Cognitive Context-Interpreting Relationship And Its Implications For Interpreting Preparation

Interpreting is one of the oldest professions of human civilization.The birth of interpreting is a result of a strong need for communication among people speaking different languages.With China's rising international profile,cross-cultural communication has become more and more necessary and important,therefore, interpreting studies have gained more and more attention.This paper aims to study the following questions:First,differences between traditional studies of context and cognitive context.It has long been known that interpreting,as a communicative activity,only takes place in special context. Traditional context studies emphasize on the impact of external environment of an interpreter by seeing only the restrictive and explanatory functions of context,and ignoring the subjective initiative of interpreter in communication.With the rapid development of cognitive psychology in recent decades,quite a few scholars are employing the concept of cognitive context into interpreting studies.Cognitive context,or "dynamic context",emphasizes on the cognitive activity inside human brain,and consider the internal environment as important as the external environment.Second,innate relationship between cognitive context and interpreting. According to the Relevance Theory,context represents a series of assumptions exist in the minds of both parties of communication.The comprehension of an utterance is produced dynamically,it's a choice of different assumptions made by the participant of a communication activity.From source text to target text,three objectives are affected by cognitive context:the speaker of source text,the interpreter and the audience.By introducing the Relevance Theory and the Effort Model put forward by Daniel Gile,this paper intends to discuss the innate relationship between cognitive context and interpreting,and analyze the impacts of cognitive context in interpreting process.Third,implications for interpreting preparation.This part includes three aspects: components of interpreter's knowledge,thematic knowledge build-up and technical terminology. Based on this,the paper tries to come to the conclusion that interpreting process is an information rebuilding process which is achieved through cognition.During this process,cognitive context has a very important role to play,therefore,it's an element interpreters cannot bear to ignore.A qualified interpreter should be acquainted with the cognitive activity within human brain during the interpreting process in order to be better prepared for a specific interpreting task.