Improvement Of Coherence In Consecutive Interpreting For Training From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

From the perspective of relevance theory,this study takes the author's interpreting practice in an Egyptian training course as the research object and studies coherence in consecutive interpreting for training.The author first reviews studies related to coherence and Relevance Theory.After that,the author analyzes his own consecutive interpreting experience in a training course.Within the framework of relevance theory,factors affecting the coherence of consecutive interpreting are discussed,and incoherence problems arising from the combined influences of these factors are analyzed with some representative cases from the practice.In the end,based on a reflection on the interpreting practice,after considering the two relevance principles of Relevance Theory and the characteristics of consecutive interpreting in the classroom setting,the author put forward coping strategies to improve coherence in consecutive interpreting for training.The study finds that the speaker factors and the audience factors affect the intensity of relevance between the speaker's discourse and the audience's cognitive environment and jointly determine the contextual effects,thus influencing coherence.In concrete terms,the speaker factors include information structure and information amount of the discourse of the speaker.The audience factors include the audience's understanding of the previous text,their knowledge on the subject and cross-cultural knowledge,and the focus of the audience's attention.Under the combined influences of these factors,three problems causing incoherence occur.(1)Unreasonable information structure.(2)Information deficiency.Deficiency of contexts occurs due to the implicitness of the speaker's discourse and lack of cognitive environment of the audience.(3)Information redundancy.These could waste the efforts of the audience to establish relevance.In the end,three coping strategies are recommended to improve interpreting coherence: structure adjustment,explicitness,and simplification of discourse to strengthen contextual effects,reduce processing efforts spent by the audience,and strengthen the relevance between the discourse and the audience,thus improving coherence in consecutive interpreting for training.