A Study On The Causes And Countermeasures Of Information Loss In C-E Consecutive Interpreting

Consecutive interpreting (CI) is one of the major working modes for professional interpreters; it isalso a leading form of exercises for students majoring interpreting. Thus studies on CI demonstrate athriving development trend recently and have already yielded some fruitful results. Nevertheless, moreefforts still need to be made for further academic progress because studies on this field are far from beingadequate. Information loss, as a kind of performance failure, is not only a headache for professionals, butalso a difficulty which has plagued lots of student interpreters. However, there are only limited studies onthis topic, among which most of them are largely focused on simultaneous interpreting (SI) and littleattention is given to information loss in CI.Nowadays, the most popular research model in interpreting is the general empirical interpretingresearch with interdisciplinary perspective. Daniel Gile is just a leading role in this field. He made lots ofempirical studies and formulated the Effort Model (EM) as well as the Tightrope Hypothesis with the aid ofrelevant concepts of cognitive psychology. Based on his EM for CI and Tightrope Hypothesis, the presentstudy takes12MTI students majoring interpreting as subjects and intends to probe into information loss inone-way C-E consecutive interpreting. It is aimed at answering the following questions:1) what are themain causes for information loss in C-E consecutive interpreting on the part of student interpreters?2)among all the causes which may trigger information loss for student interpreters in C-E consecutiveinterpreting, which one accounts for the biggest weight and what correlation can be found existing betweeninformation loss and this factor?3) As to information loss in C-E consecutive interpreting, what measuresshould be taken by students to avoid them?To answer the questions, the following parts of research methodology are covered: tape-recording,interview and questionnaire. The author first recorded the on-site interpreting versions of the subjects andthen used stimulated recall (SR) to have an interview with each of them once recording was finished. Laterthe questionnaires were distributed among more students and all the collected raw data were sorted out andcomputed in light of Cai Xiaohong’s division of information unit and Zhang Peibei&Ren Jingsheng’sinterpreting fidelity evaluation method. Analysis and discussions of the statistical results of SPSS13.0weremade based on Gile’s relevant theories.According to the work done above, the thesis concludes that the main causes which may triggerinformation loss in C-E consecutive include attentional resources saturation, inadequate working language competence, unfavorable memory ability, insufficient note-taking skill and high information density of thesource speech, etc.Statistical results of multiple linear regression analysis show that each of these causes is correlatedwith information loss, but attentional resources saturation presents a relatively higher significant correlationwith information loss. Results of partial correlation analysis further prove that attentional resourcessaturation is the key factor in triggering information loss, with the other four variables only exerting a“mixed” influence.Countermeasures can be adopted to avoid information loss, such as minimizing processing capacityrequirement of each effort and optimizing the allocation of total attentional resources, both of which caneffectively reduce the possibility of attentional resources saturation so as to reduce information loss.Specific tactics for the two countermeasures include reasonable segmentation of SL and the flexible useand coordination of note-taking in CI, etc.