On Listening Comprehension Barriers In Consecutive Interpretation And Coping Strategies

Interpretation has been increasingly important in bridging people from differentcountries. All too often, interpreters are confronted with listening comprehensionbarriers. The listening comprehension of the source language is the first step and thekey link of interpretation. Listening is the foundation of interpreting. Therefore,there’s no interpreting without listening. However, listening comprehension is aprocess which is complex, dynamic and rather fragile, bringing great difficulties tointerpreters for its instantaneity and immediacy. The speaker’s accent, the flow ofspeech, the on-spot pressure and other elements make listening is the link thatproblems will most likely to occur. Among these factors, accent and speech flowproblems stand out to be severely hindering the listening comprehension ofinterpreters. Therefore, this report aims at exploring listening comprehension barriersat the phonetic level: accent and the flow of speech, and proposing coping strategies.This report is composed of five parts. The first part is the introduction, whichdeals with the research background, research significance and research questions.The second part is the literature review. This part mainly explores the definitions ofinterpretation, the classification of interpretation, the definition of listeningcomprehension and that of listening comprehension barriers, accent, and the flow ofspeech as a whole. Meanwhile, this part also includes a major literature review aboutinterpretation and listening comprehension barriers from four perspectives. The thirdpart is the methodology. The fourth part is the discussion of listening comprehensionbarriers with its focus put on the accent and the flow of speech. In this part,paragraphs and several sentences are excerpted from press conference and speechesto demonstrate how accent and the flow of speech cause obstacles to interpretation.The fifth part mainly explores the coping strategies to settle down barriers caused byaccent and the flow of speech. The sixth part is the conclusion which summarizes theresults of discussion in part3and the limitations of this thesis.