The Role Of Background Knowledge In Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpreting-A Schema Theory Perspective

Schema, a word of Greek origin, refers to a constructive structure of prior knowledge and places new information in the appropriate context and relation. Since F. C. Bartlett, a British psychologist, introduced the notion of schema into cognitive psychology, many scholars studying linguistics, anthropology, psychology and artificial intelligence have set out to conduct researches based on schema. During the last two decades, in particular, a lot of linguists and scholars have applied schema theory to the field of second language acquisition. They have studied second language reading comprehension and listening comprehension from a cognitive perspective and have achieved fruitful results.However, few researches have employed schema theory in the field of simultaneous interpreting, also a branch of second language acquisition, to promote the teaching and learning of simultaneous interpreting. Bearing this in mind, in this thesis, the author determines to apply schema theory to Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting in order to explore whether the background knowledge exerts positive influence on Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting, if the influence does exist, in what ways the influence reveals itself and what enlightenment it can provide to simultaneous interpreting learning and teaching.This thesis conducts an empirical research to collect relevant data for descriptive analysis and discussion. Twenty senior students majoring in interpreting and translation in the same class in Hubei University are selected to take part in the experiment. They are randomly divided into two groups-the experimental group and the control group-with ten subjects respectively. The experiment is carried out for three times using different topics. Before doing each Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting, both experimental group and control group read a piece of Chinese material. The reading material handed out to experimental group provides relevant background knowledge to the subjects while the reading material presented to control group has nothing to do with the topic for the following Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting. On finishing reading the materials, they are collected and each subject in both groups is assigned a cassette to do Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting. The interpretations of both groups are recorded at the meantime. On finishing interpreting, all the cassettes are collected to be transcribed for descriptive analysis. What’s more, all subjects are required to answer a questionnaire immediately after doing the third time Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting for data analysis to explore the role of background knowledge in Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting and what pedagogical enlightenment it can provide to simultaneous interpreting.According to the analysis of the transcriptions and questionnaires of both experimental group and control group, it is found that background knowledge does exert significant influence on Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting. What’s more, sufficient and necessary background knowledge helps to promote a better understanding of the source language, contribute to a more effective working memory, foster a more equivalent reproduction of the target language and enhance interpreters’ self-confidence. Therefore, both trainers and trainees of simultaneous interpreting should attach great importance to background knowledge and try to consciously obtain as much background knowledge as possible.