The Effectiveness Of The Principle Of Economy In Avoiding Errors In Prepared C-E Simultaneous Interpreting

Over the years, the principle of economy (PE) has been the focus of scholar’s discussion among all theories in simultaneous interpreting (SI). However, no studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of PE in avoiding mistakes in C-E SI. This thesis, with8MTI students in X University as the subjects, seeks to analyze relevant issues under PE and error analysis theory.This research, with the transcriptions of four recordings from SI training class of the8students as its basis, looks at many errors under the error analysis theory. Through comparative analysis among different students, whose masteries of PE vary, it summarizes three errors, namely, number error, omission and pause, which occur due to their disobedience of PE. PE has two dimensions of meaning:syntactic linearity, which requires the interpreter to make no unnecessary movement of word order, and simplification, which calls for the most economic way of language output. If the interpreter fails to follow PE, his memory load, time pressure and psychological stress will be greatly increased. Consequently, these three errors are likely to occur and the quality of interpretation tends to be undermined. On the contrary, observing PE allows the interpreter to spend more time and efforts in production, so that number errors, omissions and pauses will be minimized. This testifies to the effectiveness of PE in error avoidance.Therefore, the author suggests shadowing and sight interpreting as SI training approaches to improve students’ masteries of PE. The findings in this paper may provide some guidance on the improvement of C-E SI quality...