The Name And Nature Of Relevant Knowledge In Interpreting

Knowledge has been regarded as an indispensable part of interpreting competence,playing a significant role in the interpreting process.Yet there is not only a dearth of research on knowledge in interpreting studies,but also certain problem in the use of relevant concepts.With an increasing number of interpreting practices in a wider variety of domains,the ad hoc knowledge pertaining to specific interpreting tasks,known as the relevant knowledge(RK)in this study,has received more attention.Advance preparation is the major way to acquire RK,but current researches only focused on its influence on interpreter's performance.On the one hand,the RK was not clearly delineated;on the other,scholars have contradictory views on the relationship between RK and domain knowledge(DK).Under this condition,this study has explored RK's intension and extension,by means of literature review,quasiexperiment and interview,undertaking triangulation by collecting and analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data,referencing concepts in sociolinguistics such as discourse community,language variety and jargon and the Gravitational Model of language availability in interpreting studies as the main theoretical support,so as to find out the nature of RK,understand the interpreting process more properly,and provide advices and thoughts for fostering the interpreting competence.This study first compares the knowledge types of RK and DK,thus drawing the first conclusion: RK in interpreting does not cover the entire scope of DK.Then,the comparison and contrast between and among the knowledge as required in interpreting for domains of science and technology,court service and foreign affairs are conducted,thus drawing the second conclusion: RK in interpreting is not a subset of DK.Thirdly,the content of the RK is discussed via the empirical study.Eight professional interpreters with no relevant education background or working experience are selected to interpret two speeches of the same domain,which contain jargons and have different degrees of specialization.The content and features of subjects' knowledge requirement(KR)is obtained through screen recording and videotaping;their levels of domain-specific knowledge,purposes for KR and other information are gained through follow-up questionnaires and interview;their interpreting performance are scored respectively by professional interpreters and domain experts.The result reveals:(1)The subjects' KR is of domain attributes,and their main purposes are to acquire expressions in target language as well as the concepts.(2)The subjects' KR is neither deep nor wide,while higher degree of specialization of the source language or subjects' relatively low level of domain-specific knowledge does not depeen or widen their KR.What's more,the subject's interpreting performance is uncorrelated with their level of domain-specific knowledge.(3)When given more preparation time,the subjects will not deepen or widen their KR,and the ultimate goal is actually to acquire professional and logical delivery in target language.So in any scenario,their KR is not deep,and the width of KR largely depends on the speaker's discourse plan.That's why they need to anticipate the speech content based on the conference details,the most helpful of which is PPT.In addition,the subjects will get verbally familiar with how to express and organize the target language.In sum,the third conclusion is drawn: The relevant knowledge in interpreting is in nature a discourse system of certain domain(s)together with context knowledge as a source of anticipation;the range of this discourse system is usually not wide,only including the language constituents in the speech.