A Study On The Relationship Between Quantitative Features Of Notes And Qualitative Features Of Interpreting Performance

As an emerging interpreting market,China is in ever great need for professional interpreters as it increasingly exchanges with other parts in the world in politics,economy,culture and so on.Interpreting training for translation and interpreting majors therefore becomes the core of many hot debates between scholars and interpreting instructors,who differ in their opinions on interpreting teaching orientation,importance and weight of interpreting notes instruction in interpreting training and means of interpreting note-taking teaching and teacher's role.For empirical studies on interpreting notes,scholars mostly focus on the relationship between the quantitative features of notes and qualitative features of interpreting performance.In studies of this kind,scholars abroad conclude that greater number of notes leads to better interpreting performance while scholars at home could not find significant relationship between these two variables.In order to learn real-life interpreting teaching for translation and interpreting majors in China,the author of this thesis referred to previous studies and first of all carried out a preliminary research including a questionnaire survey on 104 translation and interpreting majors as well as an interview with five experienced interpreting teachers from the University of Shanghai for Science & Technology.The preliminary research seeks to understand debates on interpreting teaching from a practical point of view and tries to find effective suggestions for current interpreting teaching in China.For different answers given by scholars abroad and home in their studies on interpreting notes,the second part of the research carried out an empirical study with ten first-year Masters of Translation and Interpreting in University of Shanghai for Science & Technology.To push empirical study of notes of this kind further,the author also brought in variables of the number of legible notes,the number of effective notes,the ratio of the number of effective notes to the total number of notes and faithfulness to explore a clearer relationship between quantitative features of notes and qualitative features of interpreting performance.Based on statistical analysis and discussions of this study,findings generated are as follows: skill-based interpreting teaching with a proper portion of language training on the basis of students' foreign language proficiency is needed for current interpreting instruction for translation and interpreting majors in China;interpreting notes are of great importance in facilitating source language comprehension andinformation retaining,but such significance should not be overrated because the aim of notes remains effective interpreting performance;interpreting notes shall be imparted within the range of guidance and support instead of standard setting for the individuality of personal notes needs to be respected;there is no significant relationship between the total number of notes and interpreting performance but the number of legible notes,the number of effective notes,the ratio of the number of effective notes to the total number of notes and faithfulness are proved effective in the study of the relationship between quantitative features of notes and qualitative features of interpreting performance.