Abstract

This paper presents a detailed report of the users' quality expectations and the extent to which the expectations vary based on the type of conferences in Malaysian conference interpreting setting using a questionnaire-based survey study. Five conferences were selected for the purpose of data collection and 256 users rated eleven quality criteria of sense-consistency with the original message, logical cohesion, native accent, lively intonation, style, synchronicity, correct terminology, correct grammar, fluency of delivery, completeness of message, and pleasant voice on a four-point ordinal scale adapted from Zwischenberger and Pöchhacker (2010). Users also answered five open-ended questions adopted from Moser (1995). The findings from the scale analysis indicated that users' expectations of the quality vary in different conferences. The users of the "Translation" conference rated most of the quality criteria higher than the users of the other conferences and had higher expectations. Their rating was followed by the attributions of users in "Science", "Technology", "Tourism", and "Management" conferences respectively, in terms of quality expectations. Analysis of open-ended questions revealed that while the Translation conference users attached high importance to the linguistic criteria with a focus on interpreter's role and contribution, the users at other conferences considered extra-linguistic aspects in conference interpreting as important.