A Comparative Study of Bilingual and Trilingual Students’ Working Memory Capacity

The notion of working memory capacity of interpreters, and the ways that it can be expanded have been important areas of research in translation studies. the present study aimed at comparing the working memory capacity of the trilingual and bilingual students of translation studies. the participants included twelve upper intermediate students of translation studies consisting of six trilingual ones (speaking turkish as the first language, persian as the second language, and english as the third language) in daneshvaran university of tabriz and six bilingual ones (speaking persian as the first language and english as the second language) at university of birjand. first, the participants were asked to answer the oxford placement test so we can be sure that all of them are at the same level of english language proficiency. in order to compare the working memory capacity of trilingual and bilingual students, we gave them digit span test individually, and measured the total digit span score, two error maximal length (te_ml) for backward and forward digit span. the obtained data were analyzed using independent sample t-test. the results showed no significant differences between the working memory capacity of trilingual and bilingual students of translation studies. the findings were discussed and the recommendations for theory and practice were made.