New approaches to studying the cognitive impact of a CAI tool on Chinese interpreting trainees

High cognitive demands may impact (trainee) interpreters’ performance when interpreting simultaneously, and computer-assisted interpreting (CAI) tools like InterpretBank seek to improve their term-rendering accuracy and efficiency. Part of a PhD research project, this paper reports on term rendering accuracy of Chinese interpreting trainees using CAI tools in remote interpreting tasks, and other cognitive effects. We adopted a control pretest-posttest design over three cycles. After an initial data-collection round (baseline), participants were split into either Excel or CAI-tool-trained groups for two more rounds, each with two tasks: glossary compilation and interpreting. We found noticeable improvements in term accuracy in both groups, but especially with the CAI tool, and complex interactions of CAI tool use with cognitive effort. InterpretBank, the CAI tool tested, seems to enhance term precision, decrease response times, and to support multitasking in remote interpreting, thereby improving interpreting quality. Yet results also reveal the cognitive challenges of information searching when the source speech delivers high-density information.