An Exploratory Study On The Flow Experience Of Simultaneous Interpreting Trainees During Their Self-practice

Many current researches have been centering on interpreting itself,ranging from interpreting process,performance to product and profession.Yet,few have shed eyes on interpreters,the subject of interpreting.The most researched topics of the only few that focus on interpreters are the negative part of interpreting,such as anxiety of interpreters.By adopting flow theory and other flow studies,the paper explores the psychological feelings of interpreters.Flow experience is a psychological concept raised by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,a Hungarian American psychologist.The flow experience of interpreting in this paper is an experience that people are engaged and feel in the zone,ignoring time,disfluencies,anxiety and every other trivial things that would distract them when doing simultaneous interpreting(abbreviated as SI).The paper applies Flow State Scale(abbreviated as FSS)to test intensity of flow in interpreting and Flow Dispositional Scale(abbreviated as DFS)to explore propensity to experience flow and how the propensity to experience flow is related to the intensity of flow from the perspective of flow theory.The author illustrates the implications of flow based on the results of scales and related theory.The first chapter illustrates the research background,the rationale,the significance of the research as well as research questions of the thesis.It aims to give a preliminary introduction to the whole thesis.Chapter Two is about literature review which focuses on flow studies,and studies applying Flow Theory in foreign language education,translation and interpreting,and interpreting education.This chapter acts as a stepping stone,and provides a solid background for the following investigation.Chapter Three focuses on the theoretical framework.It mainly includes the key concepts,the relationships of key concepts,the flow theory,the flow models,and the effects of flow in interpreting self-practice.This chapter aims at explaining the concepts and theories on flow in detail,and exploring the relationship between the flow theory and the student interpreters' self-practice for simultaneous interpreting.Chapter Four illustrates the research design,which adopts the pilot research,the prior survey,and two questionnaires.By mainly drawing on Flow State Scale and Dispositional Flow Scale,it aims to collect data to answer the research questions.Chapter Five analyzes and discusses the research results.By running the data of the scales on SPSS,it aims to analyze the results to answer the research questions mainly from the perspective of certain elements of the flow experience(i.e.challenge-skill balance,clear goal,action-awareness merging,concentration on task at hand,unambiguous feedback,loss of consciousness,sense of control,autotelic experience,transformation of time)as reflected in the scales.Chapter Six discusses the conclusions,implications and limitations.The findings imply that the average intensity of flow for the student interpreters when they are self-practicing SI is at the moderate level and that Flow State Scale and Dispositional Flow Scale are related.These results suggest that the propensity to experience flow will influence the intensity of flow experience in a positive way.