Experimental Report-the Application Of Stenography To Chinese-English Interpreting

Interpreting plays an important role in international exchange and its qualityoften directly affects the outcome of the exchange. In order to improve the quality ofinterpreting, scholars at home and abroad have done a variety of studies, which，to acertain degree，plays a guiding role in improving interpreters`competence. However,the fundamental problems such as the reduction of interpreting difficulty and theimprovement of interpreting quality still remain unsolved. With the repaiddevelopment of science and technology today, can we change the traditionalinterpreting model to reduce interpreting difficulty and improve its quality byapplying the fruits of science and technology? It is a question worthy of discussion,which is also the key point of the study of this paper.In the first chapter, this paper proposed the hypothesis of applying stenographyto Chinese-English interpreting on the basis of a brief review of the domestic andoverseas scholars`research achievements in area of interpreting study concerned.Chapter two theoretically proved the feasibility of the combination of stenographywith Chinese-English interpreting through exploring the speed of Chinese speech andstenography and comparing sight translation efforts with interpreting efforts. To verifythe hypothesis, Chapter three conducted an experiment, in which comparison is firstlymade among the four interpreters in cases of with or without assistant of stenographyin the process of interpreting. After the experiment, the procedure involves theaudience’ scoring, interpreter’s interview and quantitative analysis of the dataprovided. The result shows that the excellent stenographers`input speed exceeds thespeaker’s speech, which can provide real-time words recording for interpreters. At thesame time, interpreters read those words and do the interpretation, and thus theinterpreting is transformed into sight interpreting. In view of this, the interpreting ismore faithful to the speaker and delivers more information, so the quality ofinterpreting is highly improved. The last chapter came to a conclusion that theapplication of stenography to Chinese-English interpreting is an effective way toreduce difficulty of interpreting and improve quality of interpreting.