A Probe Into The Factors Affecting The Quality Of Conference Consecutive Interpretation

Interpreting as a modern profession has established its important status in the international community in its short history. Nowadays, from top-ranking political talks to business negotiations, interpreters' intelligence and efforts have become an indispensable part of all the international gatherings. Interpreters must help people overcome language barriers, dispel their suspicion and serve as a bridge in intercultural communication.In the past near-three decades, China, one of the most promising developing countries in the world, has witnessed a great many encouraging achievements in its drive for modernization: China's accession to the WTO, Beijing's selection as the host city for the 2008 Olympics, Shanghai's successful bid for the 2010 World Exposition, just to mention a few. All of these great events have proved that China's level of international engagement has reached an unprecedented level as a result of its nearly three-decade reform and opening up.Despite the great demand for conference interpretation, China's research on conference interpretation is far from meeting demands. In China, interpreting is a fledgling research field. Not until 1980s did some interpreters begin to write some prescriptive articles based on their professional experience, on introspection and on some literature (Xiao, 2002). However, no systematic studies have been found concerning the factors affecting the quality of conference consecutive interpretation (CCI).To this end, the thesis intends to combine the study of interpreting with the theories of psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics in order to explore the factors that affect the quality of conference consecutive interpretation from three perspectives, namely, from the perspective of interpreting process, from the perspective of major conference elements and from the perspective of interpreter quality.And the thesis also intends to throw some light on both interpretation teaching and practice. Thus, it may help to pave the way for further research on coping strategies in conference consecutive interpretation.Enough efforts for theoretical considerations and rich empirical preparation are the key to the completion of the thesis.Extensive reading of relevant materials such as books, journal articles and papers in both interpretation theory and practice is essential for the origin of the paper. A good command of involved interpretation-related theories, like Gile's Effort Model and Comprehension Model, The Triangle Model based on the Theory of Sense and the Xiada Model, etc, also prompts the preparation of the paper.As interpretation is a highly practical job, practical study is indispensable to the success of the thesis. The author has made very intensive study of the recordings of some important press conferences like NPC (National People's Congress and CPPCC (Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference).The introduction of the thesis mainly presents the status quo of interpretation and interpretation research and naturally leads to the body.The thesis includes four chapters. Chapter one serves as an introduction to several key items like interpretation, conference interpretation, consecutive interpretation and simultaneous interpretation.Chapter two is devoted to literature review: two major theoretical parts are to be reviewed: major interpretation models and interpretation assessment theory are to be introduced. The models to be introduced are: the Effort Models by Denial Gile, the Triangle Model based on the theory of sense, the Model of Xiamen University.Meanwhile, studies concerning interpretation quality assessment are also to be presented and analyzed.Altogether, this chapter serves as the theoretical foundation for the thesis.Chapter three mainly focuses on exploring the factors affecting the quality of conference consecutive interpretation from three perspectives: the perspective of the process of CCI, the perspective of major conference elements and the perspective of interpreter quality.From the first perspective, factors will be explored from information input, processing and output.From the second perspective, factors are to be dug out from elements like conference topic, speaker, interpreter, audience, organizer, setting and other elements.From the third perspective, factors are to be researched from such aspects as linguistic competence, extra-linguistic knowledge, professional ethics and public presentation skills.Chapter four mainly focuses on the implications and suggestions for interpretation teaching.In the conclusion, the author points out the major findings and limitations of the present study and proposes some suggestions for further research.