An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Multi-type Computer-assisted Interpretation On The Quality Of English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpretation

With the acceleration of technological change,CAI interpreting has gradually become one of the key focuses of academic research.Taking high speed speech as an example,this study aims to investigate the effects of multiple types of CAI on the quality of English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation through an empirical comparison study.This paper focuses on two questions:first,whether different CAI interpreting forms weaken or improve the quality of English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation of high speed texts;second,whether there are differences in the effects of different CAI forms on the overall quality of interpretation,the specific manifestations of the differences and the reasons for their formation.In this paper,a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is selected as the source text.Six trainee interpreters from graduate school of translation and interpretation of a foreign studies university in northern China are invited to participate in the experiment with the help of multi-type CAI forms.Post-interpretation interviews were conducted.Based on Yang Chengshu’s interpretation quality assessment sheet,this paper carries out quantitative and qualitative analysis of the experimental results,and analyzes the effects of multiple types of CAI on the quality of the interpretation from three levels:Fidelity,Delivery and Language.It was found that in English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation of high speed speeches,CAI interpretation does affect the interpreting quality in terms of Fidelity,Delivery and Language.From the perspective of quantitative assessment,in the Fidelity level,the occurrence of mistranslation and omission decreased gradually and number of over translation increased significantly across the three experimental groups.At the Delivery level,the interpreters without machine assistance were able to interpret logically,while the interpreters with machine assistance needed to devote extra efforts to identify whether the given interpretation was logical or not.At the Language level,grammatical errors and inappropriate word choices caused by the fast speed of the source text gradually decreased among the three groups of interpreters.From the perspective of qualitative analysis,CAI can improve the overall interpretation quality in terms of reducing the possibility of low-level grammatical and word choice errors.Nevertheless,the misidentification of the source text’s logic may lower the interpreting quality.The rapid switching of subtitles can also negatively affect the interpreter’s performance.This study recommends that machine interpretation developers to address low-level errors that occur from machine transcription to machine translation,and that interpreters continually improve their skills and use new technologies wisely so that they can better cope with the competition.Finally,this study recommends scholars and researchers to expand the size of samples and language pairs,design better evaluation criteria as well as explore the possible effects of CAI on interpreting quality in different fields.