An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Different Parallel Texts On Interpreter Trainees’ Non-fluency In Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpreting

This paper is an empirical study on the effect of different parallel texts on non-fluency in Chinese-English interpreting.Parallel texts,as a form of preparation,allow interpreters to be familiar with the speech,background knowledge and terminology in advance,thus optimizing interpretation output.The range of parallel texts is very wide,and in interpreting practice,interpreters need to focus on the selection of parallel texts to find the most effective and helpful parallel texts and prepare for translation as efficiently as possible.Therefore,the selection of parallel texts is very important and has reference significance for guiding interpreting practice and training.However,for a long time there has been little research into the differences in the role of different types of parallel texts.Therefore,the aim of this paper is to examine the role of two different parallel texts on fluency and to investigate the reasons for the differences,so as to indicate which factor is more weighted in the improvement of fluency between background knowledge and terminology,and which parallel text is more effective.Ten subjects of comparable English proficiency were selected to participate in the experiment,all of whom were second-year graduate students of the School of English andInternational Studies,Beijing Foreign Studies University,and were randomly divided into two groups of five each.Each group was provided with two different bilingual parallel texts respectively:a glossary of terminology extracted from the original text,and a text on the background knowledge and theme of the original text.The recordings of their interpretation are collected in order to explore which parallel text has a more significant effect on reducing non-fluency.The results come from transcription of the recordings,data analysis,case studies and post-experimental interviews.The results of the experiment showed that the glossary type of parallel text significantly enhanced fluency,specifically by reducing non-fluent pauses,repetitions and corrections,but had a less significant effect on false starts.The reason is that both parallel texts provide relevant thematic and contextual knowledge,but the terminology text provides a translation of the terms contained in the original text,while the other type does not have this function.It was further concluded that terminology can significantly improve fluency.Interpreters can focus on the preparation of bilingual terms in comparison to background knowledge when preparing for interpreting tasks.