Impact Of Numbers On Student Interpreters In English-to-Chinese Simultaneous Interpreting And Coping Tactics

This thesis focuses on the impact of numbers on student interpreters in English-to-Chinese simultaneous interpretation and coping tactics.In order to become professional interpreters,students have to receive special training on simultaneous interpretation.Long sentences with dense numbers are regarded as a major obstacle for students and even professional interpreters because numbers are characterized by low redundancy and low predictability.Besides,there is a difference between the numerical systems in English and in Chinese.Based on Daniel Gile's Effort Model,this thesis discusses the impact of different types of numbers through an experiment with ten students being subjects.The material of the experiment is an excerpt from the speech given by Chinese Ambassador Liu Xiaoming.After the experiment,the researcher has interviews with the subjects to figure out the causes of misinterpretation and coping tactics.This thesis has drawn the conclusion that student interpreters have the highest accuracy rate on ordinal numbers and the lowest accuracy rate on numbers larger than 10,000.Omission is the most frequent error that student interpreters make.Interpreters would be likely to make mistakes on:(1)sentences with dense numbers of sequential percentages;(2)sentences with dense large numbers;and(3)sentences with dense numbers and complicated information.In these cases,numbers would be a problem trigger and cause failure sequences.Coping tactics include training before interpretation and tactics that can be adopted when doing the interpretation.Training before interpretation refers to regular and intensive training on number interpretation.During the interpretation process,interpreters could take notes or make approximations to reduce the pressure on short-term memory.This thesis could be regarded as a guide for students when they are receiving training on number interpretation.