As simultaneous interpretation plays a pivotal role in international conferences, it is increasingly used on television for live coverage as well. Interpreters for live television interpretation face much challenging situation than ordinary international conference as they can not meet speakers in advance and more rapid delivery is required. The live coverage of Academy Award ceremonies was particularly unique in that the ceremonies were an entertainment rather than a routine conference.This study examined the temporal aspects of the simultaneous interpretation from English into Korean at the Academy Award ceremonies of 1997, 1998 and 1999 through computer assisted analysis of the original English speech and interpreted Korean. Statistical analysis of the three years' data showed no significant differences in the number of syllables, speech proportion(SP) and wpm of the speakers and interpreters. The same data, however, proved to be statistically different from other types of simultaneous interpretations such as lectures or news reports. When compared to original speech, the interpreted Korean version was higher in all the factors mentioned above except SP. As expected, the dubbed Korean version showed significantly greater wpm, SP and number of syllables than interpretation. Recommendation for the future live coverage of this ceremony should be a bilingual mode where viewers can chose from the English original or Korean simultaneous interpretation.
