Linguistic Parameters Affecting Interpreting Quality Assessment: How Predicatable?

What linguistic parameter can effectively predict interpreting assessment results?Neither overseas nor domestic scholars have attempted any holistic and quantitativeresearch on this topic. In this regard, this study aims to answer the aforementionedquestion. The present research takes China’s senior English major students as subjects,collects and transcribes90TEM-8Interpreting Test (2007) records.20interpretingfactors under the category of grammatical accuracy, grammatical complexity, lexicon,fluency, cohesion and completeness are investigated to explore their capability ofdistinguishing interpreting levels and their correlation with interpreting assessmentresults by way of One-way ANOVA and Discriminant Analysis. The findings are:1)parameters under the category of discourse completeness have the strongestlevel-distinction capability, followed by fluency, grammatical accuracy and cohesion;2) parameters having the highest correlation with interpreting assessment results areunder the category of discourse completeness, followed by fluency and grammaticalaccuracy. This is further supported by Discriminant Analysis results. Based on thefindings, this study proposed that features of grammatical accuracy, fluency andcompleteness synergistically predict interpreting assessment results. This study maygive implications for interpreting test preparation, interpreting quality researchmethodology, interpreting teaching and interpreting assessment.