Towards Detextualization In Simultaneous Interpreting With Text: A Cases-based Study

Tactics and theories of simultaneous interpreting have been discussed profoundly, butfew people have touched upon the use of the text when there is any. Throughinterpreting learning and practice, the author finds that to read the text givenbeforehand carefully rather than read from the text while interpreting, or to“internalize” the text first and then to “detextualize” while interpreting in the author’swords, may achieve better performance. With a comparative experiment, the authortries to testify that hypothesis.The author first collected audio and texts from real simultaneous interpretingconference and then handed the texts out to six students from MTI Class2013forpreparation. On the experiment day, the subjects were divided into two groups ofthree, with the first group for simultaneous interpreting with text and the secondwithout text. All their performances were recorded. Afterwards, the author transcribedthe audio of both the source speech and the interpreting and analyzed the result aswell as asked the subjects to do self-analysis. The result turns out that the controlgroup (group one) lagged far behind during interpreting and translated literally by thetexts while the experimental group (group two) tried to keep pace with the speakersby means of simplification, omission, etc. when the speech went fast. But the resultalso showed that the experimental group underperformed their counterpart in accuratetransference of numbers and proper nouns. As is indicated, how to better combine theadvantages of both interpreting with and without text deserves further exploration inrelevant studies in the future.