Emotion and interpreting: Does affective language impact interpreting quality?

Abstract

In recent decades, an increasing number of studies has focused on interpreting emotional language and its potential impact on interpreters’ well-being. Interpreters have been shown to respond to emotionally charged content (e.g., Korpal & Jasielska, 2019). However, little is known about the relationship between emotional content and interpreting quality. To fill this empirical gap, interpreting quality for neutral, negative and positive sentences was measured in both L2-to-L1 (English into Polish) and L1-to-L2 (Polish into English) interpreting. Two sets of pre-tested sentences, matched for length and readability index, from psychophysiological studies (Korpal, Jankowiak, & Kaczmarek, 2025; Korpal, Jankowiak, & Kaczmarek, 2026), were used for the present analysis. A propositional accuracy score and an error analysis (in line with Bartłomiejczyk, 2010), were applied to measure interpreting quality. The study results show that interpreting quality may be lower for affect-laden sentences, relative to neutral sentences, which can be mainly observed in a higher number of interpreting errors for affective content. Interpreting into L2 triggers more errors but tends not to impact propositional accuracy scores. Overall, the study contributes to interpreting studies by testing the relationship between affect-laden content and interpreting performance. Study outcomes can be applied in interpreter education by introducing more practice in interpreting potentially challenging affective language.