Listening Comprehension Barriers And Solutions In English-Chinese Interpretation

Along with the deepening of globalization, interpretation—a translation form thirty times quicker than written translation—became an indispensable bridge among different languages and cultures. The prosperous interpretation market stimulates both theoretical and empirical researches on it. Many scholars study about the standard, techniques and purpose of interpretation by borrowing the theories of written translation; while some probe into the occupational morality and objectivity of the interpreter. Unfortunately, there are few researches on the listening comprehension problems in interpretation, one of the key links in interpretation.Listening comprehension in interpretation is different from that in other occasions. The normal listening comprehension can be categorized as a "natural listening"; because the listeners just pay attention to what they are interested in or the key content, and then make communicative reactions such as agreement or support or rejection, etc. Compared with this kind of listening, which is comparatively random and superficial, listening comprehension in interpretation is more precise and professional; since the interpreter has to fully understand every detail and repeat the speech in the target language as complete as possible. If problems arise in this stage the whole interpretation could be affected. On the other hand, listening comprehension is a quite vulnerable link in interpretation, because it is restricted by the message repeat techniques except other barriers. The purpose of this dissertation is how to reduce listening comprehension problems and improve the efficiency of listening comprehension in interpretation.In chapter one the rationale of listening comprehension as well as the "Top-down" and "Bottom-up" comprehension models are introduced. Later on, the author reviews the previous studies of listening comprehension from four different aspects. By using these research results as reference and based on the special features of listening comprehension in interpretation, the author puts forward the theoretical foundation of the current study—the "Schema Theory" and "Automaticity Theory" oflistening comprehension as well as Gile's "Effort Models" of interpretation.Under the direction of the theoretical foundation mentioned above, in chapter two the author researches into listening comprehension barriers from the perspective of knowledge acquisition and factors beyond knowledge acquisition. Knowledge acquisition includes the acquisition of linguistic knowledge and cognitive knowledge; the other factors include features of the speech itself and the psychological status of the interpreter.After figuring out the causes of these problems the author then tries to find solutions to these problems from three aspects, namely, preparation, memory training and listening strategies used in interpretation. The preparation is a full-scale preparation, which includes daily preparation, advance preparation and the last-minute preparation. The preparation can also be categorized into knowledge acquisition and psychological preparation. Memory plays a vital role in comprehension mechanism during interpreting; that is why the author puts memory training as a separate part in chapter three. The strategies in the real situation include note-taking and effective anticipation, which are proved useful in interpretation. Finally, the author gives some strategies that can be used when problems arise.In the last part the author summarizes the main findings of this study; he also points out the disadvantages of the current study due to the limited condition. Based on the insufficiencies the author gives his suggestions for the further studies.