Using Voice Input To Assist Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpretation

Based on Daniel Gile’s "Effort Model" and some empirical research, this paper explores the possibility of using voice input software to assist Chinese-English simultaneous interpretation (SI) and carries out an experiment to see the influence.After consulting teachers and interpreters, the author decides to use iFlytek Voice Input for the experiment and introduces it in the first part. Second, the paper introduces Daniel Gile’s Effort Models on simultaneous interpretation with and without text and proposes the effort model of SI with voice input assistance, assuming that with less memory and reading requirement, interpreters could have more capacity available for production and thus enhance the quality of output.To prove that, an experiment is conducted to see the influence of C-E simultaneous interpretation with voice input assistance. Using iFlytek and Corel Video Studio, the author designs a C-E simultaneous interpretation interface and conducts comparative experiments on two groups of students to see the influence of it on the quality of output, including correctness, fluency, EVS and sentence structure. Quantitative and qualitative analyses are made in this part. The author also analyzes the coping strategy of interpreters when text display delays and collects interpreters’ feedback.In the last part, the paper concludes that using voice input software in C-E simultaneous interpretation helps improve data correctness, reduce self-correction and improve sentence structure. Yet the delay of text display undermines the positive side. When the delay exceeds10seconds, there would be omissions of information, long pauses and sudden slowdowns. Although interpreters can rescue the situation by reallocating efforts, slowing down and adding introductory phrases, they would lose faith in voice input assistance and only refer to it when they run into effort saturation, especially when lots of numbers pop up. Therefore, improving language-chunk recognition and shortening text display delay are essential for its application.