An Empirical Study Of The Relationship Between Interpreting Competence And Language Competence In Consecutive Interpreting

With the development of the interpreting teaching and research,the relationship between interpreting competence and language competence has become a key problem,and it is also an important criterion to distinguish the interpreting teaching and language teaching.However,instead of objective empirical study,the theoretical study and rational inference were more focused on in the previous research.This thesis is an empirical study on the relationship between interpreting competence and language competence.Based on the expert-novice paradigm,professional interpreters,student interpreters and non interpreters are selected to do the consecutive interpreting from Chinese to English and from English to Chinese.By collecting the experiment data,making comparison between interpretations of the three groups and analyzing the experiment data,the author finds that the quality of their interpretations is varied,and that the interpretation quality of the professional interpreters is better than that of the student interpreters,and the latter is better than that of the non-interpreters.The differences in the quality of their interpretations are not so much attributed to their language competence as to their interpreting competence.The experiment result suggests that the interpreting competence does not equal to the language competence.Rather than a result of natural development,the interpreting competence is able to be developed and improved via interpreting training.Thus,the present study may provide objective suggestions for interpreting teaching and training.Through the analysis of experiment results,the brain’s cognitive saturation caused by limited effort,deficient basic language competence and lack of professional interpreting training are three main factors affecting interpreters’ interpretation quality in this experiment.Therefore,interpreters should distribute their efforts reasonably in order to adapt to the multitask model of the interpreting.Learner interpreters should attach great importance to professional interpreting training without neglecting basic language competence.And then,the teaching orientation should feature interpreting teaching and training.