Sense Loss In Consecutive Interpreting At Press Conferences

Sense, the core information of the source text that interpretation aims to maintainin the target text, is of paramount importance in interpreting as its successfultransition determines whether the speaker can be understood. Basing on theexploration of the true scope of sense in interpreting, the thesis sets out to explore thephenomenon of sense loss in consecutive interpreting at press conferences. It mainlytouches upon four topics: the definition of sense loss, the possible reasons for senseloss, the common types of sense loss and the coping strategies for sense loss.Sense loss may happen at any point in the process of Consecutive Interpreting(CI) and be caused by a series of reasons from problems in listening comprehension,note-taking, and effort allocation, to differences in cultural backgrounds,untranslatability and nuances of linguistic register. Press Conference Interpreting(PCI), due to its unique features, is vulnerable to sense loss in its own ways. With thehelp of Gile’s Effort Models, the thesis sets up a theoretical framework for analyzingand recognizing reasons that lead to sense loss in CI. It also discusses sense loss inPCI in details with examples drawn from empirical studies on video and audio recordsof PCI and gives out strategies to guard against sense loss in PCI.Discussion of sense loss in this thesis incorporates both the loss of semanticmeanings and the loss of pragmatic meanings. It strives to shed a new light onresearches on quality evaluation of interpreting, especially that of press conferenceinterpreting. It’s also the hope of the author that the paper can help interpreters toperform better at PCI.