A Practice Report On The Interpreting Of David Eagleman's TED Speech

Usually,TED speeches are presented to Chinese people in the form of video with subtitles,but there are other cross-cultural communication occasions where they need to be interpreted live.For example,when TEDx activities held by domestic colleges and universities or independent bodies invite foreigners as speakers,they usually will have live interpretation to serve the audience.Hereby,this report tries to analyze and explore the existing problems and corresponding strategies to be adopted in the mock interpretation of a TED speech,hoping to offer some guidance to the future study and practice work of the speech interpretation.This paper is a practice report on David Eagleman's TED Speech "Can we create new senses for humans?" in March,2015.This speech introduces a new idea of human brains receiving sensory signals,and the research on technology about sensory substitution and sensory addition conducted by David Eagleman and his team.In this report,the triangular model of interpreting of the interpretive theory provides a theoretical framework.As one of the main guiding theories in interpretation,the interpretive theory is very essential to the practice of consecutive interpreting,simultaneous interpreting,and mock interpreting.The basic conception of the interpretive theory is:Interpreting is not simply a one-way process of decoding from the source language to the target one,but a process of re-presenting the meaning in target language on the basis of interpreting to the original discourse.The basic view of the interpretive theory is:The act of interpreting is consisted of three stages,namely the comprehension of the meaning of source language from the perspective of listening and memorizing,deverbalization and reformulation of the meaning in the target language.This theory requires an interpreter to follow the principle of deverbalization,loyalty to the communication intention,and master of utterance cognition when interpreting.This report is divided into six parts.Part one is introduction about TED speeches,the status quo of the research on interpretation of TED speeches and this mock interpretation practice.Part two is the theoretical framework,namely the introduction of the interpretive theory and its guiding significance to the TED speech interpretation.Part three is the analysis of this mock interpretation,including the preparation before interpretation and the quality control of the practice.Part four is the difficulties and focuses encountered during interpretation,including omissions and misinterpretation.Part five is the case analysis.In this part,the author applies the interpretive theory to the detailed cases and raises the corresponding strategies to be adopted during interpretation.Part six is the summarizing part.The author summarizes her experience and lessons drawn from the whole practice,and self-examines the deficiencies and limitations of this mock interpretation.From this task description and case analysis,the report draws some conclusions:First,the interpreter should make adequate preparation before interpretation both from the verbal and non-verbal perspectives.Second,the interpretive theory proves effective in the interpretation of TED speeches.Third,with the interpretive theory as the framework,the interpreter can adopt the strategies of free translation and foreignization to master the discourse intention,adjust the sentences neatly,and highlight the semantic content when interpreting the TED speeches.And these conclusions have certain reference significance to the interpretation of TED speeches.