Study Of Anticipation In English And Chinese Interpretation In View Of Context Theory

There are many differences between translation and interpretation, one prominent character of the latter is that it is an intense work within a limited time. The interpreter has to finish listening comprehension, memory, and production in a flash. It will be more difficult to have one task accomplished with the criterion of "accuracy, smoothness, and quickness". In the "Effort Model", Daniel Gile proposes that the interpreter has to reasonably allocate the limited efforts so as to accomplish the task successfully. If the interpreter can pre-finish part of the missions through anticipation, it can greatly relieve his or her memory burden and enhance the quality of interpretation. As a form of communication, interpretation can not escape from context, and only in the context can its meaning be revealed. Context has a broad connotation, and it contains all the elements related to a certain item. The development of context theory also experienced many stages, and now it shows the characteristic of interdisciplinary. In language use, context has many functions, such as the restrictive function, interpretive function, filtering function and supplementary function, etc. This thesis mainly discusses its predictive function during interpretation.Based on the studies of former scholars, the author of this thesis divides context into three categories: textual context, communicative context and cognitive context. There has been many researches done on anticipation concerning simultaneous interpretation, but this thesis is focusing itself on the interpretation of various types. Because the author holds that the phenomenon of anticipation in interpretation is prevailing, and it is done both consciously and unconsciously. According to the time sequence, there is anticipation before and in the middle of the interpretation. According to the nature of anticipation, Gile divides it into linguistic and extra-linguistic anticipation. The author of this thesis, in light of context theory, divides it into anticipation in textual context, anticipation in communicative context and anticipation in cognitive context.Different cultures contain different thinking modes; different interpreting missions decide different topics; different speakers have different background information; different text types produce different language formula; different communicating purposes involve different strategies—all these will be elaborated in the discussion of anticipation in textual context and communicative context in this paper. Besides the traditional analysis of contexts, the author also gives an illustration of cognitive context from the dynamic view. Because anticipation itself is a kind of cognitive thinking activity which has a close relationship with human's capacity of memorizing and logical analysis, it is only when the stored information schema is successfully activated by the novel information that the anticipation comes out. So, to anticipate, there must be three necessities: the perceived vocal information, the extra-linguistic knowledge stored in memory as schema, and the activation of the schema by the logical inference.In one word, since anticipation can relieve the memory burden in interpretation, which is inseparable with context, this thesis tries to study the anticipation in view of context theory, hoping to help enhance the working efficiency of the interpreter.