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4.2.1 Introduction 
In this section, I address the following research question: 
Which source linguistic items are the most challenging for interpreter 
trainees working from English into French? In tackling this question, I also 
aim to show how it is possible to determine that a specific item is 
challenging or difficult for an interpreter. 
Operationalizing interpreting quality as a low number of errors (i.e. divergent 
renditions), I would like to address a second research question: 
Does the quality of the trainees’ interpretations improve across time? How 
can we measure that improvement? Do all trainees improve across time?
4.2.2 Quantitative analysis 
In order to answer my first research question, it is important to analyse the 
percentage of close and divergent renditions. A close rendition means that the 
content of the trainees’ output closely corresponds to what is found in the original. 
A divergent rendition, by contrast, is a case of interpreting error because the 
output is not equal to the input (Wadensjö, 1998: 106-108). However, it would also 
be interesting to examine the other types of rendition as they may shed light on 
interpreting strategies typical of given items (e.g. a high percentage of zero 

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Results and discussion 
 
page 70 
renditions). The present analysis only focuses on the four most frequent linguistic 
items in the source speeches, i.e. complex noun phrases, with 243 occurrences, 
single-word terms, numbers and proper nouns, occurring 27, 27 and 15 times 
respectively. The number of occurrences in the TT is given in Table 15. As can be 
seen, the study is based on the analysis of 1,536 TT occurrences in total.
Table 15 – Occurrences of the 4 most frequent linguistic items in LOCOSSI