Strategies For Shortening Ear-Voice Span In Simultaneous Interpreting And Their Application

With the increasingly deepening of globalization, international communications havebeen more frequently carried out all over the world, including exchanges of political,cultural, economic and environmental issues, etc. In particular, the importance ofenvironmental issues has been highlighted. People begin to realize the significance ofenvironmental protection which is closely related to man kind’s survival. At the same time,numerous theme speeches on international conferences are associated with this issue. Thispaper selects “An Inconvenient Truth”, a speech about global warming given by former USVice President, Al Gore, aiming at providing some suggestions for oral interpreters whenthey deal with environment-related discourses.The case study is based on Gile’s Effort Model (1995). In accordance with this model,simultaneous interpreting is a process of time allocation and an addition of listening,memory, coordination and production, i.e., SI=L+M+C+P. Time allocation of these fourparts determines the inevitability of ear-voice span in simultaneous interpreting. However,meaningless lengthening of ear-voice span will result in information missing, informationinterruption, receptors’ confusion and other deficiencies. It is essentially required thatinterpreters should effectively shorten ear-voice span in a successful simultaneousinterpreting.This paper aims at exploring strategies for shortening ear-voice span in E-Csimultaneous interpreting, based on an analysis of the case–“An Inconvenient Truth”. Itreflects on how the strategies adopted in the case can be applied into similar texts. First ofall, the paper analyzes the difficulties which cause the lengthening of ear-voice span,including complex-structured long sentences and information-dense short sentences.Subsequently, the paper proposes some strategies to effectively shorten ear-voice span withsome specific examples. In addition, the paper also raises the application of theses strategies, i.e., how to apply the strategies into similar texts, aiming at providing somereferences for interpretations and practices later.