An Analysis Of Anticipation Mechanism In English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpretation From The Perspective Of Schema Theory

With the growing of China’s economic development and its increasing contact with theoutside world, interpreters, especially simultaneous interpreters, as a result, are in highdemand in China. Simultaneous interpreting as a major form of interpreting, is widelyadopted on influential international occasions such as multi-national and multi-lingualconferences, press conferences, foreign affairs, etc. To simultaneous interpreting itself, it hasmany uncertain factors such as broad topics, various contents and wide-raging styles ofdifferent speakers’ speeches. Therefore, in addition to good command of English and Chineselanguages, simultaneous interpreters also have to master several skills to fulfill the taskexcellently. In this thesis, the author will talk about one of the skills——prediction beforeinterpretation, which enables interpreters to make sense of full sentences before the speakerfinishes it.This thesis, based on schema theory of cognitive development mechanism and takingPresident Obama’s speech in Fudan University as a case, elaborates on how interpretersimprove the ability of identifying, analyzing, comprehension and expressing and how theypredict the following text effectively by making full use of structure schemata, linguisticschemata and schemata of background knowledge. Effective prediction can help interpreterspredict and express source language accurately as well as relieve their memory andpsychological burden. Considering that the schema theory has influenced a lot in secondlanguage acquisition (SLA), listening and reading comprehension, so the author tries tointroduce it into simultaneous interpreting and explore its effect on prediction.