Coping Tactics For Power Point Slides In English-Chinese Consecutive Interpretation

This practice report is based on the simulated English-Chinese consecutive interpretation of the lecture “The Secret of Our Success”.Joseph Henrich,a professor at Harvard University,explained how and why humans have adapted to environment and evolved successfully in the lecture.Power Point slides are important aids for Prof.Henrich to express and demonstrate his views.But they can be either support or distraction to the interpreter.This report analyzes the problem of the slides in the interpretation of the lecture and provides feasible strategies to make the slides a helper for the interpreter.The Power Point slides are divided into three types according to their structures,namely text-only slides,picture-text-combined slides and chart-only slides.For text-only slides,the overlapping parts with the lecture are taken full advantage.For example,they can be taken as notes directly.As for picture-text-combined slides,the importance of the picture and text is judged.Then the interpreter focuses on the important one and treats the less important one as an aid.Methods of explanation or amplification are used to deal with chart-only slides.Properly coping with the slides can maximize their effect in interpretation.Power Point slides are widely used in lectures and conferences,and how to handle the slides is a common problem in interpretation.Hopefully,other interpreters can borrow some experiences from the coping strategies in this report to improve the quality and efficiency of the interpretation.