Consecutive Interpretation

This paper focuses on the cognitive and pragmatic analysis of consecutive interpretation (CI). It is of positive significance and reasonable feasibility. First, the study of CI is of practical significance because CI is the preliminary course of interpretation training course and it is widely used in Chinese important occasions. Second, the study of CI is more measurable and operationally feasible compared with SI. Finally, the distinctive features of CI need an analysis from both the cognitive and pragmatic views. This study draws on the speech comprehension model, the memory theory, the speech production model,the schema theory and the context theory to analyze the process of consecutive interpretation. A questionnaire survey is also conducted to investigate the pragmatic and cognitive aspects of consecutive interpretation. The findings are presented as follows:Before the interpretation, the interpreter tries to collect all the information about the incoming interpretation, which constitutes the context of the incoming interpretation. The context features activate the appropriate schema in the interpreter's mind and help the interpreter to make expectations on the incoming interpretation. All of them have influence on the interpretation performance. However, among all those context features, the nature of the speech, the related vocabulary and terminology, the topic of the speech, the background of the speech topic, and the setting of the interpretation are more essential than others. As for how significant their influence on interpretation performance is, it depends on the interpreter's familiarity with the speech. The interpreter's expectation is impossible to be the same as the actual content; however, it plays a directive role in interpreter's comprehension and production. It is a top-down process.When the interpretation takes place, the interpreter listens to and analyzes the continuous speech signals from the lower level to the higher level. That means from the phonological level, lexical level, syntactic level to the discourse level. At the phonological and lexical levels, the sound is put in the sensory store and matched with the information retrieved from the permanent memory to identify syllables and words. At the lexical level, the context features, especially the background of the speech, the topic of the speech and the related vocabulary and terminology are very helpful in selecting proper meaning of a...