
Agnieszka ChmielAdam Mickiewicz University in Poznań | UAM · Department of Translation Studies
Agnieszka Chmiel
Doctor of Philosophy
About
54
Publications
32,793
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
556
Citations
Introduction
I currently work as a University Professor in the Department of Translation Studies, Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. My main research interests include conference interpreting, psycholinguistic aspects of interpreting, working memory, audio description and respeaking.
Publications
Publications (54)
Cognitive information processing has long been an area of interest for Interpreting Studies scholars. This paper discusses the interdisciplinary relation between Interpreting Studies (IS) and psycholinguistics as a source of a possible synergy effect and explains why Interpreting Studies matters not only to interpreters and interpreting researchers...
This paper presents results of an eye-tracking study involving sight translation. It was assumed that interpreting trainees at a more advanced stage of training would display more efficient reading patterns than their less experienced colleagues. Eighteen participants with either one year or two years of interpreting training were asked to sight tr...
This article reports on the Pear Tree Project (PTP) conducted as part of the DTV4All project, whose original aim was to develop audio description (AD) guidelines in Europe, in order to ensure consistent high quality AD. However, before streamlining AD standards, a number of issues had to be addressed, the most essential being whether relevant cross...
Conference interpreters form a special case of language users because the simultaneous interpretation practice requires very specific lexical processing. Word comprehension and production in respective languages is performed under strict time constraints and requires constant activation of the involved languages. The present experiment aimed at she...
This corpus-based study examines the effect of syntactic complexity in the source language on simultaneous interpreters’ cognitive load and stress. Previous studies show contrasting results regarding the source text syntax and cognitive load in interpreting, while the link between syntactic complexity and interpreters’ stress remains unexplored. Ou...
This study examines the effect of real-time subtitles generated by automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology on interpreting accuracy and interpreters’ cognitive load. Multiple measurements — including interpreting accuracy, the NASA-TLX for subjective ratings of cognitive load, eye-tracking and theta power as indicated by EEG recordings — were...
This study analyses cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting on the basis of naturalistic data from the Polish Interpreting Corpus (PINC). We wanted to find evidence both for the current load (visible immediately after the exposure to the source text word) and the exported load (visible after the production of the translation equivalent in the t...
Understood as a language rarely learned by non-native speakers (Whyatt & Pavlović 2021), Polish might be considered a language of limited diffusion. As a result, interpreters frequently work both into and from Polish. This stands in stark contrast with the approach to interpreting directionality preferred in many international organizations and rep...
This paper presents methodological challenges in a study focusing on the impact of remote interpreting settings on interpreter experience and performance. In recent years, the practice of simultaneous interpreting has undergone a robust development with the quick uptake of remote interpreting technologies due to the global pandemic. In order to inv...
The study examined how a required reformulation of a source text affects reading patterns in sight translation. We also tested how interpreters regulated their eye-voice span (IVS, understood as the delay between viewing the source language word and speaking it in the target language) in the task. Twenty-four professional conference interpreters si...
The aim of the study was to investigate the coordination of source text comprehension and translation in a sight translation task. The study also sought to determine whether translation strategies influence sight translation performance. Two groups of conference interpreters—professionals and trainees—sight translated English sentences into Polish...
The following chapter introduces PINC — the Polish Interpreting Corpus, a PolishEnglish and English-Polish corpus ofshort European Parliament speeches and their interpretations. The uniqueness ofPINC, apart from its language combination, consists in careful balancing of mode of delivery, in rich metadata, interpreter identification and availability...
This paper describes automated identification of interpreter voices in the Polish Interpreting Corpus (PINC). After collecting a set of voice samples of interpreters, a deep neural network model was used to match all the utterances from the corpus with specific individuals. The final result is very accurate and provides a considerable saving of tim...
Audio description (AD) is a type of translation involving the transfer of images into words, whose primary target audience are persons with sight loss. However, in reality audio description users are a heterogeneous group with various dysfunctions ranging from congenital blindness to low vision. These users might differ in their preferences for aud...
Audio description (AD) is a mode of audiovisual transfer which involves making audiovisual content and live performances accessible to people with sight loss. With the growing demand for this audiovisual translation (AVT) practice, a need has arisen to train professionals in the area. As a result, AD courses have sprung up, both in the form of univ...
In the current study we set out to investigate source language interference in the visual modality (in sight translation – ST) and in the auditory modality (in simultaneous interpreting – SI). We probed interpretations of cognates, interlingual homographs and passive structures in single sentence contexts as performed from English to Polish by 47 a...
This study aims to investigate the influence of interpreter training and conference interpreting experience on anticipation, as measured by word-translation latencies in a semantically constrained context. It involved professional conference interpreters, on the one hand, and, on the other, interpreter trainees being tested at the beginning and at...
The present study focuses on (in)congruence of input between the visual and the auditory modality in simultaneous interpreting with text. We asked twenty-four professional conference interpreters to simultaneously interpret an aurally and visually presented text with controlled incongruences in three categories (numbers, names and control words), w...
With the rising popularity of and legal requirements for media accessibility, a need has arisen to train professional audio describers and, to this end, to educate audio description trainers. This paper aims to serve as guidance for trainers who wish to design and conduct their own audio description course. It first identifies shortcomings in the c...
The study examines how professional and trainee interpreters process syntax in sight translation. We asked 24 professionals and 15 trainees to sight translate sentences with subject-relative clauses and more difficult object-relative clauses while measuring translation accuracy, eye movements and translation durations. We found that trainees took l...
In the current study we set out to investigate source language interference in the visual modality (in sight translation – ST) and in the auditory modality (in simultaneous interpreting – SI). We probed interpretations of cognates, interlingual homographs and passive structures in single sentence contexts as performed from English to Polish by 47 a...
The aim of the study was to examine how interpreter training and experience influence word recognition and cross-linguistic connections in the bilingual mental lexicon. Sixty-eight professional interpreters, interpreter trainees (tested at the beginning and end of their training) and bilingual controls were asked to complete a semantic priming stud...
Respeaking is a method of producing subtitling for live events and TV programmes. Respeakers repeat speakers’ utterances so that they may be changed by speech recognition software into subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. Respeakers need to paraphrase the text so that it conforms with temporal and spatial constraints of subtitling. Due to th...
Respeaking involves producing subtitles in real time to make live television programs accessible to deaf and hard of hearing viewers. In this study we investigated how the type of material to be respoken affects temporal aspects of respeaking, such as ear–voice span and pauses. Given the similarities between respeaking and interpreting (time constr...
Book available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10593/24583
Książka „Tłumacz – praktyczne aspekty zawodu" jest zbiorem dziesięciu rozdziałów napisanych przez wykładowców specjalizacji tłumaczeniowych na Wydziale Anglistyki UAM z myślą o studentach i początkujących tłumaczach. Każdy rozdział omawia wybrane praktyczne aspekty związane z funkcjonowaniem na...
Aims and Objectives
The purpose of the study was to disentangle the effects of simultaneous interpreting experience and training on working memory, to examine the effect of language, modality and recall on working memory scores, and to associate memory scores of trainees with interpreting quality.
Design
Working memory scores were compared in the...
Reception studies are frequently used in audio description research to elicit preferences of the visually impaired about certain aspects and level of acceptance of various solutions. However, this research method is characterised by limitations, which are discussed in this article as regards the participants and the design of reception studies. We...
Professional interpreters employed by international institutions usually work into their L1 from their L2, while freelance interpreters tend to work both into and from their L1. A study was devised to see if the long-term interpreting unidirectional practice (in the L2–L1 direction only), in contrast to bidirectional practice (in the L2–L1 and L1–L...
The chapter by Mazur and Chmiel reports on a study combining eye-tracking and reception study data to find out to what extent audio description beneficiaries appreciate eye-tracking based descriptions. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 visually impaired respondents who saw videos either with audio descriptions based on eye-tracking data fr...
This article focuses on the analysis of technical constraints and critical points in the voice-over translation of a single episode of The West Wing, an American TV series set in the White House. The aim was to investigate how the mode of translation (voice-over for fiction genres) with its numerous constraints influences the translator’s decision-...
This chapter is devoted to memory as one of the most important assets of a consecutive interpreter. First, it presents the most influencial models of memory, which divide memory generally into sensory, working and long-term memory. Then, applications of various memory types in consecutive interpreting are described: short-term auditory memory in de...
This chapter focuses on processing in simultaneous interpreting, understood as a set of operations performed on the source text and tapping into interpreting strategies in order to streamline the production of the target text. First, arguments are presented to support the author’s approach to training, i.e. developing isolated sub-skills of simulta...
Respeakers need to master a number of linguistic and technical competences (Arumí Ribas & Romero Fresco 2008, Romero Fresco 2012, Eugeni 2008). Among them is the ability to listen and speak at the same time in the same language or to translate the words spoken in a live programme into another language. Other necessary linguistic skills are the abil...
This paper examines the effectiveness of teaching note-taking to trainee interpreters. It first identifies layout, symbols and visualizations as aspects assumed to contribute to more successful consecutive interpreting and then presents contents of a note-taking course. The experimental study described in the paper features interpreting trainees wh...
Work Package 3 (Testing) was intended to find out which audio description (AD)
solutions make description of visual content more comprehensible, easier to visualize
and simply more pleasurable for the blind and partially sighted audience. The work
package was divided into two stages: stage one was to determine which items are
challenging in AD and...
AD reception research, or collection of feedback from the blind and partially sighted as the target audience of audio described films, seems to be one of the best sources of information to be applied when creating both AD standards and audio descriptions proper. This paper presents experiences gained by the authors when conducting two reception stu...
Audio description is a new area in audiovisual translation research. It focuses on the intersemiotic translation of images into words for the blind and partially sighted. Thanks to audio description, the blind have access to the visual aspects of mass media, i.e. they can fully participate in the cultural life of the society. This paper will first...
Professional audio describers often face a dilemma what to include in their descriptions, how to order described elements and what to omit due to time constraints. It is thus useful to examine how particular film scenes are perceived by sighted viewers and to what extent audio description can influence that perception. This paper is a work-in-progr...
Whether Translation Studies really matters is an important and challenging question which practitioners of translation and interpreting raise repeatedly. TS scholars, many of whom are translators and interpreters themselves, are not indifferent to it either. The twenty papers of this thematic volume, contributed by authors from various parts of Eur...
Simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a cognitively demanding task. This is why there are typically two interpreters working in a booth and taking turns every 30 minutes or so. Interpreters work in pairs not only to be able to overcome fatigue, but also to cooperate and help each other. This article is an attempt to shed some light on the process of bo...