A Study On Memory And Memory Training In Interpreting

Memory plays an important role during the process of interpreting: the sensory memory preserves the sensory stimuli of the source language information; the short-term memory stores the information sent by sensory memory, and processes them based on the knowledge stored in long-term memory; the long-term memory provides relevant knowledge (background information, context information etc.) to help short-term memory process the message. With the interaction of the three memory systems, the interpreter is able to find the equivalents in target language to reproduce the speech successfully.As interpreting is of instantaneous character, the memory of an interpreter will, to some degree, leave direct impact on the quality of his interpretation. Therefore, memory training deserves certain attention from researchers in the field of interpreting training. However, the efforts of the researches of this field in China always go to the general description of the techniques required to accomplish the complex activity. The papers concerning memory training are mostly written from the perspective of the training of interpreting techniques on the whole, only a few have focused on the elaboration of memory skills. With a hope to enrich the research in this field, this paper tries to offer a structured memory training system by suggesting a set of comprehensive training approaches on memory, which are based on the principles drawn from psychological researches, psycholinguistics and interpretation literatures.After setting out a general framework based on what has been said and written about human memory systems, the paper discusses the nature of memory in interpreting, its unique characteristics in this field and especially the factors that affect it. With full recognition of the importance of memory training in interpretation course, a case study is conducted to investigate the training situation in Sichuan International Studies University. The case study is intended to find the answers to the questions below: 1) how interpreting teaching in SISU is carried out; 2) what methods are used to train memory in interpreting; and 3) the effects of memory training.