Abstract

Is structural difference in a language pair associated with difficulty in translating or interpreting complex sentences in that pair? This study aims to shed light on that question. Specifically, it seeks associations between typological differences in the branching direction of subordinate clauses and rates for three identified indicators of production difficulty in translation and interpretation of increasingly complex sentences. The unit of analysis used to measure rates for those indicators is the semantic proposition. The analysis involves translation and interpretation from English into five languages from different families: Russian, Hungarian, Turkish, Mandarin and Japanese. Three modes of language transfer are considered: legal translation, subtitle translation and simultaneous interpretation. The findings provide initial confirmation that greater structural difference in a language pair is associated with higher rates for indicators of difficulty in translating or interpreting increasingly complex sentences in that pair, with some major differences between the three modes considered.