The effects of noise on the performance of simultaneous interpreters: accuracy of performance.

Abstract The effect of noisy listening conditions on the performance of simultaneous interpreters was studied by asking subjects to shadow and simultaneously interpret French prose into English at 3 signal-noise ratios. It was found that while noise had a significant effect on the proportions of texts correctly shadowed and interpreted, there were significantly more errors committed when interpreting than when shadowing at lower signal-noise ratios. This finding, together with analysis of subjects' self-corrections when interpreting, suggested that difficulty in perceiving source language passages reduced the ability of simultaneous interpreters to monitor their interpretations into the target language.