Rapidly Piloting Real-time Linguistic Assistance for Simultaneous Interpreters with Untrained Bilingual Surrogates

Alvin Grissom II, Jo Shoemaker, Benjamin Goldman, Ruikang Shi, Craig Stewart, C. Anton Rytting, Leah Findlater, Jordan L. Boyd-Graber

Abstract: Simultaneous interpretation is a cognitively taxing task, and even seasoned professionals benefit from real-time assistance. However, both recruiting professional interpreters and evaluating new assistance techniques are difficult. We present a novel, realistic simultaneous interpretation task that mimics the cognitive load of interpretation with crowdworker surrogates. Our task tests different real-time assistance methods in a Wizard-of-Oz experiment with a large pool of proxy users and compares against professional interpreters. Both professional and proxy participants respond similarly to changes in interpreting conditions, including improvement with two assistance interventions—translation of specific terms and of numbers—compared to a no-assistance control.