Effects of gesture production on rendition fluency in dialogue interpreting

Abstract

Corpus-based and experimental studies show that interpreters use spontaneous hand gestures across interpreting modes (

; ; ). As gesture rates increase in disfluent renditions, gestures are considered to support cognition by alleviating processing difficulties ( ; ). Nevertheless, interpreter trainees are often discouraged from vivid gestures, which may be perceived as signs of difficulty with the source text ( ; ). Previous findings from the CoGCIn project (2024) suggested that inhibiting gestures increased cognitive load, as measured by reaction times, rendition durations, and the NASA Task Load Index. Building on these results, the present study examines how limiting gesture production affects fluency in dialogue interpreting.

In a simulated task, 57 trainee interpreters worked in English–Spanish ( N  = 13), English–French ( N  = 10), and English–Polish ( N  = 34) language pairs. Video stimuli depicting a doctor–patient interaction were used to test two conditions: Free Gesture and Restricted Gesture, in which participants were instructed to keep their hands still. Speech and gesture production were annotated in ELAN, yielding measures such as filled and silent pauses (

) and words per minute.

The findings indicate that restricting spontaneous gestures reduces fluency in dialogue interpreting by novice interpreters, as evidenced by increased filled and silent pauses. Gesture inhibition appears to disrupt embodied cognition mechanisms supporting efficient information recall and packaging, thereby affecting flow, indicating that discouraging gestures in interpreter training may have negative consequences on performance.