Translation and Inner State: The impact of Interpreters’ Extraversion/Introversion on Accuracy and Sentence Length

Abstract

The present study investigated the impact of interpreters’ extroversion/introversion on interpretation accuracy. It was also designed to explore the relationship between extroversion/ introversion and the length of interpreted sentences. To achieve these purposes, first a placement test (i.e. Oxford Placement Test), was administered to 65 senior university translation students at Feizol-Islam non-governmental institute of higher education in order to select a homogeneous population. Based on the results, 30 students with the same level of language proficiency were specified. Then, an extroversion/introversion test (Al-Shalabi 2003) was run to set apart extrovert and introvert participants. Finally, both groups were asked to interpret a VOA audio track. Analysis of the obtained results revealed that both extroversion and introversion affect interpretation accuracy, with the difference that introvert interpretation accuracy overweighed extrovert interpretation accuracy. Also, in terms of the length of the interpreted sentences, the results showed that the average length of extrovert interpreters’ sentences was longer than those of introvert interpreters’ sentences and source text sentences. The findings have implications for teachers of interpretation courses and workshops to test their students concerning extroversion and introversion before teaching, and to base their instruction on the fact that psychological moods affect the extent of their students’ performance as regards translation accuracy.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s1p561