An Empirical Study On Deverbalization In C-E Simultaneous Interpretinga Recognition Memory Approach

Deverbalization is a meaning and intention-oriented interpreting strategy, as opposed to a strategy based on linguistic correspondence, and it is believed to serve the communicative purpose better when the content of the source text is stripped of its linguistic form. Little experimental work, however, has been performed in the study on deverbalization; most of the literature is either theoretical or descriptive in nature. This research attempts to find out in an empirical research whether there is correlation between interpreter’s deverbalization level and quality of his/her performance. If so, will a higher deverbalization level generates better performance and vice versa? Recognition memory, an indicator of the ability to recognize previously encountered events or objects, is used to measure interpreter’s deverbalization level. The author first reviews the relevant research on deverbalization and recognition memory in the West and China to offer a holistic view of previous studies and highlights the part that inspires this research. The author then conducts an empirical research—an experiment and a survey(including recognition memory questionnaire and an interview with the subjects) to collect data(voice recordings, questionnaire statistics, and interview results) for analysis and revelation of correlation between interpreters’ deverbalization level and performance quality. The results show that subjects with better performance quality have a higher recognition memory score in meaning-changed sentence(deeper deverbalization level) while subjects with relatively poorer performance have a higher recognition score in original sentence(lower deverbalization level). The research is expected to provide some references to further studies on deverbalization.