A Report On Consecutive Interpreting For 2021 SDU-Oxford Online Training Program

This report is based on the interpreter’s interpreting activity for the 2021 SDU-Oxford Student Wellbeing and Support(SWAS)Online Training Program jointly held by Shandong University and Oxford University,recording the whole interpreting process from pre-task preparations,task implementation to post-task reflections.The task was conducted in the form of remote consecutive interpreting for two hours in total,including two lectures given by three speakers,covering the holistic student support services and student career services of Oxford University.The interpreting task was challenging since it required encyclopedic knowledge and higher processing capacity of the interpreter due to the broad content of the lectures,the strong accent and high speech rate of the speakers.Under the guidance of Gile’s Effort Models,this report touches upon the problems encountered in the interpreting task:comprehension failure,cognitive saturation and production difficulties,and analyzes the causes of these problems,including high rate of delivery,high density of the information content,strong accent of the speaker,linguistic and cultural differences.Coping tactics and strategies to solve these problems are also explored,including omitting,replacing a segment with a more general segment,explaining or summarizing,and optimizing the allocation of processing capacity.Through the detailed case studies,the report concludes that Gile’s Effort Models can help interpreters understand many difficulties in interpreting,identify the problems,analyze causes of the problems,and find out corresponding solutions.Thus,the Models can also help interpreters improve their interpreting skills for future development.This report analyzes the interpreter’s interpreting practice with the help of Gile’s Effort Models,summarizes strategies to deal with typical interpreting problems of comprehension failure,cognitive saturation and production difficulties,and proposes suggestions for further interpreting training to provide some insights and help for novice interpreters or interpreting learners engaged in remote consecutive interpreting.