A Report On Simulated E-C Simultaneous Interpreting Of The World Science Festival Symposium Guided By The Principle Of Syntactic Linearity

As one of the most complex language tasks,simultaneous interpreting(SI)is characterized by simultaneity,immediacy and so on.Language comprehension and production take place at the same time,imposing a burden on interpreters’ cognition.Besides,syntactic and grammatical disparities between English and Chinese make the interpreting of long sentences a difficulty in E-C simultaneous interpreting.Scholars at home and abroad have found that the principle of syntactic linearity is effective in interpreting long sentences and in saving interpreters’ short-term memory and speech production effort.Regarded as a golden rule in SI,syntactic linearity refers to segmenting one source-language sentence into several shorter target-speech sentences and interpreting them in order.Syntactic linearity makes it possible for interpreters to unload working memory earlier and enables them to distribute more energy to listening,analysis and conversion of language,thus refining on the target language.Guided by the principle of syntactic linearity,this report chooses a language-themed symposium held online on September 30,2021 in the “Big Ideas”series of the World Science Festival to conduct a simulated E-C simultaneous interpreting.Difficulties in the task are introduced first.And then the feasibility of syntactic linearity in simultaneous interpreting is demonstrated in combination with features of simultaneous interpreting,research of domestic and foreign scholars and Gile’s Effort Model.Finally,coping tactics of long sentences in the process of SI are analyzed and concluded,mainly including anticipation,segmentation,category shifts and omission.Deficiencies in this practice are also summarized and reflected with the expectation of improving the author’s interpreting skills as well as providing some reference for other interpreters in the interpreting of long sentences.