Barriers To Listening Comprehension In Video Translation: A Case Study

Video translation is an important type of tasks that lies somewhere between consecutive interpreting and translation. Same as the former, an important part of it is listening comprehension, which determines whether an interpreter could successfully understand the speaker and complete the task. It is also a weak point and bottleneck for many. In interpreting tasks, some factors may create obstacles to listening comprehension, such as accents.This paper briefly describes one video translation task the author has engaged, analyzes obstacles to listening comprehension in this task and provides coping strategies accordingly.To better analyze the problems, this paper applies Daniel Gile's comprehension equation model, "C(Comprehension) = KL(Knowledge of the Language) + ELK(Extra-linguistic Knowledge) + A(Analysis)". Based on analysis, the author found that two major obstacles are blocking listening comprehension in this task: One is the speaker's accent and the other is interpreter's lack of extra-linguistic knowledge.