Preparationforinterpretation interpretation

With the acceleration of globalization, the exhibition industry, as an emerging industry, has achieved rapid development. Exhibitions in China have not only attracted many local investors, but also an increasing number of foreign investors. Therefore, the industry is badly in need of exhibition interpreters to help pidge the linguistic barriers of communication. However, compared with common interpreting, exhibition interpreting is complex in its contents and varied in its scenes, which requires interpreters to take much energy to get used to these characteristics. According to Gile’s Effort Models, the total processing capacity of interpreters is limited. If the interpreter’s total processing capacity requirement exceeds the total processing capacity available, the quality of interpretation will be compromised. As a necessity for interpreters,

2. Theoretical framework--Daniel Gile’s Effort Models

In the 1970s, after the observations about errors made by professionals even in speech segments containing no apparent difficulty, Daniel Gile developed an Effort Model for simultaneous interpretation, which explains the difficulties of interpretation. And Later, he extended his research to an Effort Model for consecutive interpretation.

Daniel Gile (1995: 161) put forward two ideas that inspired the development of Models:

(1) Interpretation requires some sort of mental “energy” that is only available in limited supply.

(2) Interpretation takes up almost all of this mental energy, and sometimes requires more than is available, at which times performance deteriorates.

Here he explains that interpretation requires a certain amount of mental “energy”, which is, attention or processing capacity. If the processing capacity is overloaded, the interpretation performance will deteriorate. Gile believes that interpretation is made up of non-automatic operations. From his observation of simultaneous interpretation, Gile proposed three main Efforts: the Listening and Analysis Effort L, a Speech Production Effort P, and a Short-term Memory Effort M.

The Listening and Analysis Effort L refers to the comprehension-oriented operations. The Production Effort P refers to the output part of interpretation. The Memory effort M includes the storage of information for later use.

Here’s an Effort Model for Simultaneous Interpretation

(1) SI=L+P+M+C

C refers to the Coordination Effort, which represents the coordination of the above three other Efforts.

This equation shows that the performance of simultaneous interpreting is dependent on how well each task is carried out. The tasks include the particular comprehension, short term memory, and production operations (Gile, 1995: 169). Each effort in the model has their specific requirements for the interpreter’s processing capacity, which is determined by a specific task. In different tasks, the processing capacity required for the four efforts are different. The process of simultaneous interpretation is based on the active participate of these four efforts. The interpreter should have a proper management of each processing capacity so as to complete a successful simultaneous interpretation.

With the same principle, consecutive interpretation is performed in two phases.

From these two phases, we can find that the process of consecutive interpretation is more complicated than that of simultaneous interpretation. But as it is mentioned before, the Effort Models for simultaneous interpretation and consecutive interpretation are based on the same principles.

Professor Gile (1995: 170, 171 & 180) believed that, for each part of the Efforts, the processing capacity requirements should not exceed the processing capacity available. And the total processing capacity requirement should not exceed the total processing capacity available.

According to Daniel Gile (1995: 159), “one of the most striking and challenging phenomena in interpreting is its fundamental difficulty for the interpreter”. Interpreting is a highly demanding and challenging task for the interpreter. Gile (1995: 172) proposed an idea called “problem triggers”. There are problems arising from an increase in processing capacity requirements, such as a high rate of delivery of the speech, and a high density of the information content of the speech. Problems also arise from external factors, such as the deterioration of sound quality, a noisy channel, as well as strong accents and incorrect grammar and lexical usage, and unusual linguistic style and reasoning style. In addition, unknown names composed of several words and saturation may cause the increase of the Memory Effort, thus trigger problems in interpretation.

To avoid these potential problems, preparation before interpreting is essential. For exhibition interpreting, preparation can eliminate the processing capacity requirement and enlarge the total processing capacity available.