Factors That Influence Student Interpreter's Key Message Extraction Efficiency In Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpreting And The Coping Strategies

This thesis explores factors that influence key message extraction efficiency in Chinese-English (C-E) Simultaneous Interpreting (SI) and the relevant coping strategies.In the literature review part, Daniel Gile's Effort Model is introduced to explain the information processing process of SI and possible problem triggers for interpreters. Next, the thesis reviews previous studies of omission and its classification in SI and points out the difference between omission, miss of interpretation and information loss. If interpreters can actively omit some information that is irrelevant to the theme, he or she can save more effort to improve SI performance. Then the thesis defines the concept of key message and secondary information. It points out that it is omission of key message that mainly harms the accomplishment of the speaker's goal of communication and brings risks to cooperation. At last, previous studies on omission and key message extraction in SI are summarized and insufficiencies pointed out to explore new room for study.In the empirical part, the author adopts a speech of an engineer from Beijing Transport Energy & Environment Center on 2014 China-US Clean Transport Policy and Tech Summit as the testing material and invites seven students who have learned SI for one semester from the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation of Beijing Foreign Studies University to participate in the experiment. Based on the experimental results, a quantitative analysis is made to figure out the quantity and omission of primary and secondary information for each examinee, followed by a qualitative analysis that sums up the major problems triggers.The thesis finds that when the speech is delivered in high-speed, student interpreters tend to ignore the context and find it difficult to tell primary information from secondary information. They follow the text too closely, which only leads to fragmented production without any logic. If interpreters can adapt to the speed instead of sheer panicking, adjust their EVS to facilitate active listening and use strategies like omission and summary, they can achieve better SI performance.