An Empirical Study Of Students' Interpretation Of Figures In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting

Figure interpretation has long been a bottleneck affecting the quality of interpretation, and it has been a hard nut that interpreters must crack. Little attention has been given so far to the research in this regard in consecutive interpretation (CI), and most researches have been carried out on the basis of theories, rather than empirical evidence. The present empirical study aims to show whether numbers are problem triggers in Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting, and with the help of the theory of Danial Gile's Effort Model, to investigate the underlying causes for the difficulties perceived by student interpreters when doing figure interpretation in CI. Therefore, advice and suggestions are offered to future interpretation teaching and training. The detailed research questions are:(1) Do numbers cause problems in CI? If yes, which types of numbers cause the most problems? And which is the most common mistake? (2) What are the potential reasons for the difficulty for student interpreters to interpret numbers? (3) What are the feasible methods to improve figure interpretation ability?Subjects of this empirical study consist of 30 senior ESL undergraduates in Hunan XX University. A series of instruments are employed, such as stimulated recall, together with notes, recordings of interpretation and post-test interviews, to elicit and analyze the empirical data generated by the 30 subjects. Based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data, the present study has drawn the following conclusions.1. The fact that the general performance in which the subjects'accuracy in speech segments with numbers is lower than in those without numbers shows that numbers are big problem triggers in CI. What's more, among the five major categories, numbers with four or more digits show the highest error score. Omissions are by far the most common mistakes in all the six main types.2. In terms of the factors affecting the fluency and accuracy in figure interpretation, below are the potential reasons.1). Differences of numeral systems between the English and Chinese languages cause problems.2). Student interpreters have a low degree of automatization.3). Complexity of figure-based information and unfamiliarity with the source text increase capacity requirement in Listening and Analysis Effort.4). Improper figure-based notes increase capacity requirement in Production Effort. 5). Student interpreters have Working Memory shortage.3. The implications of the findings for future figure interpretation teaching and training are presented as follows. Firstly, interpreters should have a good command of the differences of numeral systems between English and Chinese. Secondly, student interpreters must be trained to formulate a scientific figure-based notes system of their own. Thirdly, student interpreters should make every effort to enrich their background knowledge and broaden their horizon through various training materials so that their WM effort could be reduced in practical interpretation. Fourthly, only sufficient targeted figure interpretation training can guarantee the improvement of the automatization of figure-converting skills. Last but not least, student interpreters must be trained to enhance their working memory through intensive reading and retelling without the help of notes.The present thesis may serve as a pilot study for future larger-scale researches.