A Schematic Approach To Comprehension In Interpreting

Since its first application into social-scientific research in 1932, schema theory has been widely used in foreign language teaching and reading and listening comprehension. Comparatively speaking, the application of schema theory into interpreting research is quite limited. On the other hand, comprehension in interpreting has always been one of the major subjects in interpreting research. The thesis attempts to further the study of comprehension in interpreting by applying schema theory to the comprehension process and construct a schema model for comprehension in interpreting to achieve a better understanding of comprehension in interpreting, find ways that help interpreters have more efficient comprehension at the cost of less processing capacity. Starting with a brief review of interpreting, interpreting studies, this paper elaborates on the schema theory as well as comprehension of language, then the perspective was narrowed to the comprehension in interpreting, within the frameworks of Daniel Gile's Effort Models and Comprehension Equation, providing an alternative view on the activation, construction, retrieval and accumulation of an interpreter's schemata.