A Study On Interpreting Teaching From The Perspective Of Context Adaptation Theory

As the talent-training pattern for English major gradually becomes mature, and the interpreting course construction is constantly advancing, interpreting and interpreting teaching are enjoying a flourishing progress, but also in desperate need of some improvement in the quality of teaching. Nowadays, interpreter, as the bridge for international exchanges and cooperation in various fields, has played an increasingly vital role. Therefore, it becomes quite pressing for universities and interpreting training schools to figure out how to cultivate qualified interpreters.Though the interpreting course has been listed as required course for English majors in many universities, the question of how to teach is still under exploration due to its complexity. Nowadays, traditional pattern of interpreting course cannot meet the needs of modern times for qualified interpreters as it is far away from the real work on the interpreting site.The author took a fifteen-day consecutive interpreting training course at Jiahua Interpreting Training School in Wuhan in 2013, which contains a wealth of practical and targeted training contents. The author also served as a teaching assistant to help the teacher select training materials for interpreting class, and help the students with their in-class interpreting exercises and after-class review. This thesis, on the basis of the author’s experience of training and being a teaching assistant, takes consecutive interpreting class as the research topic. It is believed that interpreting, which is an intercultural communicative activity through the medium of language, is affected by the linguistic environment and the non-linguistic environment between the speakers. Therefore, as the intermediary between the speakers, interpreter has to make choices constantly in accordance with both the speaker’s and message receiver’s norms of language expression, thus providing excellent interpreting service. In the light of Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, this thesis takes living examples to discuss the basic mode of thinking in interpreting and interpreting teaching, and designs a consecutive interpreting class by illustration with a case study, and also collects information by questionnaire and interpreting ability tests for students. At last, this thesis, based on the discussions and illustrations, draws a conclusion that it is applicable and effective to adopt Adaptation Theory in interpreting teaching.