Public Speaking Strategies In Interpreting Production

There has been a heated discussion on “public speaking and interpretation” in the field of professional interpretation in recent years. Interpreting in essence is a form of oral production, so employing public speaking strategies is deemed to improve the quality of interpreting production. Especially when the source text is a public speech, public speaking strategies are expected to be used skillfully in interpreting.This report, based on the author's consecutive interpreting practice at a marble tile company's brand summit, discusses how to interpret a speaker's public speech. Chapter one reviews the general picture of the interpreting task, including the profile of the speaker and interpreter. Detailed descriptions of the parties involved enable the author to understand the task better. Chapter two explains how the author did the pre-task preparation and Chapter three lists the summit's schedule and analyzes the difficulties the author encountered. These difficulties come as a significant base for the communication processes analysis in Chapter four and strategy proposal in Chapter five.The author, in Chapter four, illustrates the close relationship between public speaking and interpreting by analyzing their communication processes respectively. The finding that the two oral production shares a lot in communicative essence leads to an argumentation that strategies used in public speaking apply to interpreting as well. Chapter five introduces specific public speaking strategies(verbal strategies and non-verbal strategies) as an enlightenment to the difficulties the author was faced with interpreting. Verbal strategies proposes that interpreters should conduct the principles of precision, simplicity and logic to ensure that the audience understands the main message the speaker intends to convey. But public speaking interpreting is more than verbal message delivery. The non-verbal elements related to public speaking deserve special attention. So non-verbal strategies propose that the interpreting should integrate with the features or skills closely associated with public speaking and the ideal production is presented in a way that the interpreter likewise, as the “mirror” of the speaker, is addressing a public speech. Trustworthy voice and mastery of facial expressions, eye contact, gestures and dress code are deemed as non-verbal strategies of crucial importance to ensure an excellent speech interpreting. If the interpreter aims to reproduce the greatest degree of the charisma of public speaking, both verbal strategies and non-verbal strategies deserve importance.