A Report On Consecutive Interpreting In A Seminar On Instructional Leadership

This report is based on a consecutive interpreting task carried out by the author in a seminar on instructional leadership held by South China Normal University (SCNU).In the report, the entire process of the interpreting task is presented and the major factors leading to anxiety in interpreting of the author are discussed and analyzed.On April 10th, 2016, the author served as a consecutive interpreter for the first time in a real working environment at the Teachers' Development Center in Shunde for a seminar on instructional leadership alongside two U.S. educators and principals and teachers from SCNU and in Shunde. During the pre-task preparation, the author applied the Internet for additional knowledge after reading the profiles of the speakers and the materials on the seminar. During the task, the main strategies used by the author to deal with the challenges occurred were omission and paraphrasing.By doing this consecutive interpreting task, the author realized that the difficulties encountered could be summed up as the external and the internal ones and they could cause anxiety in interpreting that affected the performance of the author. Based on the classifications put forward by Kang, the author analyzed the illocutionary factors and the locutionary factors causing anxiety in interpreting and their impact on the output.The illocutionary factors discussed in the report include mental factor, cognitive factor and environmental factor, while the locutionary factors comprise information volume factor, bilingual knowledge factor and language technique factor. The analysis may help the author and other trainee interpreters better deal with anxiety in interpreting and improve their output in future interpreting practice.