Effect Of Schema On Performance Of English-Chinese Sight Translation

Sight translation is the transposition of a message written in one language into amessage delivered orally in another language. As one of the important forms ofinterpreting, it is mostly used in court interpreting as well as in various internationalconferences. At the same time, as one of the important parts of simultaneousinterpreting training, sight translation is included in most of the simultaneousinterpreting courses around the world.Schema, originated in cognitive psychology, is an organizing form of the outsideknowledge in human mind and a section from past experiences as a vague guidelinefor human activities. It was raised first in1932, and then widely used in a variety ofresearch areas, especially in second language reading comprehension and listeningcomprehension.To my knowledge, very few research efforts have been made to explore factorsaffecting the performance of sight translation, let alone the effects of schema on sighttranslation performance. On the basis of the findings of the effects of schema onsecond language reading comprehension as well as theories on interpretation andpsycholinguistics, the present study tries to apply the schema theory to the study ofsight translation and aims to examine the effects of schema on the performance ofEnglish-Chinese sight translation performance.The thesis plans to answer the following Questions:1) Do the schemata of the sight translator have significant effects on sighttranslation performance? If so, can schemata facilitate every link of sight translation?2) May schema result in a significant difference in sight translation performance?3) May proficiency inadequacy be supplemented by the activation of schema?This thesis first discusses the definition, features of schema theory and twomodes of information process. Then according to Daniel Gile’s Effort Model andComprehension Equation, it organizes sight translation into three steps, i.e. readingcomprehension, memory and production. Later on, the thesis designs an experiment,testifying the relations between schema and sight translation. The study is an empirical research based on the experimental tests on the sophomores majoringEnglish at SISU. The subjects are divided into two groups: one group has muchbackground knowledge on the test passage while the other is not supplied with anybackground knowledge. In the experiment, background knowledge is the onlyindependent variable and the performance of sight translation is taken as thedependent variable with other factors controlled as constants. Qualitative analysis isadopted to analyze the performance the subjects’ interpretation. The performance ofindividual subjects’ interpretation is analyzed in terms of accuracy, smoothness andtimeliness of the production. At last, the paper draws the conclusion that according tothe schema theory, activating the concerned knowledge in the interpreter’s mind ishelpful to understanding of original information, memorizing ideas and producing in arapid and accurate manner. The author also hopes the paper can provide some cluesfor future interpreting training and textbook compilation.