A Report On The Consecutive Interpreting For Program For Young Leaders From Pacific Island Countries

This report is based on the consecutive interpreting performed by the author for the Lingnan Culture Lecture.The lecture is part of the 2018 Program for Young Leaders from Pacific Island Countries and is comprised of a formal presentation and a QA session.It lasted for about two and a half hours and the interpreting was mainly from Chinese to English.In retrospection,the author found her interpreting filled with literal transcoding,and thus distinctive of Chinglish,compromising the overall quality of the interpreting.With the author’s interpreter training experience,she had known better than a literal translation,at least in theory.Why was the English rendition so literal then?To answer this question,the author turned to the Interpretive Theory of Translation(ITT),the first interpreting theory that denies pure linguistic transfer as a correct view of interpreting.ITT was put up in the late 1960 s by Danica Seleskovitch,the founder of the Paris School.It sees interpreting as a means of communication that focuses on the transmission of sense rather than transcoding words.And a complete process of interpreting is comprised of three stages,comprehension,de-verbalization and reformulation(Seleskovitch & Lederer.1995).Each stage plays an important role in the work of the next one.Comprehension is the prerequisite for de-verbalization,and de-verbalization marks as an essential step for reformulation,the performance of which,in the end,impacts the overall quality of the interpreting.With ITT as a guiding philosophy,the author found out that literal translation happens if either of the three stages of interpreting is failed.Insufficient information processing,lack of de-verbalization and improper language usage in reformulation were the three major causes for her literal transcoding.To avoid these problems,she needs to first focus on analyzing information,then break away with the interference from the source language,and finally,restructure the message by following the rules and laws of English.