Process And Training Strategies Of Consecutive Interpreting-An Analysis Based On Memory Psychology

As is known to all, in a consecutive interpreting session, the interpreter is heavily mental-loaded due to information absorbing, encoding and retrieval process. Meanwhile, the process of consecutive interpretation (CI), to some extent, is considered to be a struggle against forgetting. Memory is fundamental in the process of CI. However, few people were born with super memory. Most successful interpreters home and abroad possess good memory by special and professional training on memory skills.Interpreting research nowadays has been receiving more attention in China; and an increasingly more significant role of memory in interpreting is also witnessed by all. The early research of memory is carried out in psychological perspective, followed by the research on CI Memory from an inter-discipline perspective, i.e., experimental psychology, psychological linguistics, cognitive psychology etc. CI memory research has carried on already for 20 years; comparing with the less-than-60-year history of the whole interpretation research. Of course, the research of memory itself can be dated back to early 1879, when Ebbinghaus initiated experiment on memory and reaped plenty of significant data and valuable research methods, which shows that current CI memory research is both feasible and necessary. Nevertheless, the study of CI memory and memory-loss phenomena from memory psychology perspective remains few.This thesis presents the process and training strategies of CI under the perspective of psychology of memory. It carries out an analysis of the application of memory mechanism into CI training and its impact upon the practice of consecutive interpreting. Starting from the different types of memory and their interrelated functions in CI process, the author aims to clarify the inner information processing system by making a comparison between two memory models, i.e., Atkinson-Shiffrin Model proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin, and the famous traditional Level-of- processing Model by Craik and Lockhart. Three interpreting models are also analyzed in this thesis, i.e., the Effort Model, (Daniel Gile, 1995), 3P Model and Triangular Model of Interpretive Theory by Danica Seleskovitch and Marianne Lederer in 1994. By specifying on the Memory loss theories in CI processing, the author first refers to the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve and then explains memory-loss in CI process. Finally the author brings out that note-taking is an effective way to extend the capacity of memory, and then illustrates some techniques based on the concepts of Rehearsal and Selective Attention in memory models, for instance, retelling and shadowing exercise. And some advisable skills and mnemonics are also proposed to deal with numbers, terminology and in-the-session problems, for example, categorization, comparison, generalization, visualization, imagery and organization etc. The author then proposes that current interpreting training should abandon the stereotype which paid too much attention on interpreting subject and content training. Instead, it should emphasize more on interpreting skills, especially on memory skills training, because memory is very fundamental in CI.