A Study Of Consecutive Interpretation From The Perspective Of Working Memory

This paper investigates the role of working memory in consecutive interpretation.Consecutive interpretation is a complicated bilingual activity and specific branch of interpretation.In consecutive interpretation,the interpreter repeats what has been said in the target language,directly after the source utterance ends.Therefore,it is highly restricted by time.For the interpreter,interpreting involves various cognitive processing activities which include listing and attending to the utterance,analyzing the meaning of the communication,recalling the intended message,and reformulating it into the target language.All these cognitive activities take place concurrently.This is in line with the concept of working memory,put forward by British psychologists,Alan Baddeley and Hitch,who based their ideas on experimental research.The theory of working memory of broad and current interest in the interpreting researches,due to its significance for interpreting activities.Under the guidance of working memory theory,the present study analyzes the interpreter's mechanism of information processing and the dimensions of working memory in the process of CI,discusses how working memory influences on consecutive interpreting,and researches the relationship between working memory capacity and interpreting performance.Typical examples are selected from the press conference of Premier Li Keqiang answering questions of the medium after the National People's Congress and the Chinese Political Conference and applied in detailed case studies.The case studies show that working memory plays an important role in consecutive interpreting,and the interpreting activities have high requirements on the working memory capacity of interpreters.Working memory is a key factor for successful interpretation.What's more,working memory also interacts with other special interpreting special skills to influence the interpretation effect.This paper attempts to further clear the relationship between working memory and interpreting activities,so as to provide scientific explorations and explanations ofcognitive psychology perspectives for the research on the process of consecutive interpretation,and offer theoretical supports for the development of working memory.