An Experiment On The Impact Of Dictation-translation Exercise On The Listening Analysis Capability Of Interpreting Beginners

With growing demand for translators and interpreters,currently in China,a large number of universities are offering interpreting courses and many more are joining.However,an effective curriculum is yet to be agreed upon.Classroom teaching at best is conducted by teachers with interpreting experience.In other cases,the teaching follows a selected course book.Hence,the learning of interpreting is more spontaneous than prescribed.Of the few teaching protocols that have been more or less recognized,interpreting begins with a solid listening analysis of the source information,especially in English,which has proved by far one of the biggest challenges for most beginners.But exactly what can be done to improve the capability in question is hardly empirically tested.The author is an interpreting major and also a fansub maker for over 6 years.When making subtitles the method of dictation-translation is sometimes applied,which is to dictate the English content first and then translate it into Chinese.The process is very similar to that of interpreting in that they both need intensive attention and timely and effective information transfer.As a result,the author found that by doing dictation-translation frequently,her interpreting ability,especially her listening analysis capability is greatly improved.Therefore the author hopes to prove the effect of dictation-translation on interpreting beginners and to further explore the application of such exercise in interpreting training.To this end,an experiment is designed.The author selected 50 second-graders of undergraduates as the subjects.They had similar education background upon their university entry and they are all beginners in interpreting.In order to ensure the subjects’ comparability,they are divided into three categories according to their scores of the listening course in Grade One: namely Category A(high score),Category B(average score)and Category C(low score).The experiment is carried out on a voluntary basis and students who signed up became the subjects on the experimental group.Before the experiment,a sampling retelling-test was carried out to better get hold of their listening competence and to discover their listening problems.Later the author carried out an 11 weeks’ dictation-translation training on the experimental group.As the experiment closed,a retelling-test was given to all subjects and their performance is rated.The experimental results show that in Category A,Category B and Category C,the scores of the subjects of the experimental group are much higher than that of the control group.The analysis of the experiment results also reveals that in terms of accuracy,the grabbing of main idea,frame-working and inferring,the experimental group is doing much better than the control group.Therefore,for interpreting beginners,when trying to develop their listening analysis capability,dictation-translation training could be of help in a short time.