Effect Of Background Knowledge On The Performance Of English Majors In English-chinese Consecutive Interpreting

The present study investigated the role of background knowledge in interpretingperformance by an empirical experiment, trying to address these two questions:1) Whether there is a significant correlation between background knowledge andinterpreting performance and;2) If there is, how does background knowledge impact on interpreting performance?Based on previous theoretical and empirical studies, the present study designed anexperiment to answer those research questions. Seven second-year postgraduates majoringin English from Shanghai International Studies University participated in the study. Theywere asked to do consecutive interpreting of a scientific text from English to Chinese.Their performances were recorded and evaluated by three raters. Interpreting performancebeing one variable, the other variable---participants’ level of background knowledge---was measured through a self-assessed questionnaire. More information concerningparticipants’ psychological activity during the interpreting process and reflection of theirown performance was elicited in the follow-up interview. Quantitative analyses from bothparticipants and text perspectives, and qualitative analyses exploring how specificknowledge points affect interpreting performance were carried out to gain a comprehensiveand insightful view of the questions under investigation.The results show that background knowledge has a significant correlation withinterpreting performance and reveal a multi-layered influencing mechanism of backgroundknowledge over interpreting performance. Its influence extends to (a) the basic meaningperception,(b) the grasp of underlying logic,(c) the negative psychological impact,(d)comprehension and reproduction of terms, and (e) possible distortion of or addition to theoriginal information.Though there are certain limitations regarding the size of experiment population,control of variables and evaluation criteria in the present study, the findings here dopropose some implications for interpreting trainings and future studies, coveringbackground knowledge acquisition, activation, application, its psychological impact andetc..