A Report On The Consecutive Interpreting For The Academic Lecture—Wet Architecture

The report is on the interpreting for an academic lecture. It describes the author’s practice on the English to Chinese consecutive interpreting for the academic lecture entitled Wet Architecture in the Forestry College of Guangxi University in2013. The author concentrates on reviewing the whole process of preparation before interpreting at first; then, Peter Newmark’s classification of text functions is employed to analyze the main functions of the source text, namely, informative and vocative function. Accordingly, semantic translation and communicative translation methods are used to guide the interpreting practice. In case study, the interpretation of terminologies, discourse marker "you know" and parallel sentences are taken as examples to illustrate the interpreting strategies in the practice. In the end, the author assesses the interpreting practice and puts forward suggestions on interpreting academic lectures:first of all, overall preparation before interpreting is a must. And subject knowledge preparation and the glossary preparation should be given priority. Secondly, the translation of formulistic expressions and repeated phrases and sentences can be translated in advance. Thirdly, do not concentrate too much on identifying the exact words in interpreting if the lecturer has a strong and elusive accent. Interpreters should focus more on the comprehension of the whole sentences instead. Fourthly, in the process of interpreting, reasonable speculation is available if the interpreter takes advantage of all the supplementary means presented by the speaker on the site. Fifthly, paraphrasing is a useful tactic for interpreting unprepared terminologies and unclear expressions.