A Report On The Interpreting Of Powering The Future: The Energy Planet

Simultaneous Interpreting, short as SI, is one of the most frequently used multi-task interpreting activities in international conferences and business meetings. Simultaneous interpreters convey the same thoughts and emotions expressed by the source language in another language, the target language, almost at the same speed of the speaker. Such an activity requires interpreters to strike a balance among listening, comprehension, memory and interpreting.Daniel Gile, an interpreting researcher, put forward “the Effort Model of SI”, that is “Simultaneous Interpreting = Listening and Analysis + Short Term Memory + Speech Production + Coordination”.As a simultaneous activity, SI has an important feature, ear-voice-span, which refers to the time between receiving messages and deliver messages. Simultaneous interpreters have to coordinate listening, analysis, memory and message delivery. Meantime, they need to store the following messages in short term memory. The ear-voice-span in SI and the differences between English and Chinese languages restrict interpreters from adjusting the structure of source language. Otherwise, the completion of SI would be difficult because the interpreter cannot balance his effort properly. However, the principle of syntactic linearity, by shortening the ear-voice-span and alleviating short-term memory load, can effectively solve the problem.The thesis focuses on the application of the principle of syntactic linearity in English-Chinese SI in the case of a documentary named Powering the Future: The Energy Planet on Discovery Channel. Hosted by the chief scientist of The Nature Conservancy, Dr. Sanjayan, the documentary includes almost all the issues relating to new energy, enlightening people on the exploration of clean, safe and renewable energy.This interpretation task was completed under the guidance of the principle of syntactic linearity. The author is able to get a better understanding of such principle and conduct self-improvement. Besides, it will facilitate the author to achieve more progress in future practices as well as real tasks.