A Reflective Report On Stimulated E-C CI Of The Lecture “Willa Cather, The Literary Canon, And The Modernist Aesthetics”

Interpretation pushes forward international academic exchanges. In academic exchanges, language is a significant obstacle. Not only should we get information, we should also understand information. Thus, interpretation plays an irreplaceable role in information exchanges.This simulated interpretation practice is based on the lecture “Willa Cather, the Literary Canon, and the Modernist Aesthetics” delivered by Professor John.C.Orr from Portland University. The whole process of the simulation was recorded, and the recording was transcribed shown in Appendix. The author summarizes countermeasures for English-Chinese consecutive interpreting(CI) difficulties in academic lectures by means of analyzing this interpreting practice.This report comprises of four parts. Chapter one describes task background and task requirements and introduces pre-interpretation preparation, simulated CI process and after-interpreting assessment. Chapter two introduces the source text and analyzes features of the source text. In chapter three two major problems “misinterpretation” and “information loss” in the process of interpreting are discussed respectively. Misinterpretation is caused by three factors:(1) lack of knowledge;(2) weakness in listening comprehension;(3) inadequacy in target language expression. Information loss is due to information overload and the appearance of too many names. Chapter four elaborates countermeasures specific to the difficulties:(1) making sufficient preparations before the consecutive interpreting;(2) improving listening ability;(3) strengthening training for language output;(4) strengthening note-taking exercise;(5) distributing efforts reasonably.It is expected that this reflective report on simulated consecutive interpreting could enhance the author’s interpreting ability and can be of some help to other interpreters.