Empirical Study On The Transcoding Technique Of Simultaneous Interpreting From Non-automatic Operation To Semi-automatic Operation

Semi-automatic operation and non-automatic operation in informationprocessing and its related theories have been attracting enormous attentions frominterpretation researchers and are applied to shed light on interpretation-relatedissues such as the effort distribution. Through the empirical study on interpreters,this paper aims to analyze that transcoding in simultaneous interpreting can beshifted from a non-automatic operation to a semi-automatic one through thechunk-oriented pre-preparation so as to lessen the loads on short-term memory andallot more mental energy to other operations, thus improving the overallperformance of simultaneous interpreting.The empirical study was adopted in this paper with a comparative experimentbeing conducted. The subjects of the experiment are40MTI students from auniversity. Subjects in group A undertook the chunk-oriented pre-preparation on adaily basis two weeks in advance of the experiment. And subjects in group Bconducted the non-chunk-oriented pre-preparation under the same condition.Ear-Voice Span and accuracy rate of each chunk were recorded and analyzed.Implications of the results for simultaneous interpreting performance improvementand its pedagogy were discussed. The paper concluded with a restatement of theresearch findings, implications and with suggestions for possible future research.