A Case Study Of Site Interpreting At The China-Indonesia Student Exchange Meeting In The Light Of Schema Theory

With the popularity of cross-cultural communications,interpreting is playing an increasingly important role.In interpreting activities,only when the interpreter fully understands the source language can he or she achieve good performance.However,cultural differences faced by interpreters and their possible language deficit may have become common obstacles on their way to improving their interpreting skills.As a student of English interpreting major,the author has been involved in relevant theories in her study,among which Schema Theory gives the author an important inspiration.Therefore,the author takes her own practice of consecutive interpreting as the object of study,trying to explore the significance of different schema for interpreters from three aspects: the linguistic schema,the content schema and the formal schema.The author finds that:(1)the lack of the linguistic schema not only obstructs the interpreter's listening comprehension and general understanding,but also affects the interpreter's expression;(2)storage of the content schema can help interpreters have a quick grasp at the meaning of the discourse as well as make reasonable speculations on some contents difficult to apprehend.The absence of the content schema may lead to incorrect interpreting due to the ignorance of key contexts.;(3)mastering different types of formal schema can help interpreters to produce more logical and conventional interpreting in the target language,and may also help interpreters predict the remarks to follow.On the basis of the above discussion,the author puts forward some suggestions on how interpreters enrich and update their knowledge schema.The author hopes that this study can provide some references for other interpreters in improving their professional skills.