Process-Oriented Interpretation Ability Assessment

As China's participation in international activities and affairs booms,the demand for interpretation service keeps growing and the development of interpretation gains pace.The popularity of interpretation has given rise to enthusiasm and demand for interpretation studies.More and more universities give a higher priority to the translation(written translation and oral interpretation),which gives a strong boost to the education and research of interpretation.In addition to the interpretation learning set for graduate students,the undergraduate courses have also emphasized interpretation teaching.Alongside that,the studies on interpreting ability assessment and interpretation teaching gains more attention.Interpretation assessment is extremely important as part of interpretation teaching and training,for interpretation assessment is an important tool for assessing the interpreting ability and coursework quality.Rational methods and standards used for assessment play a key role in interpretation teaching,which can not only make the assessment more scientific and standardized,but also may better guide interpretation teaching as well.It is noticeable that,although the interpretation courses grow in number,there is no clear and unified system for interpretation assessment methods,standards or interpretation teaching model,which causes huge controversy,especially during the undergraduate stage.This thesis aims to explore a set of effective and practical model and rubric for undergraduate students from the perspective of interpretation process.Chapter Two of this thesis discusses in detail the history of interpreting research both in western countries and China.Interpreting research in the West can be mainly divided into four stages.The first stage concerns retrospective and empirical research and no inter-discipline research was conducted during that stage.The second phase focuses on experimental psychological research,especially the cognitive issues of interpreting based on psychology and psycholinguistics theory.they have the interdisciplinary nature,along with the limitation of scientific nature.The third phase of the research focuses on interpreting process and interpretation models,including interpretation theory,Gile's Effort Model,Gerver's Interpreting Processing Model,Massaro's Information-processing Model of Understanding Speech,Moser's Information Processing Mode of DiscourseUnderstanding,etc..The problem with this stage is that it lays too little emphasis on empirical study of the models mentioned above.The fourth stage pays more attention to the empirical nature of research.Theoretically,scientifically,and inter-disciplinarily speaking,interpreting research has become a relatively mature research field.In China,although lagging behind,the development of interpreting research is accelerating.Several important conferences held in China mark the milestones of the development of Chinese interpreting research.Chinese Interpreters took these interpreting seminars as opportunities to share and exchange achievements in interpreting research and interpretation teaching,which has promoted the continuous development of interpreting theoretical research and interpretation teaching in China.The early research on interpreting in China mainly focused on interpreting situation and interpreting training.There was no systematic framework for interpreting research.At the beginning of the second stage,domestic researchers conducted research in detail on interpreting teaching,interpreting careers,and interpreting market.The research gradually matured.The third stage of domestic interpreting research began to enter an interdisciplinary stage,drawing on the research methods and research results of other disciplines.The fourth stage focused on professionalization and internationalization of Chinese interpreting research.Chapter Three provides an explanation of interpreting process and interpreting models.After reviewing the history of interpreting model studies both in China and the West,this chapter focuses on the three most influential models in this regard: the Triangular Model of the Interpretive Theory,the Effort Model of Gile,and Interpreting Model proposed by Xiamen University.In the Interpretive Theory,the interpreting process can be divided into three stages: comprehension,deverbalization and reformulation.This process does not go on in a linear manner but a triangular one.Among them,the deverbalization part is an important step from comprehension to reformulation.Gile's Effort Model combines relevant research together in cognitive psychology,psycholinguistics,sociology and other disciplines.It uses a series of equations to describe an effort model of interpreter performance and brain activity during interpreting,and also explains how interpreter allocates effort when multitasks such as listening,comprehension,memory,and output,and uses related equations to explain the conditionsfor the successive interpreting tasks.It is highly operable and useful for analyzing misinterpretation and omission of interpretation.The Xiamen University Model originates from Gile's model.It is also a supplement and improvement upon Gile's effort model.The Xiamen University Model includes comprehension,reconstruction,analysis,skill and professionalism.Xiamen University's interpreting model is not a linear model but an interactive one.Xiamen University applied this interpreting model to practical interpretation teaching,which confirmed the operability of this model.Through sorting and contrasting,this chapter concludes that Gile' and Xiamen University's interpreting model are more applicable in terms of guiding the interpretation training and interpretation assessment.These two models are exactly what the current interpretation teaching and interpreting assessment need for study and research.Chapter Four discusses interpreting assessment in detail,especially the studies of the assessment construct(parameters).Researchers began to conduct empirical study on interpretation quality during the mid 1980 s,exploring the impact of audience and setting on the quality assessment of interpretation.The assessment construct(parameters)research is mainly about expectation and feedback for the empirical research,typically based on the related personnel(listening audience,speakers,conference organizers,interpreters,or peers,etc.)for their expectations of interpreting service quality and follow-up feedback to understand the construct parameters and the emphasis on interpreter services,which can help interpreters to clarify the content of interpreting assessment and formulate relevant standards accordingly.Major western researchers include Bühler,Kurz,Gile,Marrone,Vuorikoski,Kopczynski,Moser-Mercer,Collados Ais,Andres,Tommola,Pardas Macias,etc.While the main researchers in China include Hu Genshen,Qian Wei,Bao Gang,He Huiling,Yan Mingli,Yang Chengshu,Chen Jing,Chen Xiangrong,etc..By reviewing the research on the assessment of interpreting quality in the West and China,this section summarizes the development of interpreter assessment research,and analyzes the limitations of related empirical research,including the effectiveness of assessors,lack of theoretical support,and overestimation on interpreting results,and too little light shed on its guidance on interpretation teaching and training.Chapter Five analyzes the existing interpreting assessment projects and standards.This section first sorts interpreting assessment models into interpreting career assessment and interpretation course assessment.Then the interpreting career assessment can be further divided into pre-assessment and post-assessment.The pre-assessment is specifically divided into qualification assessment and recruitment assessment.Interpreting course assessment can be divided into prospective assessment and retrospective assessment according to the time taken,and can be categorized into interpreting ability assessment and interpreting quality assessment according to assessment objects as well.In the interpreting assessment of undergraduates,it is necessary to figure out what the interpreting assessment is in order to better design the assessment model,construct,and criteria.This thesis holds that undergraduate interpretation assessment is more suitable for assessing interpreting ability than interpreter quality.After clarifying the types of interpreting assessment,this chapter further compares existing interpreting assessment projects at home and abroad,including the EU,NAATI,the National Foreign Language Interpreters Certificate,CATTI,SIA,and Graduate Insititute of Interpretation and Translation SISU,etc.,and points out the characteristics shared by those projects,for instance,that assessment results are graded and the difficulty of assessment materials is divided according to different levels.The assessment methods may include written examinations and interpretation(oral)examinations.After analyzing the assessment projects,the thesis compares the existing assessment criteria,including Bao Gang's interpreting competition evaluation table,Yang Chengshu's interpreter professional examination score sheet,Ye Shubai and Liu Minhua's fidelity scale and fluency scale,and Chen Jing's interpreting standard scale,as well as the assessment criteria used by the Xiamen University,the University of International Business and Economics,Graduate Insititute of Interpretation and Translation SISU,and SIA.This chapter summarizes the features and problems of interpreting assessment studies,and also compares the differences in existing assessment criteria and the implications for this study.On the basis of the previous analyses,Chapter Six puts forward four dimensions of undergraduate interpreting ability assessment: credibility,authenticity,validity and interactiveness of assessment.Under the guidance of four dimensions,this section puts forward an undergraduate interpreting assessment system in the light of the assessmentconstruct,assessment method and assessment criteria.Based on the interpreting process by Gile's Effort Model,it analyzes the factors of undergraduates' interpreting ability assessment and proposes a module construct for the ability assessment in undergraduate course of interpreting(consecutive interpretation),which includes listening and comprehension,analysis and conversion,memory,coordination/strategies,and output/performance.Alongside that,memory is subdivided into long-term memory,short-term memory,and note-taking.Output/performance is subdivided into bilingual expression and communication,each module of which is defined and described.In addition to that,this chapter has elaborated a table for assessment criteria,which includes the assessment modules with respective proportions of weight,and the corresponding assessment methods.The assessment modules are divided according to the previous discussion.The methods mainly include quantitative and qualitative method,which are determined by the modules accordingly with the proportion of the assessment modules in the result: listening comprehension 20%,analysis conversion 25%,memory 25%,coordination/strategy 10%,output/performance 25%.In Chapter Seven,an empirical study was conducted on the assessment criteria for undergraduate interpretation courses proposed in Chapter Six together with a survey on the participants.In terms of the survey,questionnaires were distributed to 105 undergraduate students.The questions covered various aspects of interpreting teaching and learning,and the results were statistically analyzed.In the empirical study,this section conducted an assessment of the interpreting abilities of the 105 participants,using the assessment method and criteria put forward in the previous chapter.After collecting the assessment result data,the thesis used SPSS to analyze the data in order to analyze the validity of the criteria,assessment parameters,and note-taking skills of the participants.The study also analyzed the correlation between the parameters and the results of the assessment,as well as the problems that participants have encountered during the assessment.According to the data analyses,the criteria of the interpretation assessment proposed by the thesis is proved valid.Alongside that,there is a positive correlation among listening comprehension,language,logic,terminology,short-term memory,and performance,showcasing that these factors have an impact on scoring the participants.Atthe same time,the listening and comprehension module matters most in the assessment.For these reasons,it can prove that the accuracy of target language is the most critical factor for the assessment result.In view of the impact of English or Chinese language competence on the performance assessment,it can be found that language and performance are more relevant when interpreting from Chinese to English than from English to Chinese.In addition,the completeness of the notes does not have direct impact on listening and comprehension,short-term memory or performance,and there is a negative correlation between the completeness of notes and assessment result,which shows the hindrance of note-taking on assessment process.Meanwhile,this chapter also analyzes the problems that the participants have encountered in the various modules of the assessment criteria,along with the guidance of the assessment result for interpretation teaching.Through a series of theoretical and empirical research,the thesis concludes that every assessment model should shed light on the following issues: what abilities to be assessed,how to divide these abilities,and how to assess these abilities.When setting up an criteria,the assessment construct should be determined based on assessment model and the purpose of the the assessment,and the construct and the items of the assessment criteria should be decided based on relevant theories.In addition,the assessment system should also be tested and verified through empirical study.In terms of the value of this thesis,it provides guidance for the three major elements in interpretation teaching,namely,teacher,teaching material,and teaching method.However,in order to ensure the objectivity and credibility of the assessment results,the assessment system proposed will involve an increase of human resource,energy,and time compared with traditional assessment,where improvement is needed.This thesis still has some shortcomings and limitations in terms of the empirical study in it.The thesis hopes that through the study,it can provide a more comprehensive theoretical framework and a different perspective for the study of interpreting assessment of undergraduates.In the future,more empirical researches are welcomed to focus on the interpretation assessment at undergraduate level and explore the interpreting teaching and assessment model that are more applicable for undergraduate interpreting course so that synergy between teaching and assessing can beenhanced and interpreting teaching can be optimized in order to improve the teaching in undergraduate interpreting course in China.