Interactions between speaker’s speech rate, orality and emotional involvement, and perceptions of interpreting difficulty: a preliminary study

Abstract

High speech rate is regarded as a reliable indicator of input difficulty, and it is associated with read speeches. Input speech rate, measured in terms of words/syllables per minute, is used as a criterion measuring difficulty when selecting material for the assessment of interpreters. However, speech rate is a multifaceted perception phenomenon that hinges on concurrent prosodic features, which are concomitant to the various modes of speech presentation, their orality and speakers’ emotional involvement. This observational, corpus-based study of English inputs at the European Parliament analyses whether fast inputs are related to perceptions of more difficulty, and slower speeches to perceptions of less difficulty. The holistic perceptions of 11 experts tentatively show that speech rate, per se, does not impinge on perceptions of difficulty. Rather, speech rate should be measured as a cluster of concurrent prosodic features. The data could contribute to the debate about the criteria used when selecting interpreting material for assessment and certification.