An Analysis Of Simultaneous Interpretation Skills Based On The Interpretive Theory

With the thrusting development of China, there is a great increase in communication between China and other countries around the world, covering political, educational, economic, cultural, and other fields. Consequently, interpreters, especially those simultaneous interpreters, often find themselves faced with highly demanding tasks. This thesis is to study simultaneous interpretation skills based on the Interpretive Theory. According to the famous French translation theorist Danica Seleskovitch, the purpose of interpretation is a process of conveying the speaker’s intended meaning irrespective of the linguistic forms. The Interpretive Theory holds that there are generally three steps in interpreting practice, i.e. comprehension, de-verbalization and re-expression. So far this theory has been functioning as the guiding principle in translation practice. The author of this thesis believes that the Interpretive Theory can also be applied to simultaneous interpretation so as to achieve effectiveness. Therefore, this thesis explores, from the perspective of the Interpretive Theory, the concrete process of Chinese-English simultaneous interpretation, elaborating on the handling of words, sentences and paragraphs respectively, aiming at finding the approaches as to how the three steps can be applied to the interpretation practice. Hopefully, this research may offer some constructive strategies that simultaneous interpreters would find helpful.