Multimodal substitutes for interpreters’ professional utterances

Abstract

   The paper considers the phenomenon of substitution from the perspective of its application in studies of nonverbal spontaneous communication. The theoretical significance lies in the development of the methodology for collecting and processing material to enrich the multimodal corpus in the context of naturalness/artificiality categories. Definitions of the terms “professional speech” and “multimodal substitute” are given. Using the example of the professional activity of synchronous interpreters the author presents the results of testing the method for eco-cognitive modeling of natural communication. The article provides the thematic classification of professional utterances of synchronous interpreters recorded in the real translation events: question-suggestion, question-confirmation, question-explanation, imperative when changing roles, indication of error, misunderstanding, indignation, consent, hint. Each thematic section presents the most representative examples of professional utterances and their multimodal substitutes in the form of the complexes of paraverbal and nonverbal markers that replace verbal cues when addressing partners in a booth. The author finds out the belonging of the substitutes and frequency of their use by active and passive synchronizers. She also discusses proportional dependence of the use of prosodo-semantemes and kinemo-semantemes on the role performed in the translation process. The identified substitutes are intended for implementation into automatic synchronous translation systems, the development of emoticons for remote synchronous translation as well as for didactic purposes.