A Study On The Problems Of Interpreters In Consecutive Interpretation From The Perspective Of Cognitive Psychology

In recent years, more and more attention has been shifted from the analysis and description of the product of translation to the study of the dynamic process of translation in the translating circles. Translation is a kind of complicated bilingual communicative act, which takes on the dynamic feature. Variables involved in communication such as speaker, languages used, speech content, occasion and object determine that communication itself is dynamic. In addition, language and culture, two important layers of translation, also present the feature of dynamic. The object of dynamic translating research is the bilingual communicative act and various kinds of parameters, which not only crowns all basic translating theories, but also relates to numerous domains of linguistics and applied linguistics, such as cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and teaching methodology. Therefore, the research and analysis of the translating process will impel and deepen the further development of translating theories, and produce enormous instructional significance on translating practice and translating teaching.Consecutive interpretation, one branch of interpretation, is a kind of highly complicated bilingual activity that is restricted by time. After incepting the source language information, interpreters need immediately reformulate it in the target language. This very unnatural state, in which listening and speaking almost happen at the same time, brings about tremendous psychological pressure on interpreters. In interpreting, interpreters go through a series of processes such as the inception, comprehension and conversion of the source language, and the reformulation in the target language. However, these processes can neither be seen nor be touched; furthermore, pure linguistic model cannot entirely explain many links of these processes and problems arising in them. Besides, in interpreting practice, what kind of tactics should interpreters take when they encounter all kinds of problems? Centered upon these two issues, this thesis applies cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics to making an abstract analysis of interpreters' linguistic information processing, and thus reveals the inner objective law in the interpreting cognitive structure. Moreover, this thesis also uses for reference the Effort Models byFrench professor Daniel Gile to develop a study on interpreters' problems while interpreting and suggests some possible coping tactics.From the transdisciplinary perspective, taking interpreters' cognitive psychological problems when interpreting as a starting point, this thesis makes a detailed scientific analysis of interpreters' comprehension process, processing capacity, wrong interpretations and their causes in the form of case studies of consecutive interpreters, so as to explore the basic skills in different stages of interpreting and coping tactics when confronting difficulties.By carrying out the analysis with specific examples, this thesis argues that consecutive interpretation is an intricate information-processing process. Consider interpreters' comprehension process. It undergoes three stages: the listening and analysis stage, the preliminary processing stage and the integration of discourse information stage. During this process, interpreters' cognitive psychology such as the directing of attention and the processing of paralinguistic information and extralinguistic information play a significant roles in the comprehension of the source language. The thesis also maintains that Daniel Gile's Effort Models provide a theoretical framework for the analysis of interpreting, especially for the analysis of the problems arising in interpreting, such as wrong interpretations and interpretations with some omitted parts that are often observed yet not due to lack of linguistic proficiency nor professional knowledge nor failure in the inception of information. They bring about much new revelation to interpreting research, and exert a directive influence upon interpreting practice and teaching.This thesis puts forward some views about interpreters' cognitive psychological problems in consecutive interpretation so as to arouse attention and evoke discussion on them. Interpreting is an art being in the ascendant, and interpreting research and interpreting teaching research are comparatively laggard in China. It is hoped that more efforts from interpreting researchers will be made in order to promote cooperation and achieve more fruitful results in this field.