Report On Consecutive Interpreting For The Promotion Conference On Mining Industry Of Canada At The China-ASEAN Expo

On September23rd,2012, the author provided consecutive interpretation for the Promotion Conference on Mining Industry of Canada at the China-ASEAN Expo. This report is an account and reflection of that assignment, describing the direct and indirect preparation, the interpretation process and case studies before drawing a conclusion.The Introduction lays out the event background, task description and purpose of the report. In Chapter2, two phases are distinguished in the preparation stage:indirect and direct preparation. The former covers language proficiency, subject knowledge, intercultural communication awareness, professional ethics, and health and attitude. Direct preparation refers to work targeted at a certain assignment, including preparation outside of conference documents, preparation of conference documents and on-site preparation. Chapter3provides an overview of the interpretation process, covering Chinese and English speeches, the Q&A session and crisis management. Case studies are made in Chapter4to illustrate three pronounced problems in the interpretation:being bound by the source language; difficulty in handling long sentences and occurrence of disfluencies. The cases are viewed in light of Danica Seleskovitch’s Interpretive Theory of Translation and Daniel Gile’s Effort Model, uncovering three main issues in the preparation work, which are then discussed and summarized. Lastly a conclusion is made, verifying the importance of pre-interpreting preparation and value of using theory to examine one’s interpretation.This report aims at reflecting on the interpreter’s performance for improvement. Hopefully it may provide insight for fellow colleagues in this exciting and challenging profession.