The Effect Of Background Knowledge On The Performance Of English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpretation

The thesis applies Comprehension Equation, the Effort Model of Simultaneous Interpretation, the Sequential Model and psycholinguistic theories to illustrate the effect of background knowledge on the performance of English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation. Supported by the above mentioned theories and based on the previous studies, the thesis intends to answer the following questions:1. Does background knowledge exert a significant effect on the performance of English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation?2. If background knowledge exerts a significant effect, does English proficiency reduce the negative effect caused by the lack of background knowledge? If so, can it override the effect of background knowledge?3. What are the major mental mechanisms involved in English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation?The study is an empirical research based on experimental tests on the third-year postgraduates majoring in English at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE). The subjects are required to simultaneously interpret one passage on which they have much background knowledge and the other on which they have little background knowledge. In the experiment, background knowledge and language proficiency are the two independent variables and the performance of simultaneous interpretation is taken as the only dependent variable with other factors controlled as constants. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are adopted to analyze the subjects' interpretation performance on the two passages. In quantitative analyses, the author uses descriptive and inferential statistical analyses to analyze the data from the experiment. In qualitative analyses, individual subjects' interpretation performance is analyzed in terms of the quality of the target language and the content of the reproduction. The author draws the following conclusions after carefully analyzing the experimental results:1. Background knowledge exerts a significant effect on the performance of English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation.2. English proficiency reduces the negative effect caused by the lack of background knowledge. But it can not override the effect of background knowledge.3. The major mental mechanisms involved in English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation are schemata, processing capacity, and top-down and bottom-up processing.As a by-product, the thesis testifies theories on interpretation, psycholinguistic theories, and findings of previous studies. \s the subjects participating in the experiment are third-year postgraduates majoring in English at UIBE, the study may shed light on the training of English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation provided by universities and colleges.