Japanese-Chinese-English Relay Simultaneous Interpreting Practice Report From The Perspective Of Effort Model And Information Loss

On 30 September 2022,the Center for Japanese Studies and the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation jointly organized an MTI lecture series at Beijing Foreign Studies University(BFSU)and invited Ms.Keiko Takahashi to give a lecture titled "The Time for Mutual Understanding-50th Anniversary of the Normalization of Diplomatic Relations between China and Japan".As an English interpreter,the author had the opportunity to practice Japanese-Chinese-English simultaneous interpretation(SI)together with students from the Center for Japanese Studies.The lecture,with a specific cultural background and a strong communicative function,was held as a Webinar on the Tencent Meeting platform,and interpreters from multiple languages provided a relay simultaneous interpretation at different venues.In this interpretation practice,interpreters encountered the impact of network and equipment,and their output capacity and emergency response ability were tested.By extracting and transcribing the floor recordings,analyzing the phenomenon of information loss occurring between the pivot translation(Chinese)and the output translation(English),and applying Gill’s Effort Model,the author finds that the causes of information loss in relay SI are broken down into four aspects:the listening and analysis aspect,the output aspect,the information loss caused by the nature of relay SI itself,and external factors.Reducing the phenomenon of information loss in relay SI requires interpreters to be skilled in various interpreting techniques on the basis of a sound understanding of the Effort Model.Therefore,the translator can adopt corresponding coping strategies to reduce the effort burden and improve the quality of the translation.Coping strategies mainly includes anticipation,supplement,explanation,simplification,summarization,and so on.The significance of this report is,on the one hand,to analyze the author’s own interpreting practice and draw lessons from it in order to improve her own interpreting ability.On the other hand,it is hoped that the in-depth analysis of this practice will provide reference and inspiration to more interpreters and learners on reducing the phenomenon of information loss in relay simultaneous interpreting.