This study was designed to analyze specifically the impact of language direction on professional Chinese /English interpreters'performance and strategy use through their experience of simultaneous interpreting in ...This study was designed to analyze specifically the impact of language direction on professional Chinese /English interpreters'performance and strategy use through their experience of simultaneous interpreting in different language directions. Simultaneous interpreting ( SI) is a kind of translation that constituted by orally translating the message heard in one language into another language immediately and continuously,and at the meanwhile the message will not stop being produced. The unique characteristics of simultaneous interpretation and the various factors that will have great impact on the procession and performance of Chinese / English SI were taken into discussion. It should be noted that unlike in daily communication situations,comprehension and production are often overlapping in simultaneous interpreting. Concurrent comprehension of the source language and production of the target language is perhaps the most unique characteristic of the SI task. Drawn from the effort model proposed by Gile,simultaneous interpreting is accomplished by the sharing of four major efforts: listening and analyzing,producion,memory,and coordination. In other words,while a comprehension problem will have a negative effect on production,a production problem also has conse-quences for comprehension. In this study I illustrate arguments for interpreting of L1 to L2 and L2 to L1 language respectively,described the studies about interpreters' strategy use and the relationship between language direction and SI strategy use. Interpreters' performance of simultaneous interpreting in different directions was determined by a few factors,including the context,personal factors,and interpreting norms. Studies showed that professional interpreters who must interpret regularly and simultaneously in both directions may develop strategic approaches to meet the different demands of A-to-B and B-to-A interpreting. Strategy use can be defined in this study as any goal-oriented,potentially conscious employment of tactics designed to overcome the processing problems interpreters encountered during simultaneous interpreting. This definition involves interpreters'responses to any problems occurring during the stages of comprehension,translation,or production. As demonstrated in this study,strategies were applied throughout the interpreting as a general approach to the interpreting task,namely anticipating,restructuring,generalizing,visualizing and among others. The difference in interpreters' performances seems not only to be a result of the disparity between their A and B language proficiency,but also a result of their awareness of their language abilities,the tactics available to them and other norms they apply to their performance,as well as the speech structures of their working languages. This study not only sheds lights on the differences of performance and strategy use among interpreters working with different language directions,but can also contribute to the design of more effective interpreting teaching programs.展开更多
文摘This study was designed to analyze specifically the impact of language direction on professional Chinese /English interpreters'performance and strategy use through their experience of simultaneous interpreting in different language directions. Simultaneous interpreting ( SI) is a kind of translation that constituted by orally translating the message heard in one language into another language immediately and continuously,and at the meanwhile the message will not stop being produced. The unique characteristics of simultaneous interpretation and the various factors that will have great impact on the procession and performance of Chinese / English SI were taken into discussion. It should be noted that unlike in daily communication situations,comprehension and production are often overlapping in simultaneous interpreting. Concurrent comprehension of the source language and production of the target language is perhaps the most unique characteristic of the SI task. Drawn from the effort model proposed by Gile,simultaneous interpreting is accomplished by the sharing of four major efforts: listening and analyzing,producion,memory,and coordination. In other words,while a comprehension problem will have a negative effect on production,a production problem also has conse-quences for comprehension. In this study I illustrate arguments for interpreting of L1 to L2 and L2 to L1 language respectively,described the studies about interpreters' strategy use and the relationship between language direction and SI strategy use. Interpreters' performance of simultaneous interpreting in different directions was determined by a few factors,including the context,personal factors,and interpreting norms. Studies showed that professional interpreters who must interpret regularly and simultaneously in both directions may develop strategic approaches to meet the different demands of A-to-B and B-to-A interpreting. Strategy use can be defined in this study as any goal-oriented,potentially conscious employment of tactics designed to overcome the processing problems interpreters encountered during simultaneous interpreting. This definition involves interpreters'responses to any problems occurring during the stages of comprehension,translation,or production. As demonstrated in this study,strategies were applied throughout the interpreting as a general approach to the interpreting task,namely anticipating,restructuring,generalizing,visualizing and among others. The difference in interpreters' performances seems not only to be a result of the disparity between their A and B language proficiency,but also a result of their awareness of their language abilities,the tactics available to them and other norms they apply to their performance,as well as the speech structures of their working languages. This study not only sheds lights on the differences of performance and strategy use among interpreters working with different language directions,but can also contribute to the design of more effective interpreting teaching programs.
