How Can Inexperienced Interpreters Handle Challenges Caused By Unfamiliar Topics In Chinese-to-English Simultaneous Interpretation

Although interpreters can have a rough understanding of new topics through pre-conference preparation, they are still relatively unfamiliar with those topics compared with the ones they have already known a lot about. As a result, interpreters have to make more efforts to dealing with difficulties brought by terminologies, lack of background knowledge, intensive information, and source language structures. This is especially the case for inexperienced interpreters because most of them lack real interpreting experience. Thus, they would be more likely to panic when facing interpreting difficulties, which will ultimately hinder the proceeding of interpretation. Given that it is more likely for inexperienced interpreters to encounter the this kind of difficulties, it is necessary to study the possible strategies that can be used by them to deal with the difficulties brought by unfamiliar topics.Based on the Effort Model and the influences of unfamiliar topics, the researcher selected several interpreting strategies, namely omission, summarizing, waiting, amplification. Through empirical study, the researcher selected several typical sentences and analyzed the strategies used by the interpreters and the quality of their interpretation both quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative analysis showed that strategy taking and the quality of interpretation are positively correlated; in qualitative analysis, specific strategies for each interpreting difficulty were explored respectively. Through this thesis, the researcher has better understood the way to deal with interpreting challenges caused by unfamiliar topics in Chinese-to-English SI, and hopes that it could also be beneficial to other inexperienced interpreters.