| One big challenge facing interpreters is to interpret for thematic conferences with a clear orientation to technical knowledge.Thus,for most interpreters and interpreter trainees in particular who have not mastered related knowledge,pre-task preparation becomes quite crucial.This report is based on a mock interpreting task along with The Blockchain Connect Conference in which I as the practitioner served as an interpreter for the speaker Vitalik Buterin,the founder of Ethereum,an open-source,blockchain-based,decentralized software platform.This report will illustrate in detail the preparatory process conducted a week before the task date and the practitioner’s acquisition of blockchain knowledge during a two-month period,namely,a short-term phase and a long-term phase put together.By analyzing the performance after interpretation,the interpreter trainee will reflect on the stage of pre-task preparation and sort out which parts of the preparatory work have been effective and what improvements need to be made in order to advance the relevant skills in question.Having served as an intern news translator of blockchain technology and Vitalik Buterin’s blogs,the interpreter found the internship a useful experience for the process of pre-task preparation.Nevertheless,due to the novelty and complexity of this topic,more energy was put on the short-term phase of preparation which was further divided in terms of language schema,content schema,and formal schema,as inspired by the relevance and feasibility of the schema theory for interpreting at the stage of preparation.The report consists of six chapters.Chapter 1 includes an introduction to the interpreting task.Chapter 2 presents the whole process of the mock interpreting task.Chapter 3 is an overview of the previous studies on pre-task preparation.Chapter 4 reviews the schema theory and highlights its usefulness for the preparatory process.Chapter 5 expounds on the aspects of pre-task preparation in detail and uses the interpreting task mentioned above as a case in point to analyze the effects of pre-task preparation on the performance of consecutive interpreting.Chapter 6 presents an overall conclusion regarding the practitioner’s reflections on the process of pre-task preparation as a whole. |
