The Impact Of Background Information On The Performance Of E-C Simultaneous Interpretation Based On The Schema Theory And The Levels-of-Processing Theory

This paper explores the impacts of background information on the performance of English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation (SI) based on Bartlett’s Schema Theory and Craik and Lockhart’s Levels-of-Processing Theory. Simultaneous interpretors are generally professional language learner who may lack training or background information of certain aspect or industry. This paper through empirical research aims at providing advices for SI learners and teaching personnel based on exploration of the impact of background information on the performance of SI.In the first part, Bartlett’s Schema Theory is introduced to explain the concept of schema, its categories and application in listening comprehension. And then Craik and Lockhart’s Levels-of-Processing Theory which explains how level of processing influences memory. Combined with the two theories, previous research is introduced as well to support this paper.The second part is empirical research, in which8simultaneous interpreters with same language proficiency are divided into two groups. Their performance is evaluated after an SI experiment with the topic of gene programming, and one of the groups is given a30-minute training on that topic a day before the experiment.The paper concludes that background information exerts significant influence on the performance on simultaneous interpreters. Therefore it requires both language proficiency and background information to guarantee good SI performance.