (SVO), Japanese has that ofsubject-object-verb (SOV). If an object of the English
speaker's utterance has a long passage, the interpreter has
to wait and begin his/her interpretation until the English
speaker finishes the utterance of its object. There is also acase that the postmodification clause in an English
sentence is translated as the premodification clause in theJapanese sentence. The similar cases, which are difficult
to be translated into Japanese, will be the obstacle for the
English-Japanese simultaneous interpretation.

3.2 Strategy of Simultaneous Interpretation

Example: <X before Y.>(Refer to sec.5.1.1)

As with the issue concerning simultaneousinterpretation suggested in the previous section, to begin
translating simultaneously with speaker utterance is also a
hard task for executing simultaneous machineinterpretation. On the other hand, simultaneousinterpreters are succeeded in generating Japanesetranslations simultaneously with English speeches,
because they have various kinds of techniques to raise
their simultaneity. Professional simultaneous interpreters
deal with those difficulties that they face when they
follow the utterance order of original speech by using
those strategies relating to when-to-say and how-to-say.
In this respect, the strategies used by professional
simultaneous interpreters are categorized into thefollowing types and interpreting patterns in thosestrategies are collected from the corpus (Refer to Figure
3).
3.2.1

Strategies to Raise the Simultaneity［when-to-say］
The following strategies are employed when thesimultaneous interpreters follow the word order of the
speakers’ utterance as much as possible (Kamei 1994). In
the below, we call such the strategies Type A.
zType A-1 : Translation based on speakers’
word order ［how-to-say］
To interpret along with speakers’ utterance is thetechnique which the interpreters use when they
follow the word order of the speakers’ utterance.
When interpreters use this technique, they do nothave to wait until the speaker finishes the sentence,and this technique also allows interpreters to raise
the simultaneity. What is crucial in this technique
are to divide the sentence into small units which
determine when to interpret and to connect each
unit in appropriate order. Interpreters are required
to translate English sentences as natural as possible,
so that the amount of their utterance sometime
larger than its original speakers’ utterance.

English-JapaneseSimultaneous Interpretation
Strategies

A
Strategies to Raisethe Simultaneity［When-to-say］

A-1
Translation Basedon Word Order［How-to-say］

B
Strategies to Raise
the Translation
Accuracy of Japanese［When-to-say］

A-2
Translation Reducing
the Amount of Utterance［How-to-say］

Figure 3: Classification of English-Japanese simultaneousinterpretation strategieszType A-2 : Reducing the amount of target
speech ［how-to-say］
This is the strategies in which interpreters
generate fewer amount of target speech. This
technique enables interpreters to generate the target
speech in shorter time. Since the time needed forspeaking the original speech is shorten, thesimultaneity of interpretation will be raised. The
techniques used in this strategy are to omit
unnecessary words or phases and to summarize
unimportant part of original speech.

3.2.2 Strategies to Raise Accuracy of Japanese［when-to-say］
This is the strategy that interpreters do not starttranslating it until the speakers finished his/ her speech inorder to collect enough information for accuratetranslation. This strategy is called Type B and is used
when the original speech was short or the pauses between
sentences are long. And this strategy cannot be used when
the simultaneity is required. The strategy is not dealt inthis paper.

4．Collecting the Interpreters’ Translation
Patterns
4.1 Purpose of the Investigation
By collecting the interpreting patterns which can beused as the translation rule for the simultaneousinterpreting system, the realization of the simultaneousmachine interpreting with high reliability can be expected.
Thus, we collected the interpreters’ translation techniquesfrom the large-scale simultaneous interpretation corpus.
Those techniques would enable the speech translation
systems to interpret the original speech more
simultaneously. The interpreting pattern collection bypeople is necessary for designing the system that collects
those patterns automatically.

4.2

Translation Techniques Examined

In this research, the complex sentence and the passive
construction were focused. The reason why thosesentences were focused was that complex sentences areusually long and the passive constructions in the original
English sentences have to be translated as the active
sentences in Japanese. And this linguistic difference
between English and Japanese is the obstacle for thesimultaneous machine translation because it is hard forthe system to determine translation units and translation
timing. Therefore, we paid attention to interpreter’s
technique such as when and how they translate thespeaker’s utterances and how they omit unnecessary
words and phrases.

5．Collecting the Interpreting Patterns
The following list shows the examples of interpreters’
technique to translate concerning complex sentences withconjunction, relative clauses, and passive construction
sentences, which were discovered by observing the
corpus. The following alphabets and numbers are thesymbols used in order to explain interpreting patterns.
They show what each symbol stands for. “X” , “Y” areclause. “Z” is words. “(1)” is English structure, “(2)” isstandard Japanese structure, “(3)” is an interpreter’s
technique. How often each symbol appears in the
corpus is shown in Table 2. In the following corpus
examples, “N” is native speaker utterances and “I” isinterpreter utterances.

5.1 Translation According to Word Order
5.1.1 Sub-conjunction Sentence# “because” Clause #When ordinary people translate the English complex
sentence <X because Y.> into Japanese and thecommon translation of the sentence is <Y nanode X.>.
The interpreter cannot begin the translation until the
speaker talks about Y. However, simultaneousinterpreters are able to begin the translation without
waiting for when the speaker says Y by devising thetranslation like <X naze-naraba Y.>. That is, the orderof X and Y occurring is corresponding to English
sentence structure. In this research, the following threeinterpreting patterns are collected in the corpus.
(1):
(2):

X because Y.
Y nano-de X.

<Interpreting pattern type 1>(3)-a: X, naze-nara-ba Y.

Translate X, and then add the “naze-naraba”
part and Y.
<Interpreting pattern type 2>(3)-b: X, Y nano-desu.

After translate X and Y consecutively, add“nano-desu” which means “because”.
<Interpreting pattern type 3>(3)-c: X, Y.

Translate X and Y consecutively as the word
order seen in the original speech, but omit the word
“because.” If the contents of X and Y have a strong
connection, it is possible that the word “because”
itself will be omitted. This technique is the same

Tble2. The result of the investigation
Strategy

Syntax typeof sentence

subInterpretati
conjunctiononaccording
to English
structure(A-1)

English sentence
structure(speaker)Standard Japanese
sentence structureInterpretation techniquewith high simultaneity(interpreter)<X because Y.><Y nano-de X.>

a. <X, naze-nara-ba Y.>
b. <X, Y nano-de-su .>c. <X, Y.>27<X before Y.><Y su-ru mae-ni X.>

a. <X shi-te-kara Y.>
b. <X shita-ato-ni Y.>

4<X even if Y.><tatoe Y de-aru-to-shite-mo X.><X, Y de-aru-to-shi-te-mo .>54(80.0)<X which Y. ><Y de-aru X.>

a. <X, kore-ni kann-shi-tewa Y.>
b. <X, Y, X>

30

a. 20(66.7)
b. 4(13.3)<X where Y.><Y to-iu X.><X, Y.>

178(47.0)<Z think Y.><Z wa Y to omoimasu .>a. <Y to omoi-masu. >b. <Y de-aru .>c. <Y de-syou .>101

a. 58(57.4)
b. 35(34.7)
c. 2(1.98)<Z wa sa-reru .><Z wo ~ su-ru .>79

65(82.3)

relative

Omission(A-2)

subject +perception
verb

passive<Z be+past participle.>construction

techniques explained in section 5.2 which
areeffective for reducing the gap time between theoriginal speaker’s utterance and the interpreter’sutterance.
Example 1
N: But you don't see the pedal because
I: Pedaru-wa amari mi-te inai-to. nazenara
N: you don't understand the pedal.
I: Pedaru-no yakuwari-wo rikai-shi-te inai kara-de-su
Example 2
N: So when I came to Kansai, it was a really big shock
because these people look so normal.
I:
Tokoro-ga
kannsai-ni
kitatoki-nimatabikkuri-shi-mashi-ta. futsuu-nann-desu.
Example 3
N: I was completely shocked because
I: Watashi-wa sugoi shokku-wo uke-te shimai-mashi-ta.
De
N: it was a train that I had never se, a train like I had
never seen before.
I: Dennsya-wa mae watashi-ga mita koto-mo nai-youna
dennsya-deshita.

# “even if” Clause #When the phrase “even if” is used, the occurringorder of X and Y will be reversed.
(1): X even if Y.
(2): tatoe Y de- aru- to shi-temo X.

There are four cases of interpreting patterns with“even if,” and all cases are translated in the reversed
way.
<Interpreting pattern type 4>(3): X, Y de aru-to shi-temo.

In order to translate it in the word order seen in the
English sentence,an interpreter stops translating

Occurrence Occurrence count
count in(the proportion of
the data
the technique (%))

a. 23(85.2)
b. 1(3.7)
c. 1(3.7)
a. 2(50.0)
b. 1(25.0)

in front of “even if” and say “tatoe” before translate
the Y part.
Example 4
N: And another way to start is always be willing towork even if you're a student.
I: Sore-kara mata hazimeru-ni atari-mashi-te-mo
itu-mo-desu-ne. Yorokonn-de shigoto-wo shi-nasai.
Gakusei-de-mo desu-ne.

# “before” Clause #The reverse clause order also can be observed in thesentences with “before.”(1): X before Y.
(2): Y su-ru mae-ni X.

One interesting technique was observed. In thetechnique, the simultaneous interpreters generate thephrases such as “shi-te kara” and “shi-ta ato-ni”
which have opposite meaning of “su-ru mae-ni”
seen in (2) after they generate X, and, after that, theytranslate Y. The following two interpreting patterns
were collected in this research.
<Interpreting pattern type 5>(3)-a: X shi-te kara Y. (Refer to Figure 2)(3)-b: X shi-ta ato-ni Y.

Example 5
N: Okay, you should pay back ahh most or all of yourloans before you invest a lot of money.
I:
Mina-sann-no
syakkinn-no
hotonndo-wo
kaeshi-te-kara
toushi-wo
suru-to-iu
koto-nishita-hou-ga ii-to omoi-masu.
Example 6
N: You should pay back ahh most or all of your loans
I: kurezittokaado-de-no kariire-wo
N: before you invest a lot of money.

I: Hennsai-shita ato toushi-wo kanngae-nasai to-iu-koto-de-ari-masu.

adverb “where” mean is omitted. The similar cases
are found in the corpus.

5.1.2 Interpreting Patterns in Sentences Include
Relative Pronouns and Relative Adverbs
In this section, the result of analysis on the interpreting
patterns with the relative pronoun “which” and relative
adverb “where” collected will be described. There was nocase of the reverse clause order found in the sentenceswith the other relative pronouns such as “who,” “when,”
and the like, so that the further research should be done.

Example 9
N: set about collecting broken toys from the garbage…
I:
Kowareta
omocha-wo
gomi-nonaaka-kara
atsume-te-kite…
N: and bringing them back to his little shoe shopI:soshitesore-wo
jibun-nokutsukoubou-ni
mochikonn-de
N: where he would repair them by hand and repaintthem and make then look new.
I: te-de hito-tsu hito-tsu shuuri-wo shi-tari iro-wo nuri
naoshi-tari-shite soshite atarashi-ku kirei-ni# “which” Clause #When the sentence including relative pronoun, it isusually the case to translate the relative pronoun clause
Y modifies the main clause X.
(1):
(2):

X which Y.
Y de-aru X.

Those interpreting patterns where the speech wastranslated in accordance with utterance order werecategorized into two major types of strategies.
<Interpreting pattern type 6>(3)-a: X, kore-ni kann-shi-te-wa Y.

To translate the relative pronoun in the way thatreflects its grammatical function, that is “pronoun
plus conjunction”.
<Interpreting pattern type 7>(3)-b: X, Y X.

In this case, X is translated before Y. But soonafter Y is translated, X is translated again. The
simultaneity will be raised and the content oforiginal speech will not be distorted by using thistechnique because it retains the original English
word order. By translating X, the final translation
will have the same clause order as the original
Japanese sentence, therefore the final translation will
become more natural.
Example 7
N: One exception might be your home which you pay off
little by little over the years, but
I: Hito-tsu reigai-wa kore-wa zyuutaku desu-ne kore-ni
kann-shi-te-wa
nagai
zikann-wo
kake-tesukoshi-zutsu kae-su toiu-koto-desu keredo-mo.
Example 8
N: exception might be your home which you pay off little
by little over the years,
I: Reigai-wa desu-ne ie-de ari-masu. suunenn kake-tesukoshi-zutu bunnkatsu-de hara-tte iku ie-no baai-wa
reigai-de ari-masu keredo-mo roonn-toka# “where” Clause #Concerning relative adverb “where,” the occurringorder of clause is also reversed.
(1):
(2):

X where Y.
Y to-iu X.

<Interpreting pattern type 8>(3): X, Y.

The main clause X and the relative adverb clause
Y are translated consecutively and the relative

5.2

Translation
Utterance

ReducingtheAmountof

5.2.1 Omission
Omission sometimes invites the situation that thenecessary information is not conveyed or is distorted.
Therefore to determine what to omit will be a difficult
ability. In this research, the verbs used frequently andrelated to thinking and perception such as “feel,” “find,”“notice,” “imagine,” “see” and “mind” were examined.
But no particular interpreting pattern was found.
However, the interpreting pattern which the subjects ofthe verb “think” often omitted was found.
# Subject+ think + (that-clause) #The appearance of the phrase, <Z think Y(that-clause).> is numerous in the speaker utterance.
Out of 101 appearances of the phrase, the cases inwhich “Z” wasn’t translated were 58 cases, and “Z
think” wasn’t translated at all were 35 cases. If themachine can shorten the translation that it generates byomitting words and phrases, the time needed for themachine translation will also be shortened and it
eventually raises the simultaneity of the system.
(1):
(2):

Z think Y.
Z wa Y to omoi-masu.

<Interpreting pattern type 9>(3): Y to omoi-masu.

Moreover, the interpreting patterns in which theverb “think” were translated as guess phrase such as“nanode-shou” and “dewa-nai-de-shou-ka” were
found.
Example 10
N: I think that is the key, I think that is the pedal of ourbicycle here.
I: Kore-ha totemo zyuuyou-da-to omoi-masu.
Kore-koso-ga
sakihodo-no
zitennsya-no
pedaru-deha-nai-ka-to omoi-masu.
Example 11
N: I think that's part of maintaining um a proper
appearance
I: Minari-wo tadashi-ku totonoe-nakereba to-iu-kotonann-de-show.
Example 12
N: I think that has a very major affect on your mind.
I: Kou-itta koto-ga sunn-de-ru hito-no kokoro-ni ooki-na
eikyou-wo ataeru-nnde-wa nai-de-syhow-ka

5.2.2
Summarized Translation
To construct the passage from the speakers’ point ofview is one of the characteristic of Japanese. On thecontrary, the passive sentences are often used in English.
Therefore, the investigation on how the passive sentences
are translated and summarized was conducted in thisresearch.

techniques, such as how they translate other English
sentence structures in addition to complex sentences. As
for developing the simultaneous interpreting system, thefurther research concerning how to apply thoseinterpreting patterns to the simultaneous interpretingsystem has to be done.

# Passive Construction #When the passive sentences of English are translated
into Japanese, the direct translation could not be
considered as the natural Japanese.

Acknowledgment: The authors would like to thankProf. Toyohide Watanabe, Assoc. Prof. Nobuo Kawaguchi,
and all members of Matsubara Laboratory at the Nagoya
University for their precious advices. This work is
partially supported by the Grand-in-Aid for Exploratory
Research (No. 17652040) of JSPS.

(1):
(2):

Z be+past participle.
Z wa sare-ru.

In this research, the technique of modifying thepassive English sentence into the active sentence
was found. It was also clarified that the smooth andnatural translation English into Japanese becomes
possible by using this technique.
<Interpreting pattern type 12>(3): Z ~wo su-ru.
Example 13
N: We have places in North America, South America,
Europe and Africa that where the land can be
developed better.
I: Kita-america minami-amerika youroppa soshite
afurica-de souiu tochi-wo-desu-ne yoku kaihatsu-wo
shi-te-iku-koto-ga deki-masu.

6．Conclusion
It is one of the effective techniques to use thetranslation strategies collected by observing interpreter's
behavior for the development of the simultaneousmachine interpreting. In this research, 4,578 pairs ofEnglish-Japanese aligned utterances were examined. This
investigation was large-scale as the observation ofsimultaneous interpretation data manually. As a result, weobserved 203 interpreting patterns. These were able to beclassified into 12 interpreting pattern. It was clarified that
4.5 percent of the English-Japanese monologue data werefitted in those interpreting patterns and those patterns canbe expected to be used as translating rules for developing
simultaneous machine interpretation. It will also benecessary to collect more simultaneous interpreters’

7.

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