On Anticipation Mechanism In Simultaneous Interpretation

With an aim to enhance the quality of simultaneous interpretation (SI) classroom teaching, the paper attempts to explain the highly complex anticipation mechanism in simultaneous interpretation from a cross-disciplinary perspective. The author sets out to establish a theoretical framework with Gile's effort model at its core and Chernov's redundancy-based probability prediction model, fuzzy linguistics as its supporting theories.On the basis of the theoretical explanation, the author makes an effort to investigate the sources of anticipation with interpreters'training in mind. The paper borrows the terms, namely linguistic competence, social competence and cultural competence, in a language acquisition competence theory proposed by Professor Liu Dechong, and categorizes anticipation accordingly. Owing to the fuzzy nature of languages, the author further explores into the results of anticipation and puts forward the concept of fuzzy output/delivery, which can be viewed as a supplementary device in the anticipation mechanism to relieve speech production effort and achieve better overall interpreting performance.To validate the author's opinions and prove their applicability in the SI classroom teaching, an observational study is carried out, in which the simultaneous interpretation of 2007 State of the Union Address by American President George W. Bush is transcribed and analyzed in great detail. The analysis reveals how interpreters tactically avert the risk of exceeding their limited pool of processing capacity in SI by anticipating based on redundancy and fuzzy nature of languages.