A Consecutive Interpreting Practice Report On Politics-Themed Lecture "Crisis On Western Democracy?" Under The Interpretive Theory

Proposed by Seleskovitch in 1968,the Interpretive Theory is one of the mainstream theories for interpreting studies.The theory’s emergence has profoundly changed the landscape of traditional translation studies by filling theoretical vacuum in interpreting.Danica Seleskovitch is known as the mother of the theory,considering her extraordinary contribution in formulating hypothesis,core conceptions,and explanatory models.These are building blocs shaping the theoretical framework of the Interpretive Theory.Seleskovitch also invented world famous ESIT pedagogy for professional conference interpreters,guided by the theory.Her effort paves the way for the theory’s future development.As Seleskovitch’s disciple,Lederer broadened the theory as she seeks to explore the relationship among language,memory,and parole.Thanks to her,the Interpretive Theory has become mature.The theory holds that an actual process of interpretation is not only consist of comprehension and re-expression,but also deverbalization,which is often neglected by people.In other words,as an act of communication,interpretation aims at transferring messages.To do the work efficiently,deverbalization of source text is considered as a necessity.Meanwhile,during this process,interpreters should be able to make cognitive complements,which usually involve the combination of language expertise,encyclopedia knowledge and context knowledge.Known as an academic institution whose main fields are China’s rural areas and Chinese farmers,Institute of China Rural Studies,CCNU,in recent years,has organized a series of academic lectures on politics and China rural studies and invited famous political scientists and researchers world-wide as lecturers for International academic exchange.On May.22,2018,it invited John Keane,world leading professor of political science and professor from University of Sydney,to give a lecture titled "Crisis on Western Democracy?Review and Comment on the Latest literature and Their Arguments" at the Great Science Hall,CCNU.The author was recommended as the conference interpreter and adopted consecutive interpreting as working mode.Guided by core principles including deverbalization,cognitive complements,and information processing pattern,the interpreter took specific strategies before,in and after the interpreting task,which attached great importance to background knowledge preparation,comprehension on logical framework of source information,deverbalization on source text,well-balanced memory distribution assisted with systematic notes,flexible re-expression.After the task,he filed a work report based on review and case study,with transcript,analysis,self-evaluation,questionaire constituting the main methodology.The thesis,as a reflection on different stages of interpreting process,has proved that deverbalization,cognitive complements,and information processing pattern are instructive to interpretation practice.It’s main findings conclude:a.Interpreter’s accuracy in listening and comprehension increases,accompanied with fewer notes and less pressure on short-term memory when he has a good commanding of topic-related knowledge.b.If resorting to deverbalization on source text and properly adopting translation techniques including syntactical shifts,addition,and omission,an interpreter is capable of delivering the the speaker’s idea faithfully.The thesis also observes that in dealing with cultural-loaded expressions,intranslatability does exist,which has long been denied by the Interpretive Theory.This thesis can serve as reference for beginners facing with academic lecture interpretation task.