The Application Of Schema Theory To Business English Interpreting

In today's world, the earth which we live on is a global village. Interactions between countries all over the world are frequent. Cultural, political, technical, educational, environmental, trade and other kinds of exchanges are flowing actively through the whole world. With the economic globalization especially after China's entry into the WTO, business cooperation between China and other countries all over the world is on ever increasing. This also brings the constant increasing on the demand of professional business interpreters. Compared to other types of interpreting, business English interpreting is a special and highly-skilled task. Many people simply consider that a person who possesses good knowledge of two languages is capable of being an interpreter. This is terribly wrong. On the opposite, business interpreters should not only possess good knowledge of languages, basic skills of interpreting, but also need professional business knowledge, as well as the capacity of mediation, and so on.Back to the 1930s, British psychologist Bartlett put forward the concept of schema, which he defined as an active and constructive structure of people's past reaction and prior experience. In other words, it is a whole body of memory to be recognized and stimulated, a bridge to connect the new message and background knowledge. Simply put, schema is a data structure made up of our long-term accumulated knowledge. When stimulated by new messages, the relevant schemata will be activated to facilitate the comprehension.This thesis will show the importance of the application of the schema theory to business English interpreting from both the theoretical and exemplary level. Language schema, content schema and structure schema will be separately used into the process of business English interpreting. Chapter one gives an overview of the schema theory and previous studies on business English interpreting; chapter two introduced business English interpreting and its characteristics in details; chapter three applies schema theory in the process of business English interpreting, considering the features of it, such as its language and style; and the final chapter gives a conclusion as well as advises in business interpreting.