A Study Of The Impact Of Non-Native English Accents On The Anxiety And Performances Of Trainee Consecutive Interpreters

English is the mainstream language for international exchanges.To date,nonnative English speakers have outnumbered native ones,but their accents may force interpreters to spend more effort on listening and analysis.Since one’s effort is limited,more effort for listening and analysis means less effort for memory and delivery.Thus,the interpreter may feel anxious when interpreting for an accented speaker,and the performance may decline.Currently,relevant research focus more on the correlation between accents and simultaneous interpreting performances.Only a few research has examined the relationship between the degree of non-native English accents and interpreters’ anxiety and performances.Seeking to explore such relationship,this study is of significance.The researcher excerpted three audios from speeches by IPCC members with varying degrees of English accent.10 second-year post-graduate students majoring in English interpretating in a university in Beijing were selected as subjects.With the interpreting anxiety scale and scale for interpreting performances assessment developed by previous researchers,the subjects’ anxiety and performances resulting from different degrees of accent were assessed.interpreting performances.Data thus collected were then imported into SPSS26 for quantitative analysis to examine the correlation between the degree of accent and the subjects’ anxiety and performances.The researcher also had one-on-one interviews with each subject after the experiment to inquiry into the causes of their anxiety changes and interpreting errors.According to the research results,in English-to-Chinese consecutive interpreting,the degree of the foreign accent could significantly raise subjects’ listening anxiety and moderately raise their’ memory and note-taking anxiety,but it was not linearly correlated with their delivery anxiety.The degree of accent also had significant,negative impact on interpreting performances,and the subjects were most likely to make content-related errors due to the accent.It was found during the interviews that unparallel bilingual proficiency is one of the error-conducive factors.Suggestions are proposed based on the analysis and interview results to cope with speakers’ accents.