A Study On Students' Number Interpretation In Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpreting

This thesis,by means of experiments and interviews,studies student interpreters'interpretation of numbers in Chinese-English simultaneos interpreting,aiming to investigate error rates,most common errors,type of errors,reasons for number misinterpretation,and coping strategies.The study finds that error rate of number interpretation ranges between 16%and 64%,which suggests a wide variation between individuals.Besides,the number most vulnerable to misinterpretation is big integer(?1000),followed by percentage and decimal.Furthermore,the most glaring number interpretation error is omission,followed by syntactic mistakes and lexical mistakes.According to the findings of interviews,student interpreters' number interpretation errors are caused by both subjective and objective factors.Subjective factors include inappropriate efforts allocation,incompetence of number reformulation,slip of the tongue,insensitivity to numbers,and slow delivery.Objective factors are high information density of texts or numbers and different numeral systems between Chinese and English.Based on the findings of interviews on student interpreters with a higher accuracy on number interpretation,there are on-line strategies and pre-interpreting strategies.The former ones include approximation,priority to number,number reformulation in the course of note taking,active anticipation,and expressing numbers in one's most convenient way while the latter ones include exercises and training on number interpretation and background knowledge preparation.In the light of those findings,this thesis aims to provide suggestions to professional and trainee interpreters on number interpretation.