Listening Problems In Interpretation And Its Coping Strategies

With the deepening of globalization, interpretation, as the bridge of communication among different languages and cultures, becomes increasingly important and prosperous. During its development, there is a great deal of research on interpretation. However, as an indispensable link of interpretation, researches on listening are relatively rare.Listening comprehension in interpretation comprehension is different from that in other situations. In interpretation, listening comprehension is more precise and professional, since the interpreter has to fully understand every detail and repeats the speech in the target language as completely as possible. If problems arise in this stage the whole interpretation could be affected. On the other hand, listening comprehension is quite a vulnerable link in interpretation, for it is restricted by many barriers. The purpose of this paper is to reduce listening problems and improve the efficiency of listening comprehension in interpretation. There are four chapters in this paper.In the first chapter, the author reviews the previous studies of listening comprehension from three different perspectives, which are the"Schema Theory", the"Psycholinguistic Theory"and the"Relevance Theory". By using these research results as reference and based on the special features of listening comprehension in interpretation, the author puts forward the theoretical foundation of the interpretation study-Daniel Gile's"Effort Models"and the"Automaticity Theory". Then the author mentions that listening in the daily time is different from that in interpreting. The normal listening can be categorized as a"natural listening"because in this situation, listeners just pay attention to what they are interested in or to the key content. Compared with this kind of listening, listening in interpretation is more professional.In the second chapter, the author first illustrates the misunderstanding of listening comprehension. Then, the author explains the listening barriers from both the linguistic and extra-linguistic perspectives. With respect to linguistic perspective, a qualified interpreter must conquer barriers on phonetics, lexicon, semantics and text. With respect to extra-linguistic perspective, a qualified interpreter must conquer barriers on subject knowledge, situational knowledge and cultural knowledge. A good knowledge of the subject matter under discussion greatly influences the quality of interpreting. The situation involves speakers and listeners at a given time and place. The more the interpreter knows about the situation, the better chance for them to understand the speaker's discourse accurately. Barriers caused as a result of cultural differences may often affect interpreters' understanding.In the third chapter, the author proposes the coping strategies based on the analysis of the first two chapters. The strategies mainly comprise the following aspects: coping tactics in daily exercise, sufficient preparation before interpretation, memory enhancement, note-taking and anticipation. The author puts forward the Full-sentence Tenet, which was initially proposed by the author in her listening class.In the last chapter, the author summarizes the main findings of this study. She also points out the disadvantages of the current study due to the limited condition. Based on the insufficiencies the author gives her suggestions for the further study.