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4.2.2.4 Proper names 
The last linguistic item under investigation is proper names, with 15 occurrences in 
the source speeches and 85 in the trainees’ interpretations. These 15 proper 
names were rather challenging for interpreter trainees as the percentage of zero 
renditions is quite high (14.21%), as can be seen in Table 22. Hanaoka (2002) 
insists on the difficulty to retain the proper name in the short-term memory and 
then to recode it in the target language. This process often causes a cognitive load 
and leads to omissions, as it is the case here. Proper names such as Rembrandt 
(Item #82 – IN03) or Snow (Item #27 – IN02) were omitted by more than half the 
students. However, more than two-thirds of proper names were correctly 
translated (68.66%). Finally, Quini (1993) says that interpreters may risk 
mispronouncing the name if they do not know how the word is spelled beforehand 
or if they are unfamiliar to that proper name. This is what probably happened with 
the proper name Hugh Herr (Item #12 – IN04): 
(81) Hugh Herr > Frank Frank (STU04 – divergent rendition) 
(82) Hugh Herr > June Herr (STU06 – divergent rendition) 
There are some striking facts across students. If we take a closer look at close 
renditions, we can see that STU06 has the lowest percentage of correctly 
translated proper names (42.86%). In addition, STU06 also has the highest 
percentage of wrongly translated items (28.57%), which means that proper names 
are a major difficulty for that student. 

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Results and discussion 
 
page 81 
Table 22 – Renditions for proper names 
STU01 STU02 STU03 STU04 STU05 STU06 STU07 STU08 Total 
Close 11/15 
11/15 
8/11 
6/11 
7/10 
6/14 
5/8 
1/1 
68.66% 
Zero 3/15 
/ 
2/11 
1/11 
2/10 
3/14 
2/8 
/ 
14.21% 
Div. 
/ 
3/15 
/ 
3/11 
1/10 
4/14 
1/8 
/ 
12.29% 
Red. 1/15 
1/15 
1/11 
1/11 
/ 
1/14 
/ 
/ 
4.82%

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Results and discussion 
 
page 82