The Effects Of Background Knowledge On Interpreting

Scholars at home and abroad have studied the role of background knowledge in second language acquisition.However,most studies were carried out from the perspective of language comprehension or knowledge structure rather than from the role of background knowledge in interpreting performance.As a practice report aiming to study the role of background knowledge in interpreting,the author describes two interpreting tasks,Sino-Dutch Fresh Chain Logistics Seminar and GoforIsrael 2018 and analyzes the effects of three categories of background knowledge on interpreting quality as well as the advice for interpreter with insufficient background knowledge.Process description is divided into three phrases in a chronological order,pre-task preparation,on-site interpreting and post-task evaluation.Then examples would be chosen for further analysis from three aspects,(1)Topical Knowledge;(2)Lexical Knowledge;(3)Language Style.Finally,the author proposes three ways to cope with the insufficient background knowledge: make comprehensive pre-task preparation;do post-task evaluation;improve psychological quality.Through task description and case analysis,it is found that background knowledge can enhance comprehension and facilitate production during interpreting.Topical background knowledge could provide context for interpreters thus facilitating the interpreting comprehension by accelerating the top-down and bottom-up information processing.Then,linguistic knowledge,i.e terminology preparation,can help interpreters acquire the surface meaning first and then build up the deep meaning.Finally,language style could help interpreters keep in accordance with the speech style of the speaker.Interpreters might produce fluent and accurate output when they are familiar with the language style of the speaker(i.e.accent,expressions).It is recommended that an interpreter should always know what content the task may involve,what terms may impede the interpreting performance,and what language style the speaker may be.When the interpreters encounter difficulties because of insufficient background knowledge,in the principle of interpreting professionalism,they should stay calm and respond properly and quickly.