An Experiment Report On Omission Phenomena Among Student Interpreters And Experienced Interpreters In English-Chinese Consecutive Interpreting

Interpreting is a special activity of information transmission between languages,in which omissions can not only trigger information loss,but also can be used as an effective simplification strategy commonly employed in interpreting training and practice.In recent years,more studies focus on simultaneous interpreting,offering explanations for information loss or justifying the inevitability of omissions from the perspective of cognitive psychology.However,efforts shed on omission phenomena in consecutive interpreting are far from adequate,let alone explorations from the perspective of meta-linguistic awareness,taking the interpreters' consciousness into account.This observational experiment is participated by six student interpreters and three experienced interpreters,and is intended to describe what influences the participants may have on the information transmission through conscious information evaluation,employment of simplification strategies and self-monitor and repairs.Three questions are explored.First,whether the omissions are made consciously or unconsciously?Second,what types of omissions are made respectively by the student interpreters and the experienced interpreters,and whether information loss is caused?And third,how different kinds of omissions distribute and change at different stages of the interpreting task.The experiment has three findings:1.Differences in strategic consciousness and erroneous omission occurrences result in different degreess of information loss.2.Different kinds of omission demonstrate an oval shape during the interpreting process,large in the middle and small at both ends.Besides,conscious strategic omissions take dominance for the experienced interpreters,while the student interpreters have a significant increase of erroneous omissions.3.Interpreters are able to monitor their own performances and make repairs during the interpreting process,where they show especially strong awareness towards the conscious unintentional omissions.The above findings indicate that strengthening the basic skills of information structural and textual evaluation and analysis of interpreting practice in further training and learning,cultivating student interpreters' sensitivity towards information,and improving their strategic awareness and self-monitor and repairs help to enhance the interpreting quality and reduce the information loss.