The Effect Of Inference On The Performance Of Interpretation

Comprehension is the foundation of successful interpretation. During the comprehensionprocess, the interpreter's inference mechanism plays an indispensable role in understandingthe source language. Supported by Relevance Theory and Cooperative Principles, this thesisintroduces the inferential mechanism adopted in interpretation and the factors influencing theinterpreter's inferential performance. The following questions are to be answered in thisthesis:(1) Does the interpreter's inferential performance have a role to play in his/her interpretationprocess?(2) What is the relation between inferential performance and interpretation performance?(3) Will the change of determining factors for inference influence the interpreter'sperformance?The methodology adopted in the study is an empirical research through experimental tests onthe second-year and third-year postgraduates majoring in English at UIBE. There are twoparts in the experiment: the first part aims at examining the relation between inference andinterpretation performance;the second part aims at testifying the effect on the interpreter'sperformance with the change of the determining factors of inference. Both quantitative andqualitative analyses are applied to analyze the result of the experiment. In the quantitativeanalysis, descriptive analysis is used to analyze the data from the experiment, while in thequalitative analysis, individual subject's performance is analyzed in terms of the quality of thetarget language and the content of the reproduction.The following conclusions are drawn based on careful analysis:(1) Inference does play an important role in the subjects' interpretation;(2) Inferential performance does have a positive relation with the subjects' interpretationperformance;(3) Interpretation performance can be improved through changing factors that determineinterpreters' inferential process.As the subjects participating in the experiment are postgraduates majoring in English at UIBE,the result of the present study could shed light on interpreter training.