The Effect Of Interpreter’s Direct Visual Access To The Speaker On Simultaneous Interpreting— An Empirical Study On Interpreting Trainees Of GDUFs

In simultaneous interpreting(SI), the interpreter’s visual input encompasses nonverbal information sent by the speaker, a complete view of the participants, the venue as well as visual presentations. A direct visual access to the speaker is one source of nonverbal communication. Previous studies have documented conference interpreters’ demand to see the speaker in person while performing SI tasks. Besides,a direct and unobstructed view of the speaker is also an explicit requirement in the Professional Code of AIIC. However, many interpreters still perform well in SI even if the working condition is short of a clear and direct view of the speaker. Due to limited research regarding visual input in SI, whether interpreter’ direct visual access to the speaker really facilitates better interpretation still remains a myth.Based on Poyatos’ Triple Structure about speech and Gile’s Effort Model, this thesis sets out to explore for interpreters, whether direct visual access to the speaker has an effect on their performance of SI. For this purpose, an experiment involving twelve interpreting trainees from the School of Interpreting and Translation Studies,Guangdong University of Foreign Studies was conducted to test the differences between interpretation with and without the interpreter seeing the speaker in person.Besides, two follow-up interviews were conducted for further analysis.It is found in this research that direct visual access to the speaker does not have a conspicuous effect on interpreters’ SI output despite their continuous demand. That being said, the demand of seeing a live speaker is not completely unreasonable due to the role it plays in interpreters’ mentality by making interpreters more confident and concentrated, and giving interpreters the feeling of being on-site rather than isolated.Therefore, it is the psychological need of interpreters that triggers such a demand.Though the SI output fails to reflect any effects caused by a direct view of the speaker,the psychological need of interpreters does prove that this working condition can have an influence on the SI process.