Audio-phonological and neuropsychological aspects of simultaneous interpretation. Role of auditory shadowing.

Two groups of female interpreter students (3rd year and 4th year) at the School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste (SIT) underwent a paradigm of complex shadowing. All subjects were polyglots, with Italian as first language (L1) and German, learned after age 10, as second language (L2). In the first part of the experiment, they were asked to listen to and immediately repeat 60 lists of 50 words each in Italian passed through earphones to the right ear (RE) and the same number of words to the left ear (LE). In the second part, the subjects were asked to do the same thing, but this time with German words to be listened to and immediately translated into Italian. The 3rd-year students generally made significantly more errors than the 4th-year students, both in L1 and in L2, and in particular when listening to the words with their left ear, as opposed to the right. No significant difference between ears or languages was shown by the 4th-year students. Moreover, no significant difference was found between the two groups in tasks requiring verbal long-term memory, i.e. repetition of lists of words with 'target words' to remember. The longer exercise in simultaneous interpreting apparently improves the students' performances in shadowing, and probably modifies the organization of some aspects of hemispheric specialization for L1 and L2.