Impacts Of Speech Rate On EN-CH Simultaneous Interpretation

The Interpretive School divides interpretation into three phases, comprehension, deverbalization, and reformulation. According to the Interpretive Theory, deverbalization is the process in which meaning is generated, and interpreters should get out of the linguistic forms of source language and grasp the sense underneath. This paper starts by introducing the Interpretive Theory and deverbalization, and then lists relevant studies on speech rate and the impacts of speech rate on simultaneous translation. The goal is to explore various implications speech rate may have on the process of deverbalization and on quality of delivery, and to provide some possible coping tactics.Materials studied in this paper are from the recordings of the 46th annual conference of the World Economic Forum in 2016. Based on existing research on English speech rate, this paper studied 30 minutes’of videos and transcripts using words per minute calculation.Given the evaluation criterion of faithfulness provided by the Interpretive Theory, this paper selected several key indexes to assess the performance of interpreter A and B when they translate two speeches of different rate. Those indexes include accuracy rate, number of omissions, number of mistranslation, number of transcoded key items, and number of deverbalized key items. By comparing the performance of the same interpreter when he or she translate speeches that differ in speech rate, this paper found that while translating fast speeches, interpreters tend to depend more on word-for-word translation (transcoding) instead of deverbalization. Moreover, mistranslation, omission, and slips of tongue are more likely to happen while interpreters transcode the speech.In addition, comparison between interpreter A and B suggests that interpreter A is more capable than interpreter B in terms of linguistic knowledge and cognitive knowledge, thus showing higher accuracy rate and less omission and mistransslation in translating both speeches. This finding also serves as a reminder to simultaneous interpreters that sound linguistic knowledge and profound cognitive knowledge will be of great help when translating fast speeches.Based on the statistics and specific examples, this paper puts forward several strategies to enable interpreters to better cope with high speech rate, including simplified expression, selective omission, ear-voice-span adjustment, and audience-centeredness.