Consecutive Interpreting Case Study On The Mental Health Seminar Of Higher Education In Northeastern University

In this report, the case of mental health seminar of higher education in Northeastern University has been chosen for the language material. The speaker is Robert N. Portnoy, PhD, director of psychological counseling center in the university of Nebraska. The theme of this seminar is the current situation and methods of peer counseling in China and American, and the understanding of the development of psychodynamic from historical and cultural aspects. The author takes the peer counseling part as the case study of English to Chinese consecutive interpretation.In the first part, the author briefly introduces the background information about the task, the client and the interpreter, the characteristics of language material and the completing form of the task, and also introduces the theoretical foundation which is based on the criteria of interpreting quality proposed by professor Cai Xiaohong; then the author introduces the implementing process of this task, including how to get prepared before the task, how to collect the relevant information, and how to compile a glossary. This part also describes the lasting time of the task and the performance of the interpreter. In the third part, the author compares the original and the transcript, and figures out some factors that will affect the interpreting quality of the task from the six basic criteria of interpreting quality,. Then the author explains how these factors have influenced the interpreting quality and how to avoid the negative effect.In the last part, after the analysis of this case, the author summarizes the quality of this interpreting task and the performance of interpreter. The interpreter has done an excellent job through the whole task. The interpreter has the ability to keep the pace stable and the expression fluent. Although the interpreter has made some mistakes, the task could carry on with a relatively high quality. Combining the criteria of the interpreting quality and author’s own knowledge and experience about interpreting, the author has drawn several tactics to fulfill the interpreting task and deliver a successful interpretation, including how to use the skill of deverbalization, how to get prepared before the task, how to express fluently, how to deal with some difficult details, how to improve a interpreter’s own quality and so on., with the hope that these tactics and experiences could help other interpreters with their own practice.