Affecting Factors Of Different Interpreting Memory Mechanisms

As an special form of translation, the most distinctive features of interpreting aretimeliness, unpredictability and universality. Compared with translation, the inter-preter has to deal with listening, memory and expression at the same time, so it’s veryimportant for the interpreter to understand and remember message in the source lan-guage effectively. Firstly, this essay introduces the mechanisms, features and func-tions of sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. Secondly, itdiscusses the factors affecting memory performance, including listening, allocation ofintention, comprehension, forgetting and psychology. Thirdly, it finds out theshortcomings and their reasons. Fourthly, this essay introduces some measures whichcan improve memory capacity according to my own experience, including shadowingpractice, note-taking, and background information. It is hoped that, it can help inter-preters to improve their memory capacity in order to better the interpreting perform-ance.