Julian House’s Translation Quality Assessment Model For Interpretation Quality Assessment

With the development of economy and the enhancement of globalization, interpretation gradually plays an important role in international community. As an important component of publicity work, Press Conference attracts the attention around the world. In recent years, more and more experts and scholars participate in the research of interpretation. In particular, the research of consecutive interpretation has become a hot topic now. At present, most of the interpretation researches are based on the theories of psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics. House’s translation quality assessment model is rarely used in interpretation research.The author intends to introduce House’s translation quality assessment model to the interpretation research. In this thesis, the author introduces the basic concepts in House’s model in detail. Besides, the author chooses25sentences from the Press Conferences hosted by Primer Wen Jiabao in2010and2011as the research materials. Zhang Lu, the female senior interpreter of Ministry of Foreign Affairs is appointed as the only interpreter of these two Press Conferences. According to the language style, the author splits the material into five categories:the Chinese idiom interpretation, the four-letter-word interpretation, the proper noun interpretation, the long sentence interpretation and the interpretation of words and phrases with Chinese characteristics. In the research, six female students from Hubei University are chosen as the research subjects. Majored in English, all of the six students have studied consecutive interpretation for one year and all of them have passed the advanced level of Shanghai Interpretation Accreditation Examination. During the data analysis, the author analyses the source text, the professional interpreter’s texts as well as interpretation learners’ texts from four aspects:field, tenor, mode and genre. Then, the author compares the professional interpreter’s text with interpretation learners’texts. The author intends to answer the following questions through this research:(1) Are there any differences between the source text and the professional interpreter’s text? If the differences do exist, what are they? (2) Are there any differences between the source text and interpretation learners’texts? If the differences do exist, what are they?(3) Are there any differences between the professional interpeter’s text and interpretation learners’texts? If the differences do exist, what are they? Why?According to the research, the author finds out that, first, there are no distinct differences between the professional interpreter’s texts and the source texts; second, mismatches can be found between interpretation learners’texts and the source texts as well as the professional interpreter’s texts. The differences are caused by the following four factors:first, interpretation learners may lack enough interpretation trainings and practices; second, interpretation learners’mental quality is not very good; third, interpretation learners lack the knowledge of traditional Chinese culture; fourth, interpretation learners’daily practices always limit on certain topics.