An Empirical Study Of Impacts From Problem Triggers On Student Interpreters’ Performance In Simulated E-C Simultaneous Interpreting

In the practice of simultaneous interpretation(Hereby shorted as SI),the performance of SI is closely related to the speaker’s speech,speed of speech,accent,and other factors.The difference between professional interpreters and student interpreters is the ability to deal with these difficult factors.Training and guiding student interpreters to deal with all kinds of difficult factors is also the main task of the MTI SI training of universities.These difficult factors are defined as "Problem Triggers" by Gile,which represents cognitive or non-cognitive factors that may lead to the changes in the performance of interpreting based on his "Effort Model"theory.The purpose of this thesis is to study the impacts from various problem triggers on the performance of student interpreters in English-Chinese(Hereby shorted as E-C)SI.Unlike previous researches,researching the effects from one problem trigger on student interpreters’ SI performance,this research attempts to study the general SI performance first and then analyzes the effects from different problem triggers.The purpose of this thesis is to answer the following two questions:First,what are the relations between problem triggers and the performance of student interpreters in E-C SI?Second,how do different problem triggers affect student interpreters’ performance in E-C SI?To this end,with the four experiments conducted by the author’s tutor in the SI class and the 2018th MTI interpreting students in Shaanxi Normal University,the author discussed the impacts of various problem triggers on the E-C SI performance of student interpreters through the analysis of the recordings of students and speakers.This thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter One introduces the research background,purpose,significance,procedures and thesis structure.Chapter Two gives a brief introduction to the interpretation theory applied in this research,reviews the previous researches on the SI performance evaluation system and problem triggers for SI,thus establishing the SI performance evaluation system and the framework of problem triggers adopted in the study.Chapter Three detailed explains the processes of experiment,data collection and statistical analysis.Chapter Four reports the results of experiments and analyzes the data.Chapter Five summarizes the whole research and puts forward suggestions to SI learning and training,limitations of the thesis and directions of researches of this kind.To better understand the changes of SI performance under different problem triggers,the author divided the four experiments into one control group and three experimental groups,which include task-planning group(Hereby shorted as planning group),task repetition group(Hereby shorted as repetition group)and formulaic sequences group(Hereby shorted as formulaic group).Each group consists of 6 SI booths and 13 student interpreters.Based on the SI performance evaluation system,every SI booth’s recording of each group will be scored and an average score of each group will be calculated and ranked.Therefore,the author analyses the impact from different problem triggers on SI performance according to the rankings and fluency tests of the four groups.The ranking of the evaluation system shows that the repetition group ranks the first,control group ranks the second,planning group ranks the third and formulaic group ranks the fourth.According to the analysis of the result,the author finds that task repetition has a significant effect on improving the SI performance of student interpreters,while effects of pre-task planning and formulaic are insignificant.The author also finds the following results:(1)Comprehensive SI training is less effective than specific SI training.(2)Positive effects of language proficiency on SI performance development is limited.(3)Problem triggers may have positive effects to student interpreters’ SI performance.(4)Different problem triggers can cause different levels of negative effects.According to the conclusion of the research,the author believes that applying task repetition to SI training can improve students’ SI performance.Therefore,both for student and teacher,training method of this kind that helps to improve student interpreters’ SI performance should be prioritized for practices.