Jennifer Wehrmeyer | North-West University (original) (raw)

Papers by Jennifer Wehrmeyer

Interpreting and Society, Aug 31, 2023

Studies in corpus linguistics, Mar 15, 2023

Studies in corpus linguistics, Mar 15, 2023

Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting

In this article, errors and repairs in a corpus of English news broadcasts interpreted simultaneo... more In this article, errors and repairs in a corpus of English news broadcasts interpreted simultaneously into South African Sign Language are explored from a psycholinguistic perspective according to Levelt’s (1989) cognitive levels (comprehension, conceptualisation, formulation, morphological encoding and articulation). Breaking away from traditional perspectives, the study offers a novel approach to empirical research into sign(ed) language interpreting, with applications relevant to spoken-language interpreting. Most slips involved lemma selection, followed by slips in articulation and conceptualisation (syntactic planning). Significantly fewer errors in comprehension compared to production indicate that professional interpreters have excellent listening skills, although reconceptualising is sometimes problematic. The interpreters mainly repaired incorrect lemma selection and reception errors that resulted in mistranslations, suggesting the existence of a true/false error-detection ...

: Because of the complexity in transcribing and annotating a visual language, there exists a pauc... more : Because of the complexity in transcribing and annotating a visual language, there exists a paucity of corpus-based/driven sign language interpreting research. In this paper, a transcription and annotation system for signed language corpora is outlined. The system was designed to analyse a corpus of interpretations into South African Sign Language, specifically to analyse corpora of signed interpretations using text-based concordance software, such as Wordsmith Tools or Antconc. Transcription of the manual signs is undertaken using lemmatized ID glosses, allowing for semantic comparison between the source message and its interpretation. The annotation system is designed to analyze five main groups of factors, namely linguistic features of the interpreter’s sign language produced, characteristics pertaining to the quality of production of a face-to-face message, characteristics of the type of language used by the interpreter (i.e. parole ) and features of the interpreting process, b...

Because of its significant role in the education and moral development of children, children’s li... more Because of its significant role in the education and moral development of children, children’s literature often has ethical, nationalistic, cultural and didactic functions. Animal characteristics are often specific to a particular culture and therefore are imbued with certain behavioural characteristics peculiar to that national culture. They also lend themselves to significant implicit authorial comment. This paper examines how behavioural characteristics of the animal characters in the popular stories of Winnie the Pooh and Puss in Boots and their translations are condoned, condemned or changed in terms of implicit national or cultural values. The study takes into account the social milieu and literary trends of the period in which these tales entered the subsystem of children’s literature. It shows that authors use implicit as well as explicit means to comment on both positive and negative characteristics, and even to approve negative characteristics. Successful translators were ...

Journal of Emergencies, Trauma, and Shock, 2013

A 42-year-old woman, presented to our emergency room with chief complaints of acute onset of dysp... more A 42-year-old woman, presented to our emergency room with chief complaints of acute onset of dyspnea, left-sided chest pain, and respiratory distress. On arrival, she had blood pressure of 90/50 mm Hg, respiratory rate of 40/min, and oxygen saturation of 95% breathing on 10 L oxygen. She was in significant respiratory distress. On examination, she was found to have diminished breath sounds on the left side of chest. Her chest radiograph showed left massive pleural effusion causing contralateral shift of mediastinum. Diagnostic pleural aspiration was done; results were consistent with hemothorax. Her multidetector computed tomography chest showed features of left-sided hemothorax (high attenuation) along with a 2 cmenhancing lobulated opacity in the left lingular lobe, suggestive of pulmonary arteriovenous malformation (PAVM). She was successfully treated with surgical resection of PAVM.

Journal of Eye Movement Research, 2014

In this study, the viewing habits of deaf and hearing adults are investigated using eye tracking ... more In this study, the viewing habits of deaf and hearing adults are investigated using eye tracking while they watched interpreted news broadcasts. The study shows that deaf viewers primarily focus on the interpreter and secondarily access picture material, but make very little use of subtitles or lip-reading. In contrast, hearing viewers prioritise pictorial content but also spend significant proportions of time examining subtitles, lip-reading and even watching the interpreter. Viewing patterns are dependent on pictorial information density rather than comprehension. The study confirms the precedence of the interpreter as primary source for deaf viewers, but also questions the efficiency of subtitling as an alternative information source for deaf viewers if an interpreter is present.

This research aimed to determine whether the rejection by Russian Orthodox Church leaders of rece... more This research aimed to determine whether the rejection by Russian Orthodox Church leaders of recent translations of the Bible into Russian could be ascribed to a conflict of Russian and Western translation norms. Using Lefevere's (1992) notion of systems, the study compared the norms of Russian Bible translations, Western Bible translation and Russian literary translation, as well as those of a segment of the target audience, to determine the extent of their compatibility with each other and with the translations in question. The results showed that the recent translations did reflect the norms of Western Bible translation, but that these were not atypical of norms for previous Russian and Slavonic translations, nor for the norms of Russian literary translation. However, the results also showed that in practice target audience norms mirrored those of the Russian Orthodox Church, resulting in a similar rejection of the newer translations. KEY TERMS: Bible translation; Translation...

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2020

This study offers a unique contribution through the construction of an annotated text-based sign ... more This study offers a unique contribution through the construction of an annotated text-based sign language interpreting corpus and its application in analyzing shifts (defined as deviations from source semantic content), which in turn enables researchers to identify and categorize interpreter strategies and norms. The corpus comprises ten half-hour news broadcasts in English and their simultaneously signed interpretations into South African Sign Language. The analysis of shifts shows that interpreters mainly strive to produce a fluent output, combatting cognitive overload through condensation, use of synonyms and omission. However, they also cater for target language norms through attention to discourse features and syntactic reformulation and by addressing perceived target audience knowledge gaps through explanations. Time constraints limit full deverbalization and repair strategies, and Deaf communicative norms occasionally conflict with interpreting norms. Although most shifts cou...

Translation and Interpreting Studies

Until now, investigations of strategies used by signed language interpreters in the simultaneous ... more Until now, investigations of strategies used by signed language interpreters in the simultaneous mode have been sporadic and restricted to analyses of short transcripts. This article presents the first corpus-driven exploration of interpreter additions in news broadcasts simultaneously interpreted into South African Sign Language. Using grounded theory, it explores the types of additions made, the reasons for their production, and their downstream consequences. The results show that interpreters mainly add discourse markers, linguistic extrapolations such as filling in ellipsis and obvious co-text, repetitions, contextual information, and to a lesser extent, second translations, pragmatic markers, and new information. However, the cost is high as additions often result in concomitant omissions and occasional incoherence. From the results, a model is extrapolated to explain additions in terms of the interpreter’s perceived roles and status in the Deaf community.

Sign Language and Linguistics

Concerted attention in sign language linguistics has focused on finding ways to document signs. U... more Concerted attention in sign language linguistics has focused on finding ways to document signs. Until now, most notation systems rely on a complex plethora of symbols and are under-specific, to the extent that visual images are still the most widely accepted way of recording primary data. This paper presents a novel phonetic notation of handshape in a step towards deriving an International Phonetic Alphabet for sign languages, based on digit shape (configuration) and position in terms of reference coordinates, aiming at both readability and precision. It is sufficiently hybrid to allow for both accurate measurements and estimates of digit positions, thereby affording a way of representing handshapes suitable for lexicography, studying phonetic variation and avatar programming. Originally tailored to describe handshapes in South African Sign Language, it can also notate gestures. After discussing transcription methods and hand physiology, digit configurations are defined in terms of ...

Hermēneus. Revista de Traducción e Interpretación, 2015

Because of the complexity in transcribing and annotating a visual language, there exists a paucit... more Because of the complexity in transcribing and annotating a visual language, there exists a paucity of corpus-based/driven sign language interpreting research. In this paper, a transcription and annotation system for signed language corpora is outlined. The system was designed to analyse a corpus of interpretations into South African Sign Language, specifically to analyse corpora of signed interpretations using text-based concordance software, such as Wordsmith Tools or Antconc. Transcription of the manual signs is undertaken using lemmatized ID glosses, allowing for semantic comparison between the source message and its interpretation. The annotation system is designed to analyze five main groups of factors, namely linguistic features of the interpreter’s sign language produced, characteristics pertaining to the quality of production of a face-to-face message, characteristics of the type of language used by the interpreter (i.e. parole) and features of the interpreting process, both...

Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting

Because of the visual nature of signed language, the compilation of a signed language interpretin... more Because of the visual nature of signed language, the compilation of a signed language interpreting corpus along the lines of spoken-language interpreting corpora has been viewed as extremely challenging, if not impossible. This study offers a unique contribution in the construction of a lemmatized, annotated text-based corpus of signed language media interpretations, which allows analysis of interesting features using readily-available concordance software. In this article, characteristics of original (not interpreted) signed language corpora are explored in terms of metadata conventions, transcription and annotation, in order to provide a framework for an interpreting corpus. Within this framework, the decisions and steps taken in the construction of the interpreting corpus are discussed and explained.

Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting

This article reviews Making way in corpus-based interpreting studies 978-981-10-6198-1978-981-10-... more This article reviews Making way in corpus-based interpreting studies 978-981-10-6198-1978-981-10-6199-8

Interpreting, 2015

This questionnaire-based study evaluates interpretations of TV news broadcasts into South African... more This questionnaire-based study evaluates interpretations of TV news broadcasts into South African Sign Language from the perspective of 360 adult Deaf respondents, who identify factors hindering comprehension. Methodologically, findings are based on both open-ended and closed questions. The sources of difficulty identified, together with viewer assessments of current interpreting services and viewer expectancy norms, are explored in relation to the profile of the Deaf target audience represented by the study sample. Despite potentially low literacy levels, the study found a stronger stated preference for subtitles than for signed interpretation. The limited size of the signed language screen inset and the type of signed language used by the interpreters were found to be the main factors limiting comprehension; to a lesser extent, problems can also be related to various features of the interpreters’ performance (facial expression, mouthing, sign articulation and general language prof...

Interpreting and Society, Aug 31, 2023

Studies in corpus linguistics, Mar 15, 2023

Studies in corpus linguistics, Mar 15, 2023

Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting

In this article, errors and repairs in a corpus of English news broadcasts interpreted simultaneo... more In this article, errors and repairs in a corpus of English news broadcasts interpreted simultaneously into South African Sign Language are explored from a psycholinguistic perspective according to Levelt’s (1989) cognitive levels (comprehension, conceptualisation, formulation, morphological encoding and articulation). Breaking away from traditional perspectives, the study offers a novel approach to empirical research into sign(ed) language interpreting, with applications relevant to spoken-language interpreting. Most slips involved lemma selection, followed by slips in articulation and conceptualisation (syntactic planning). Significantly fewer errors in comprehension compared to production indicate that professional interpreters have excellent listening skills, although reconceptualising is sometimes problematic. The interpreters mainly repaired incorrect lemma selection and reception errors that resulted in mistranslations, suggesting the existence of a true/false error-detection ...

: Because of the complexity in transcribing and annotating a visual language, there exists a pauc... more : Because of the complexity in transcribing and annotating a visual language, there exists a paucity of corpus-based/driven sign language interpreting research. In this paper, a transcription and annotation system for signed language corpora is outlined. The system was designed to analyse a corpus of interpretations into South African Sign Language, specifically to analyse corpora of signed interpretations using text-based concordance software, such as Wordsmith Tools or Antconc. Transcription of the manual signs is undertaken using lemmatized ID glosses, allowing for semantic comparison between the source message and its interpretation. The annotation system is designed to analyze five main groups of factors, namely linguistic features of the interpreter’s sign language produced, characteristics pertaining to the quality of production of a face-to-face message, characteristics of the type of language used by the interpreter (i.e. parole ) and features of the interpreting process, b...

Because of its significant role in the education and moral development of children, children’s li... more Because of its significant role in the education and moral development of children, children’s literature often has ethical, nationalistic, cultural and didactic functions. Animal characteristics are often specific to a particular culture and therefore are imbued with certain behavioural characteristics peculiar to that national culture. They also lend themselves to significant implicit authorial comment. This paper examines how behavioural characteristics of the animal characters in the popular stories of Winnie the Pooh and Puss in Boots and their translations are condoned, condemned or changed in terms of implicit national or cultural values. The study takes into account the social milieu and literary trends of the period in which these tales entered the subsystem of children’s literature. It shows that authors use implicit as well as explicit means to comment on both positive and negative characteristics, and even to approve negative characteristics. Successful translators were ...

Journal of Emergencies, Trauma, and Shock, 2013

A 42-year-old woman, presented to our emergency room with chief complaints of acute onset of dysp... more A 42-year-old woman, presented to our emergency room with chief complaints of acute onset of dyspnea, left-sided chest pain, and respiratory distress. On arrival, she had blood pressure of 90/50 mm Hg, respiratory rate of 40/min, and oxygen saturation of 95% breathing on 10 L oxygen. She was in significant respiratory distress. On examination, she was found to have diminished breath sounds on the left side of chest. Her chest radiograph showed left massive pleural effusion causing contralateral shift of mediastinum. Diagnostic pleural aspiration was done; results were consistent with hemothorax. Her multidetector computed tomography chest showed features of left-sided hemothorax (high attenuation) along with a 2 cmenhancing lobulated opacity in the left lingular lobe, suggestive of pulmonary arteriovenous malformation (PAVM). She was successfully treated with surgical resection of PAVM.

Journal of Eye Movement Research, 2014

In this study, the viewing habits of deaf and hearing adults are investigated using eye tracking ... more In this study, the viewing habits of deaf and hearing adults are investigated using eye tracking while they watched interpreted news broadcasts. The study shows that deaf viewers primarily focus on the interpreter and secondarily access picture material, but make very little use of subtitles or lip-reading. In contrast, hearing viewers prioritise pictorial content but also spend significant proportions of time examining subtitles, lip-reading and even watching the interpreter. Viewing patterns are dependent on pictorial information density rather than comprehension. The study confirms the precedence of the interpreter as primary source for deaf viewers, but also questions the efficiency of subtitling as an alternative information source for deaf viewers if an interpreter is present.

This research aimed to determine whether the rejection by Russian Orthodox Church leaders of rece... more This research aimed to determine whether the rejection by Russian Orthodox Church leaders of recent translations of the Bible into Russian could be ascribed to a conflict of Russian and Western translation norms. Using Lefevere's (1992) notion of systems, the study compared the norms of Russian Bible translations, Western Bible translation and Russian literary translation, as well as those of a segment of the target audience, to determine the extent of their compatibility with each other and with the translations in question. The results showed that the recent translations did reflect the norms of Western Bible translation, but that these were not atypical of norms for previous Russian and Slavonic translations, nor for the norms of Russian literary translation. However, the results also showed that in practice target audience norms mirrored those of the Russian Orthodox Church, resulting in a similar rejection of the newer translations. KEY TERMS: Bible translation; Translation...

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2020

This study offers a unique contribution through the construction of an annotated text-based sign ... more This study offers a unique contribution through the construction of an annotated text-based sign language interpreting corpus and its application in analyzing shifts (defined as deviations from source semantic content), which in turn enables researchers to identify and categorize interpreter strategies and norms. The corpus comprises ten half-hour news broadcasts in English and their simultaneously signed interpretations into South African Sign Language. The analysis of shifts shows that interpreters mainly strive to produce a fluent output, combatting cognitive overload through condensation, use of synonyms and omission. However, they also cater for target language norms through attention to discourse features and syntactic reformulation and by addressing perceived target audience knowledge gaps through explanations. Time constraints limit full deverbalization and repair strategies, and Deaf communicative norms occasionally conflict with interpreting norms. Although most shifts cou...

Translation and Interpreting Studies

Until now, investigations of strategies used by signed language interpreters in the simultaneous ... more Until now, investigations of strategies used by signed language interpreters in the simultaneous mode have been sporadic and restricted to analyses of short transcripts. This article presents the first corpus-driven exploration of interpreter additions in news broadcasts simultaneously interpreted into South African Sign Language. Using grounded theory, it explores the types of additions made, the reasons for their production, and their downstream consequences. The results show that interpreters mainly add discourse markers, linguistic extrapolations such as filling in ellipsis and obvious co-text, repetitions, contextual information, and to a lesser extent, second translations, pragmatic markers, and new information. However, the cost is high as additions often result in concomitant omissions and occasional incoherence. From the results, a model is extrapolated to explain additions in terms of the interpreter’s perceived roles and status in the Deaf community.

Sign Language and Linguistics

Concerted attention in sign language linguistics has focused on finding ways to document signs. U... more Concerted attention in sign language linguistics has focused on finding ways to document signs. Until now, most notation systems rely on a complex plethora of symbols and are under-specific, to the extent that visual images are still the most widely accepted way of recording primary data. This paper presents a novel phonetic notation of handshape in a step towards deriving an International Phonetic Alphabet for sign languages, based on digit shape (configuration) and position in terms of reference coordinates, aiming at both readability and precision. It is sufficiently hybrid to allow for both accurate measurements and estimates of digit positions, thereby affording a way of representing handshapes suitable for lexicography, studying phonetic variation and avatar programming. Originally tailored to describe handshapes in South African Sign Language, it can also notate gestures. After discussing transcription methods and hand physiology, digit configurations are defined in terms of ...

Hermēneus. Revista de Traducción e Interpretación, 2015

Because of the complexity in transcribing and annotating a visual language, there exists a paucit... more Because of the complexity in transcribing and annotating a visual language, there exists a paucity of corpus-based/driven sign language interpreting research. In this paper, a transcription and annotation system for signed language corpora is outlined. The system was designed to analyse a corpus of interpretations into South African Sign Language, specifically to analyse corpora of signed interpretations using text-based concordance software, such as Wordsmith Tools or Antconc. Transcription of the manual signs is undertaken using lemmatized ID glosses, allowing for semantic comparison between the source message and its interpretation. The annotation system is designed to analyze five main groups of factors, namely linguistic features of the interpreter’s sign language produced, characteristics pertaining to the quality of production of a face-to-face message, characteristics of the type of language used by the interpreter (i.e. parole) and features of the interpreting process, both...

Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting

Because of the visual nature of signed language, the compilation of a signed language interpretin... more Because of the visual nature of signed language, the compilation of a signed language interpreting corpus along the lines of spoken-language interpreting corpora has been viewed as extremely challenging, if not impossible. This study offers a unique contribution in the construction of a lemmatized, annotated text-based corpus of signed language media interpretations, which allows analysis of interesting features using readily-available concordance software. In this article, characteristics of original (not interpreted) signed language corpora are explored in terms of metadata conventions, transcription and annotation, in order to provide a framework for an interpreting corpus. Within this framework, the decisions and steps taken in the construction of the interpreting corpus are discussed and explained.

Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting

This article reviews Making way in corpus-based interpreting studies 978-981-10-6198-1978-981-10-... more This article reviews Making way in corpus-based interpreting studies 978-981-10-6198-1978-981-10-6199-8

Interpreting, 2015

This questionnaire-based study evaluates interpretations of TV news broadcasts into South African... more This questionnaire-based study evaluates interpretations of TV news broadcasts into South African Sign Language from the perspective of 360 adult Deaf respondents, who identify factors hindering comprehension. Methodologically, findings are based on both open-ended and closed questions. The sources of difficulty identified, together with viewer assessments of current interpreting services and viewer expectancy norms, are explored in relation to the profile of the Deaf target audience represented by the study sample. Despite potentially low literacy levels, the study found a stronger stated preference for subtitles than for signed interpretation. The limited size of the signed language screen inset and the type of signed language used by the interpreters were found to be the main factors limiting comprehension; to a lesser extent, problems can also be related to various features of the interpreters’ performance (facial expression, mouthing, sign articulation and general language prof...