How Does Student Interpreters’ Interpreting Performance Relate to Their Performance in Summarizing?

Summarizing used as an exercise in interpreting training mainly aims to promote interpreting efficiency. So far, however, how student interpreters’ interpreting performance relates to their performance in summarizing remains obscure, let alone how the relation may change during interpreting training. The current study thus takes on a longitudinal approach, investigating 62 student interpreters’ performance in a consecutive interpreting task from Language B/L2 to Language A/L1 and their performance in a post-interpreting summarizing task (in Language A) at two stages (the beginning and the end) of their first-year interpreting training. Quantitative analyses resulted in three major findings: (1) Student interpreters had better performance both in interpreting and in summarizing at the end of interpreting training than at the beginning; (2) Student interpreters’ performance in interpreting had a significant positive correlation with their performance in summarizing, with the correlation becoming stronger at the end of interpreting training than at the beginning; (3) Student interpreters’ performance in summarizing at the beginning of interpreting training significantly predicted their development in interpreting performance (both overall interpreting performance and performance in information accuracy and completeness). Pedagogical implications are discussed.