A Working Memory Perspective On Simultaneous Interpreting

Working memory is an important theoretical concept from cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Working memory is capable of storing and processing information at the same time. In contrast, short-term memory is only capable of storing information. Working memory plays a key role in complex cognitive activities. In simultaneous interpreting, a simultaneous interpreter has to maintain and manipulate information concurrently. Hence, it is working memory instead of short-term memory that plays a significant role in simultaneous interpreting. Previous research on interpreting and memory in China was quite limited, for it mainly discussed interpreting from a short-term memory perspective. This thesis offers a working memory perspective on simultaneous interpreting to deepen research on cognitive aspects of simultaneous interpreting in China as well as to improve the training and quality of simultaneous interpreting in China.The thesis is composed of the following three chapters:Chapter 1 introduces simultaneous interpreting and working memory. The chapter introduces the process, feature, and quality of simultaneous interpreting, elaborates on three representative models of working memory, clarifies working memory involvement in complex cognitive activities, and highlights working memory involvement in simultaneous interpreting.Chapter 2 adopts a working memory perspective to analyze the cognitive process of simultaneous interpreting, difficulties in simultaneous interpreting, and working memory expertise in simultaneous interpreting. The cognitive process of simultaneous interpreting is explained based on the three models of working memory mentioned in Chapter 1. Difficulties in simultaneous interpreting are attention allocating, articulatory suppression, and problem triggers in the source language text. In addition, working memory expertise in simultaneous interpreting are manifested as follows: compared with novice simultaneous interpreters, expert simultaneous interpreters are less affected by articulatory suppression; expert simultaneous interpreters have a larger working memory span, and expert simultaneous interpreters have a more efficient working memory mechanism.Given the difficulties in simultaneous interpreting and the gap between expert interpreters and novice interpreters mentioned in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 clarifies working memory skills as well as comprehension strategies in simultaneous interpreting, which can reduce working memory load and then improve simultaneous interpreting performance. Working memory skills in simultaneous interpreting include skill of allocating attention, skill of resisting articulatory suppression, and skill of processing information. Methods such as shadowing, retelling, logic reconstructing, mental modeling, and building up long-term memory are suggested to enhance the above skills. Besides, comprehension strategies in simultaneous interpreting such as anticipation, segmentation, and integrating relevant information can reduce working memory load and then improve the performance of simultaneous interpreting.