An Exploratory Study Of The Correlation Between Interpreter Trainees'Personality And Their Interpreting Performance

In today's globalized world,China has more frequent interactions with other countries so that interpreters are in greater need in China.In this case,Master of Translation and Interpreting(MTI)was launched in 2007 in order to cultivate a large number of interpreting talents serving as the bridge to promote China's communication with the world.The fact is that language proficiency and other cognitive factors are still in the dominant position in interpreting admission tests and training.Personality,however,as an very important non-cognitive factor,also has certain impact on interpreting performance which deserves more attentionThis study is intended to explore the correlation between personality and interpreting performance guided by Eysenck's Personality Theory.It employed both quantitative and qualitative research methods.40 English interpreting postgraduates participated in this study,including 23 second-year and 17 third-year students in College of Foreign Languages and Cultures(CFLC)at Xiamen University(XMU).They completed Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Scale for Chinese(EPQ-RSC)which tested four dimensions of personality.In the questionnaire,they also reported their final exam scores of consecutive interpreting(CI)(I)and simultaneous interpreting(SI)(I)courses which were used to measure their interpreting performance.The collected data were analyzed by SPSS 22.0 to find out whether correlation exists between each dimension of personality and interpreting performance.According to participants' scores on extroversion and emotional stability,they were divided into four groups of different personality types,namely,extrovert instability,extrovert stability,introvert stability and introvert instability which are respectively corresponding to four ancient temperaments in Greece,including choleric,sanguine,phlegmatic and melancholy.Qualitative interview was also adopted to verify the results of questionnaire and personality type classification of quantitative study.Finally,these four groups' interpreting performance was compared with each other according to their mean scores of interpreting courses.This study finds correlations between two dimensions of personality—extroversion and neuroticism—and interpreting performance.There is weak positive correlation between extroversion and CI&SI and weak negative correlation is found between neuroticism and CI&SI.Specifically speaking,extroverted interpreter trainees perform better than introverted ones and interpreter trainees with more stable emotions perform better than those with unstable emotions.Another finding indicates that interpreter trainees with different personality types have different interpreting performance.The sanguine group performs the best and the melancholy group performs the worst in both CI and SI.The correlation analysis also demonstrates that extroversion and neuroticism are more closely correlated to SI performance than to CI performance.In view of the major findings in this study,some recommendations are proposed to interpreting admission tests and training.The limitations of this study are discussed and suggestions are offered to future researchers.