IIITóm tắtAccent is recognized by interpreters as a major source of comprehension difficulty, butempirical studies to investigate its specific influences have been sporadic in theinterpreting discipline. Among the small number of researchers, Mazzetti (1999) pointed out phonemics (also known as “segmentals”) and prosody (also known as“suprasegmentals”) as two components underlying a given accent. In the TESLdiscipline, the distinction between these two components has been extensivelydiscussed. Anderson-Hsieh, Johnson, and Koehler (1992) conducted a systematiccomparison of native speakers’ ratings of non-native speech and found that the impactof prosody on comprehension was over that of phonemics or syllable structure. Thecurrent study seeks to examine this finding in the interpreting setting throughexperiment. Thirty-seven graduate-level interpreting majors participated in a proposed experiment. Instruments include: 1) four versions of the same source text recorded bythe same speaker, featuring “phonemic deviations + prosodic deviations,” “phonemicdeviations,” “prosodic deviations,” and “no deviations (as control version)” respectively;2) a questionnaire to be filled out by participants after the experiment. All participantswere firstly divided randomly into four groups. After a pre-experiment briefing, eachgroup of participants rendered a specific version of the source text and then filled outthe questionnaire after listening to their own renditions. Renditions were rated for accuracy by two freelance interpreters. Statistic analysis was conducted based on themean accuracy scores to find out the significance of phonemics and of prosody inaffecting rendition accuracy, while participants’ responses to the questionnaire wereanalyzed qualitatively. Results of the quantitative analysis indicated that whereas bothnon-native phonemics and non-native prosody had significant deteriorating impact on ivrendition accuracy, the latter had a stronger effect. It was found in the qualitativeanalysis that among the phonemic deviations incorporated in the degraded materials,only North American English post-vowel /r/ was identified as comprehension problemtrigger. As for prosodic deviations, both non-native intonation and rhythm were found to undermine comprehension, but misplaced lexical stresses were not. Finding of thestudy may assist trainers, trainees, and professionals by contributing to their knowledgeof accent. However, future studies would be necessary to find out more about the highlycomplex issue of source language accent.Key words: accent, non-native English, listening comprehension, simultaneousinterpreting, phonemics, segmentals, prosody, suprasegmental
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