The Impact Of Extra-Linguistic Knowledge On The Performance Of Simultaneous Interpretation Students-A Case Study

This paper was about an empirical research which was based on a C-E simultaneous interpretation(SI)class in Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation,Beijing Foreign Studies University.The theoretical basis of this paper included Daniel Gile's Effort Model and Comprehension Equation,and the concept of sense unit under the framework of the interpretive theory.The author also used Chen Jing's Table of Evaluating Interpretation Performance for reference.The paper mainly focused on what impact will extra-linguistic knowledge gained from previous classes' practicing and teaching have on students' SI performance in later classes under the same topic.The empirical research mainly included two parts:class teaching and after-class experiment.In the first part,the teacher guided students from A class and B class to do C-E simultaneous interpretation for Cheng Siwei's speech on venture capital and its development in China,and made comments on students' performance.Cheng Siwei's speech had two parts,and each class finished one part separately.Then,the author guided Class A students to finish the second part of the speech,and collected all materials and records for quantitative and qualitative analysis.After evaluating all transcripts of the records,the author drew a conclusion that in SI teaching under a special topic,extra-linguistic knowledge gained from previous classes will have positive impact on students' SI performance in later classes,as long as students have fully learned and absorbed related knowledge.If students want to further improve their performance in class and enhance interpretation ability,they need to prepare for the topic given by the teacher before taking a practicing class,and review notes after class.Only in this way can they truly learn relevant knowledge and reduce reaction time when doing SI,and produce more faithful and fluent delivery.