Analysis Of The Cognitive Overloading Phenomenon In Consecutive Interpreting And Coping Strategies--A Case Study Of NPC Chinese Premiers' Press Conference Interpreting Practices

With the Effort Models advanced by professor Daniel Gile as the theoretical basis and through studying the state-level interpreters' performances in press conference interpreting settings over the recent years, the present study aims at tackling the cognitive overloading phenomenon in consecutive interpreting from an interdisciplinary perspective. The author begins with a critical overview of the contribution and limitations of the studies on the process of conference interpreting in the interpreting research community at home and abroad. Then, the author analyses the two major cognitive dimensions in the complex mental process of interpreting, i.e., the objective cognitive environment of interpreting and the interpreter's own cognitive mechanism (the former consists of linguistic context and extra-linguistic context, and the latter includes interpreters' cognitive models, cognitive-processing strategies, cognitive-processing capacities, and cognitive-psychological competence, etc). On such bases, the author conducts a preliminary qualitative evaluation of the COP in press conference interpreting and further explores the major reasons for the COP (high information-density, high-degree information complexity, heavy working pressure, etc), and then puts forward some coping strategies in tackling this phenomenon, e.g., constructing the network of knowledge schemata, optimizing the allocation of processing capacities, and utilizing appropriate cognitive processing strategies.