On The Processing Of Conceptual Metaphors In English-Chinese Consecutive Interpreting:An Empirical Study Of The Effect Of Background Information

Since the 1970s,metaphor has attracted extensive attention across various fields,including translation studies.However,previous studies mainly focus on the translation rather than the interpretation of metaphors.Given that interpretation is a complex process concerning both comprehension and reformulation,interpreters must perform multiple cognitive tasks simultaneously to understand,analyze and reformulate the source language within a short period of time.As a critical area to study interpreting preparation,background information helps interpreters enhance the understanding of conceptual metaphors and improve the interpreting qualityThis paper presents an empirical study of a political speech that contains 40 conceptual metaphors.In order to explore the influence of background information on the quality of metaphor interpretation,the author has divided 22 subjects into an experimental group and a control group and had them complete Donald Trump’s Nomination Acceptance Speech The experimental group was given relevant background material in advance and had 10 minutes to read the background information,while the control group was not given background informationThrough quantitative and qualitative analyses,this study reveals that the experimental group has shorter processing time,fewer pauses and better performance;while the control group has more mistranslations,omissions and fluency problems.Therefore,this study concludes that the acquisition of background information can help interpreters alleviate their cognitive load,shorten their processing time,reduce silent and filled pauses and deliver the message more accurately,completely and fluently.