A Study Of Effort Coordination Strategies Of Simultaneous Interpreting From Perspective Of Simultaneous Interpreting Process

Interpreting has enjoyed a quite long history since the first emergence of communication necessity between people speaking different languages. However, it was only after World War I when interpreting saw itself as a profession. Born in the wake of World War II in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trail, simultaneous interpreting as the most commonly used way for conference interpreting thereafter established its status in the international community as a significant and challenging profession, which has attracted a great number of practitioners and theorists.Studies in interpretation theory saw rapid development since 1950s, with the springing up of various translation and interpretation schools such as the ESIT-ECOLE SUPERIEURE D'INTERPRETESET DE TRANDUCTEURS in Paris, organizations like AIIC-ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL DES INTERPRETES DE CONFERENCES, journal such as Meta and Babel, schools like the"Leipzig School"led by Kade, the"Soviet School"represented by Chernov, and the"Paris School"championed by Seleskovitch. Various research methodologies have been developed such as experience summarization, introspection, on-the-spot observation, the source language and the target language analysis, and experimentation, etc. However, research work in interpreting was started a bit later compared with that of the western world, yet it began to gain momentum since the reform and opening up. Even though more and more importance has been given to this particular field as China plays an increasingly prominent role in the international community, interpreting study is still in its infancy and will keep on exploring new scientific and systematic theories. The same is true with the western world.With regard to the existing theory, interpreting can be divided into three categories, namely, escort interpreting, consecutive interpreting, and simultaneous interpreting, the last of which is considered to be the most complex and challenging one. Studies in simultaneous interpreting thus require a more complicated methodology in a more intertwined interdisciplinary perspective.Bearing this in mind, the current thesis starts from the analysis of simultaneous interpreting process, and divides it into several components, including auditory perception of source language speech, visual input, comprehension, deverbalization and memory storage, speech production and self-monitoring. Then problem triggers that may result in effort consumption in each component of simultaneous interpreting process are discussed and analyzed, and relevant strategies are explored to minimize these effort overload triggers to finally achieve effort coordination for simultaneous interpreters. Specifically, at first, existing theories will be applied to simultaneous interpreting process to lay foundation for later studies and to support the author's research methodology, with which the process of simultaneous interpreting will be carefully segmented into different stages. Secondly, off-line factors and on-line factors affecting effort coordination in each stage are analyzed to discover the roots and impacts of these factors. Thirdly, both on-line and off-line strategies aiming at dealing with respective factors are given to help simultaneous interpreters to coordinate total effort within the limit of processing capacity. Finally, an integrated system of strategies is proposed for the benefit of simultaneous interpreters. This integrated system of strategies is quite practical in assisting the interpreters'simultaneous interpreting tasks if they can master each of the strategy and finally to integrate them into a systematic whole.