An Empiircal Study On The Cognitive Factors Affecting Comprehension In English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpreting

As politics, economy, culture and society are rapidly developing, there appear numerousinternational conferences globally. Interpreting, especially simultaneous interpreting (SI), nowplays a key role in achieving the cross-cultural communication of people from differentcountries and regions. SI features with simultaneity, time-saving and directness. It is obviousthat simultaneous interpreters are in severe shortage now in China, particularly in themetropolitan cities. Moreover, this kind of shortage is rather outstanding in the city ofChangchun in recent years.Simultaneous interpreting is a kind of cross-cultural communication conveying a largeamount of instant information, which needs to be processed efficiently by an interpreterduring limited time. Essentially, simultaneous interpreting itself is a sophisticated cognitiveprocess which consists of comprehension, memorization and expression. Sincecomprehension is the foundation of the whole interpreting process, it’s a critical premise for asuccessful simultaneous interpreting. What can help an interpreter’s comprehension not onlyincludes such linguistic skills as phonetic recognition, semantic analysis, and syntax analysis,but also includes certain cognitive factors. And these cognitive factors can facilitate theinterpreter’s understanding of semantic meaning of original language, and thus help smooththe way for the construction of sense group and getting the overall meaning of the wholediscourse.The research questions of this thesis can be concluded into two parts:1. Do the cognitivefactors, background knowledge and logic analysis capability have relationship with theinterpreting comprehension?2. And if they do, how would they affect the interpretingcomprehension?The subjects of this research are identified to be the second grade students of the Masterof Translation and Interpreting (MTI) major (orientation of Interpretation, Grade2010) inCollege of Foreign Languages of Jilin University. Their English language competences are almost at the same level. The tools involved in this research include simultaneousinterpretation equipments in Room419of College of Foreign Languages, Jilin University,voice recording devices, questionnaires accordingly designed for different cognitive factors,and Microsoft Office Excel. And the investigation methods applied in this research are surveymethod, experimental method, and case study method. The author selects three lectures fromthe Harvard University’s Justice with Michael Sandel’s series of lectures, which arecomparatively too professional for general postgraduate of English-related majors but aremuch fitter for the subjects in this research, second grade MTI students.The research is designed as follows: According to the two cognitive factors that areintended to research in this study, the subjects are randomly divided into two groups, each ofwhich consists of10subjects, respectively abbreviated as Group A and Group B hereafter.The ten subjects of Group A are used for observing and studying if the cognitive factor,background knowledge, can affect interpreting comprehension, and those of Group B are usedfor observing and studying how the cognitive factor, logic analysis capability, can affectinterpreting comprehension.In case that the set research had to be done again and the prepared material(s) is (are) notnew for the subjects any more due to the interpreting equipment’s malfunctions or personnel’smisoperations, the author prepared extra similar materials for each group accordingly toensure a smooth research process with reasonable results.There are totally three steps for each group: recording of the interpretation, post-testsurvey and evaluation.As for Group A, the steps are as follows: Firstly, three days before the research theauthor required the subjects to watch the videos of the first three lectures from the HarvardUniversity’s Justice with Michael Sandel’s series of lectures and look up the relatedinformation of John Locke, an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the mostinfluential Enlightenment thinkers. And his philosophical views would be discussed in detailsin the material that the subjects in Group A would interpret in this research. Secondly, on theday that the research is conducted, the fourth lecture of Harvard University’s Justice withMichael Sandel’s series of lectures. You’re your Motive&The Supreme Principle of Morality, would be played in the experiment and the subjects would interpret it simultaneously, andtheir voice would be recorded respectively. Lastly, after the interpreting process, every subjectwould do a survey specially designed on background knowledge with questions askingwhether they had already done the preparations as the author told them and their opinionsabout background knowledge and so on.Experiment process for Group B: The investigation subjects would not be told to prepareanything before the experiment and on the day that the research is done, the sixth lecture ofHarvard University’s Justice with Michael Sandel’s series of lectures, Hired Guns, would beplayed in the experiment and the subjects would interpret it simultaneously, and their voicewould be recorded respectively. And then, after the interpreting process, every subject woulddo a Questionnaires of Logic Analysis Capability specially designed to examine the level thatthe subjects’ logic analysis capability can reach.In order to evaluate the interpretation qualities of the subjects in each group, threesubjects of Group B would be chosen randomly to listen to the records of Group A andcomplete the Questionnaires of Audience Satisfaction, and in the same way, three subjects ofGroup A would be chosen randomly to listen to the records of Group B and complete theQuestionnaires of Audience Satisfaction. At last, the average score of each subject of bothGroup A and Group B would be calculated.This paper, in the way of analyzing the data of Group A and Group B and the results ofthe Questionnaires of Audience Satisfaction，shows that the cognitive factors, backgroundknowledge and capacity of logical analysis，can affect the interpreting comprehension in apositive way, using descriptive data．In conclusion, background knowledge exerts a significant effect on interpretingperformance. The activation of background knowledge facilitates the interpretingperformance．And the logic analysis capability would play the key part in it when theinterpreter lacks the support from his background knowledge. While doing the logic analysistowards the contents he is listening, including longitudinal analysis and horizontal analysis,the interpreter can understand the logic implied among the sentence and quickly grasp themeanings that the speaker wants to express in his speech. As cognitive factors are rather complicated, which are hardly measured and analyzed injust one research, in this research the author elects two cognitive factors that can affect theinterpretation greatly and are feasible for the author to measure and analyze，backgroundknowledge and logic analysis capability. This research aims to analyze how the cognitivefactors, background knowledge and logic analysis capability, can influence thecomprehension in English-Chinese simultaneous interpreting and it can be helpful forinterpreting students.