A Study On Interpreting Strategies Based On Schema Theory

This is a practice report based on mock English-Chinese consecutive interpretation of the lecture by the London School of Economics—"Butterfly Politics".The author focuses on the speeches of both the host Christine Chinkin and the speaker Catharine A MacKinnon as the case study object of this article.Based on the schema theory,the author aims to study the process,problems and coping strategies of interpretation.In the critique of pure reason,Kant once said that schema is the product of pure transcendental imagination or the knowledge structure acquired by learners in the past.From a macroscopic perspective,schema theory can tell the memory process of human brain.Memory has a great influence on the quality of interpretation as an indispensable part of interpretation.With the development of schema theory,Rumelhart further developed the theory and he thought schema theory is the interactive "knowledge structure" in a long-term memory in a hierarchy levels or "building blocks" that constitute the cognitive ability.This practice report introduces schema theory,its characteristics and its applications in interpretation.In addition,the report also introduces the interpretation strategy based on this theory.That is,literal interpretation can be adopted when the schema value is fully connected with the schema vacancy;If the interpretation of the current part is not good or forgotten,schema transfer can be adopted to mobilize the schema in memory for repairing interpretation.When the audience are lack of professional knowledge or the words used by the speaker are too intricate,the interpreter takes the initiative to explain them with a more understandable interpretation language which is a way of schema reconstruction or mobilization.It is the explanation strategy;When the professional words are not well understood and the logical reasoning fails,or the spokesman is too complicated to express the same meaning,the schema is abandoned or merged,the interpreter can use the omission strategy;When the interpreter forgets the content or doesn’t hear the words clearly,various memory methods under the understanding of the various schema can be adopted by the interpreter to guess properly.This practice report also analyzes the problems and solutions of the interpreting task,as well as the instructions of the schema theory to interpreters.