A Study On Anxiety Of Student Interpreters In Interpreting Contest

Interpreting is the most challenging task in foreign language study. Due to the time promptness and complexity of source and target language, interpreting anxiety is very common among interpreters, especially student interpreters. Anxiety exerts great influence on interpreting performance. An interpreter may exhibit good interpreting performance in daily training, but make a bungle in contests due to interpreting anxiety. In addition, in recent years, various interpreting contests, both at national level and at regional level, are held in China, including Interpreting Contest held by Translators Association of China, Cross-Strait Interpreting Contest held by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, and "Lange Cup" English-Chinese Interpretation Contest held by Guangdong Foreign Language Institute. There are large numbers of classroom anxiety and test anxiety studies in the field of second language learning, but few studies are made on interpreting anxiety of student interpreters. As far as the writer knows, there has been no relevant research on interpreting contest anxiety.As an empirical research, this thesis aims at finding out the causes of anxiety and putting forward some suggestions. The writer chose 54 college students in Hunan Province as the subjects. Based on their performance in First Hunan Postgraduates English Translation Competition on November,23,2014 and Interpreting Contest in Hunan Province on March,23,2015, the writer has conducted a quantitative and qualitative study on student interpreters'interpreting contest anxiety by means of questionnaire paper, interview and other empirical methods and has reached the following conclusions.1) Interpreting contest anxiety affects student interpreters. Its severity and scope differs from person to person.2) Student interpreters'intrinsic motivation and interpreting anxiety is negatively correlated. There is no significant correlation between student interpreters'extrinsic motivation and interpreting anxiety.3) Student interpreters'performance and interpreting test anxiety are negatively correlated. 4) Being affected by other students'anxiety, being unaccustomed to the scene of the contest, awareness of their own mistakes, fear of judges'negative evaluation are the main direct causes of student's contest anxiety.Based on these findings, this thesis puts forward the following coping strategies:1) Enhancement of intrinsic motivation; 2) Practice of public speaking skills; 3) Simulation of the scene of interpreting contest; 4) Improvement of second language proficiency and interpreting strategies. It is hoped that this thesis can help to lower interpreting anxiety and improve the performance of student interpreters.