Anticipation In Interpretation: From Phenomenon To Strategy

The anticipation strategy has always been underscored by many interpreters. In this thesis, the author attempts, by exploring the origin of the anticipation strategy --- the anticipation phenomenon existing in general human listening comprehension --- in a psycholinguistic view, based on the human memory mechanism in language comprehension as well as several cognitive models for interpreting, to show that the basis of people's anticipating lies in the cognitive context in the working memory (and part of the long term memory) and is composed by both the prepossessed knowledge from the long term memory and the input messages. In this regard, the interpreter's knowledge schemata --- the form of knowledge storage in one's long term memory --- are of great help in the anticipation strategy. In addition, one's knowledge schemata are established from the daily experience, and are cultural-sensitive. That is to say, people with diversified cultural backgrounds may possess different schemata on the same matter. Therefore, when adopting the knowledge schemata to facilitate anticipating the input messages in interpretation, the interpreter must endeavor to bridge the cultural gap by simulating the speaker's schemata so as to achieve a more reliable prediction.