Abstract
This paper describes a study conducted as part of the diploma thesis The Impact of Spanish Regional Varieties on the Quality of Simultaneous Interpreting into Czech (2019). The aim of the study was to find whether interpreters make more omissions, additions, semantic errors, and delivery errors when interpreting from Latin American varieties of Spanish than when interpreting from standard European Spanish, as defined by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE).
Another goal was to find whether the expectations of different user groups regarding the quality of simultaneous interpreting differ or not. The theoretical part of this article presents the findings and conclusions of studies published by authors who address the quality of simultaneous interpreting.
The research portion of this article describes an experiment conducted at the Institute of Translation Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University: five master's degree students of conference interpreting (Czech A, Spanish C) were asked to simultaneously interpret a speech pronounced by four native speakers - from Argentina, Peru, Mexico and northern Spain. The interpreted versions of the speech were evaluated based on an established quality assessment model.
To get another source of data, the interpreters filled out a questionnaire, which included questions about their experience with Spanish regional varieties, as well as a subjective evaluation of the difficulty of the speech, the speakers' accent, and their own interpreting. Joining the study were ten more participants - five general users and five student-users (3rd year undergraduate students of Spanish for Intercultural Communication), who were asked to assess the renditions in Czech.
The last chapter of the article presents the results of the experiment, as well as the results of the questionnaire regarding quality assessment.