Cognitive and Neurolinguistic Aspects of Interpreting

Over the past decade, a large and growing body of literature has explored the cognitive and neural foundations of interpreting processes. The article explores the relevance of cognitive and neurolinguistic approaches to the process of both simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. The main objective is to reveal the interpreter’s status, his/her mental and linguistic operations as cognitive units in the approaches under review. Firstly, we discuss how both interpreting modes have been understood and defined by various researchers. Secondly, we present the overview of diverse research works on cognitive and neurolinguistic scientific approaches to interpretation, trying to understand and explain the operating of interpreters’ minds. Finally, we focus on the issues of bilingualism and its impact on language comprehension and its production. It has been revealed that interpreting contributes significantly to improving cognitive and neural functions of the brain. Interpreters have always been a key figure in facilitating and bridging communication across cultures and languages. They can input, retain, retrieve, and output data but are limited in processing capacity at any given time. Quite recently, scholars in both interpreting and neurolinguistics have attempted to provide insight into the organization of bilingual speakers’ minds. In interpreting and translation tasks, it has been complemented by research works into language control in a bilingual language mode, with both language systems being simultaneously activated. Taken together, the cognitive and neurolinguistic studies reviewed in the paper support strong recommendations to regard an interpreter as a conceptual mediator relying on both his/her decision-making and probability thinking mechanisms.

Morphological Theory and Neurolinguistics

This chapter describes neurolinguistic aspects of morphology, morphological theory, and especially morphological processing. It briefly mentions the main processing models in the literature and how they deal with morphological issues, i.e. full-listing models (all morphologically related words are listed separately in the lexicon and are processed individually), full-parsing or decompositional models (morphologically related words are not listed in the lexicon but are decomposed into their constituent morphemes, each of which is listed in the lexicon), and hybrid, so-called dual route, models (regular morphologically related words are decomposed, irregular words are listed). The chapter also summarizes some important findings from the literature that bear on neurolinguistic aspects of morphological processing, from both language comprehension and language production, taking into consideration neuropsychological patient studies as well as studies employing neuroimaging methods.

Translating with an Injured Brain: Neurolinguistic Aspects of Translation as Revealed by Bilinguals with Cerebral Lesions

Despite significant progress in the psycholinguistic study of translation, research on its neurological underpinnings has been limited and sparse. Translation scholars have recently taken an interest in relevant neuroscientific evidence, focusing on imaging studies. This paper addresses the issue by considering an equally important body of data: clinical evidence. Specifically, a hypothesis-driven analysis is offered of 21 cases of brain-lesioned bilinguals exhibiting translation disorders. Three neurofunctional and three neuroanatomical hypotheses are derived from the Revised Hierarchical Model and the Declarative/Procedural Model, respectively. Consistent with relevant predictions, the evidence suggests that there are neurofunctionally independent routes for translation, as opposed to monolingual speech production; backward, as opposed to forward, translation; and form-based, as opposed to conceptually mediated, translation. Available data further indicates that word and sentence translation are critically subserved by posterior brain areas implicated in declarative memory, and by frontobasal areas implicated in procedural memory, respectively. In addition, translation routes appear to be entirely left-lateralized.