Report On A Simulated E-C Sight Interpreting With Text Of Apple’s 2013 Annual Report (Excerpt)

As a report on English to Chinese sight interpreting, this dissertation describes one simulated task conducted by the author for Apple’s 2013 annual report(excerpt). It analyzes the interpretation of the business, risk factors, properties and legal proceedings included in Part 1 and management’s discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations included in Part two. It targets at discussing common difficulties of sight interpreting as well as possible coping strategies and solutions.Assuming that the task process consists of “pre-interpreting preparation” and“interpreting”, the report divides “pre-interpreting preparation” into two phases according to time order, each with a different focus and function.In case study, typical examples are selected for further analysis: zero translation or zero translation plus complementary explanation for electronic and technological terms;partial translation for multimedia presentation; syntactic linearity, splitting,recombination for long sentences and four interpreting skills for passive voice sentences based on annual report’s syntactic features.Through the task description and analysis, conclusions are drawn out as follows:the corresponding coping strategies are closely related with adequate pre-interpreting preparation. It is recommended that interpreters should skim through the text to grasp the overall sense rather than become obsessed with individual words in the last phase of preparation. The factor of “text” itself serves as a double-edged sword in sight interpreting. On the one hand, text may help interpreters to deal with difficult sentence patterns, especially when the sequence of sense groups needs to be changed considerably. On the other hand, text may become an obstacle to the use of a simplification strategy or a cause of underperformance on the interpreter’s part.