Comparative Study Of Interpretation Certification Tests In China Based On Communicative Language Testing Theory

Over the past three decades of China's reform and opening up, Interpreting Certification Tests have gained remarkable growth together with the increase of foreign trade and cultural exchanges, as well as the boom of the demand for qualified interpreters. At present, China's interpretation market has been developed into a large scale, yet not standardized market bounded with interpreters of different levels. Moreover, domestic research on interpreting testing is still in its inception stage, all of which has attributed to an unbalanced development of interpreting market. To this end, it is the topic of this paper to analyse mainstream certification tests in China and tentatively explore more scientific interpreting testing model.Interpreting testing, by its nature, is communicative language testing, therefore it should abide by the principles of communicative language testing theory. This paper systematically compares and analyses three interpreting certification tests in China based on Lyle F. Bachman's Communicative Language Testing (CLT) theory, and probes into proposals and suggestions on the optimization of interpreting tests.Chapter one and chapter two respectively serves as the introduction and literature review of CLT. The characteristics of CLT was summarized to be Authentic, Functional, Interactive, Situational, and Comprehensive. According to Bachman and Palmer, the evaluation principle of CLT can be divided into "Consistency", and "Usefulness", which can be further divided into Reliability, Construct Validity, Authenticity, Interactiveness, Impact, and Practicality.Chapter three discusses interpreting tests under the guidance of CLT from the following perspectives:the very nature of interpreting, interpreting mode, as well as interpreting testing mode.Chapter four gives a brief introduction to three interpreting certification tests in China, based on which the author makes an comparative study first on "Consistency" of the test, and then on "Usefulness" in terms of situational authenticity and communicative authenticity, and validity, reliability, and practicality.Based on the understanding of former chapters, chapter five naturally comes to tentative suggestions of optimizing the testing authenticity and evaluation reliability. It is proposed that testing context and voice record material should be in more consistency with the actual language using environment; and interpreting testing should be divided to specific professional areas to promote interpreting professionalism; testers would take part in interpreting tasks beforehand so as to reduce evaluation subjectiveness.