The Effect Of Background Knowledge On The Quality Of Consecutive Interpretation

Interpretation involves a number of complicated procedures which can be affected by a variety of factors, and background knowledge is one of them. Till now, many domestic and overseas studies have manifested that background knowledge and interpreting quality have a positive correlation, which means a good mastery of background knowledge can improve the interpreting quality in various ways. Therefore, whether the interpreter owns the background knowledge related to the source text can lead to an obvious difference in his/her interpreting quality.This paper is an interpreting practice report. By taking the interpreting tasks that the author has completed during the IBM CSC program as examples, this report describes the interpreting process in the IBM CSC Program and the corresponding feedbacks the author has got, so as to analyze both the positive and negative effects of having and lacking background knowledge on the three aspects of interpreting:fluency, language accuracy and the degree of information completeness through these case studies. In addition to proving the helping role of background knowledge and emphasizing the importance of accumulating background knowledge for interpreters, this report also puts forward some relevant suggestions on how to improve one’s level of background knowledge effectively and how to deal with the problems caused by the lacking of background knowledge, which can be used as references by other interpreters.