A Report On The PBL Academic Lectures Interpretation For Primary And Secondary Students Under The Perspective Of Interpretive Theory

The report is based on the author’s interpreting practice of a series of Problem-based Learning(PBL)academic lectures held in July 2021.Audiences of this interpreting task are juveniles from Grade 3 to Grade 9.The content of the lecture involves knowledge in the syllabus of biology,physics,geography,and other disciplines.The discipline-based lecture is not complicated in comparison with the professional lecture in academic exchanges and might not be seen as the academic lecture in conventional terms.Nevertheless,such a lecture can be used as a vehicle to promote students’ learning of relevant knowledge in solving complex real-world problems.Besides,traditional interpreting research mainly focuses on diplomatic meetings,business negotiations,academic conferences,and other fields,while the academically ill-defined interpreting practice has not received adequate attention.Based on her previous interpreting practice and theoretical study,the author realizes that conveying the "sense" contained in the source language should be the top priority of interpretation,conforming to the main orientation of the Interpretive Theory of Translation after she analyzes this task.According to the theory,interpretation should aim to achieve the equivalence of the "sense" expressed in two different languages,not simply combining language meaning with language form.Danica Seleskovitch further proposes the Triangular Model,the core view of the Interpretive Theory of Translation,in terms of the interpretative procedures.Danica Seleskovitch illustrates three stages in an interpretation activity—namely,comprehension,de-verbalization,and re-expression.Both Interpretive Theory of Translation and the Triangular Model are based on long-term practice and research and thereby are of landmark significance for translation theory development.According to the author’s practice,she concludes that the Interpretive Theory of Translation has played a positive guiding role in this interpreting task.This report is a summary of these aspects mentioned above.In Chapter 1,the author gives a detailed introduction to the interpreting task,participants,PBL teaching model,task characteristics,and pre-task preparation.The main part of this report includes the introduction of the guiding theory,namely the Interpretive Theory of Translation and the Triangular Model.At the same time,through the analysis of typical cases,this report fully reflects the applicability of the Interpretive Theory of Translation and Triangular Model to PBL academic lectures for primary and secondary students.To be specific,in the comprehension stage,the author needs a thorough understanding of the source language in order to convey the information to the students accurately;in the de-verbalization stage,the author needs to analyze and summarize the language features and implications in the educational context with the aim to grasp the true "sense" of the speaker fully;in the re-expression stage,according to the specific characteristics of the audience,the author needs to adopt proper interpretation strategies,such as addition as well as omission,to ensure not only the clarity and conciseness of interpretations but also the conformance to habitual expressions of the audience.The author hopes that the dissection of her performance and summarization of her experience in practice can provide some helpful suggestions to other interpreters with similar tasks and help them better complete the task of interpretation.