Psychological Mechanism of Conference Interpreters during the Simultaneous Interpreting Process from Advanced ListeningListen to This从Listen to this 高级听力看会议口译译员在同声翻译过程中的心理机制.doc

Psychological Mechanism of Conference Interpreters during the Simultaneous Interpreting Process from Advanced Listening - Listen to ThisAbstract: This paper aims to analyze the psychological mechanism of interpreters during the simultaneous interpreting process in conferences through the practicing and study of Advanced Listening - Listen to This combining with the role listening plays in interpreting. So that to help people to understand that the simultaneous interpreting is not just oral training, but a process in which both the physical and mental sides get coordinate and harmonious. Key words: listening; conference interpreting; psychological mechanismTable of ContentsChapter1 introduction21.1 What Is Listening21.2 The World of Conference Interpreting21.3 The Starting Point2Chapter2 The Role of Listening Skills in Simultaneous Interpreting32.1 The Process of Simultaneous Interpreting32.2 Listening in Simultaneous Interpreting32.2.1 The Type, Length, and Style of the Speech42.2.2 Concentrate the Attention to the Information4Chapter3 The Psychological Mechanism of Simultaneous Interpreting Process53.1 The Inner Interpreter53.1.1 Attention-Focus-The Scientific Orientation in Everyday Life73.2 On Variance and Invariance93.3 On Understanding103.3.1 On Understanding11Bibliography15Linguistics-Philosophy of the Language-Semiology15Translation and Interpretation Theory15Theatre16Intercultural Studies16Literature and Philosophy16Management16Physical Awareness16Chapter1 introduction1.1 What Is Listening Listening is defined by Joan Morley as “everything that impinges on the human processing which mediates between sound and the construction of meaning”(Morley,1991:88). ”Everything that impinges” here in his view “includes the important dimension of the affective information, which is an integral part of real-world communication.” By “affective information”, he explains it “encompasses attitudes, emotions and feelings.”1.2 The World of Conference InterpretingThe world of international summits, conferences and congresses is characterized by the parapher-organization involved. The participants at such events usually politicians, economists, scientists, etc. at the top of their professions come to meet their international counterparts, or even those who oppose or question them, within the symbolic surroundings of palaces, government houses, conference halls or meeting rooms with an often imposing setting. Whether sober or luxurious, ancient or brand new, these are also the venues where international conference interpreters perform and interact daily with people in power, much in the same way as diplomats and journalists do.Depending on their personality and the different contexts involved, individual interpreters may or may not feel that they belong within this environment. Nonetheless, they learn a lot, consciously or unconsciously, about the sometimes subtle ways in which power is exerted, questioned, counterbalanced and contained.Because of the nature of their work, interpreters have a rare opportunity to observe and learn. Although they often join the conference delegates between sessions, once they return to the restricted space within their glass booths, which are designed to ensure freedom from distractions as well as sound quality for all concerned, they are effectively isolated from the external world. This distance favors observation.1.3 The Starting PointIf learning a second language invariably makes us aware of certain characteristics of the way we function in our first language, working daily with languages often leads to a deeper reflection about linguistic phenomena. This is especially true for interpreters, who must switch from one language to another instantly and have to contend not so much with different “ways of says things”, as with different “ways of seeing the world” and organizing it.Rather than being a reflection of some external “reality”, language both creates our image of the world and reflects it back like a paradoxical looking glass. Or rather, it is thanks to language that we can do this. To use a slightly different metaphor, the starting point for this paper was the conviction that the experience of learning and studying conference interpreting would allow me to isolate some of the mechanisms that make language work, just as a prism breaks light into the different colors of the spectrum.Chapter2 The Role of Listening Skills in Simultaneous Interpreting2.1 The Process of Simultaneous InterpretingMarianne Lederer once analyzed a one-hour long conference simultaneous interpretation from German to France second by second in her book The Theoretical Basis of Simultaneous Interpreting (1981). And she noticed that simultaneous interpreting seems to be one whole process, while in fact the process includes eight sub-processes. “When we are listening to a simultaneous interpreting, we can recognize eight sub-processes, and any of them can take place together with several others simultaneously. Of course, apparently, interpretation doesnt go through all the eight sub-processes at the same time in one time unit, but transfers among them.Some sub-processes appear frequently, and be present continuously:1. Listen2. Comprehension 3. Transfer language to concept(combine a paragraph formed by a string of sentences with perverse knowledge to form the memory of cognition)4. Express according to the cognition memoryOther sub-processes are also frequent, but there are intervals inserting in the presence:5The comprehensive context awareness6The control of auditionSome sub-processes appear at times:7. The direct interpretation of terms8. To come up with some special words”2.2 Listening in Simultaneous InterpretingInterpreters are a group of special audience which is different with other audience who listen and take part in the article, guessing the effect of the article or putting in their own opinion. Interpreters only need to pay all their attention to what the speaker say, what he wants to express, and grasp the subtle difference between the expressions, no necessary to interfere.Interpreters will be able to identify the meaning and words in a paragraph. Through practice, interpreters can make the quick analyze of information their own awareness.These are some ways to analyze and comprehend information:1. visualize 2. ensure the different time phase when speaking3. listen to the numbers4. associate the thoughts with words5. clear the relation within the context6. stimulate passive memory7. respond to the information2.2.1 The Type, Length, and Style of the SpeechArticles in newspaper, magazine, TV, radio or conference own different type, length and style. Interpreters, when listening, use counterpart ways to deal with them. They dont try to remember the words or sentences, but to try hard to express the meaning as clear and easy as possible in another language. When expressing, interpreters will definitely use idiom.2.2.2 Concentrate the Attention to the InformationThis part we use a example to testify. The next is an article took from The Economist. The content is talking about reality, so we are familiar with it. We can find that the style of writing is very artificial, so here we try to concentrate our attention to the meaning, that is, what the author wants to say rather than his flourish writing style.“In the next few days, Britains House of Commons will be asked to approve the draft agreement between Britain and China under which Hongkong will be returned to China in 1997. Assuming that the Commons says yes, Mrs. Thatcher will go to Peking on December 18th to sign the agreement which was initiated there in September. Next year Britains parliament will pass legislation allowing Britain to return to China the bit of Hongkong about a twelfth of the present Territory which was, in the theory, given in perpetuity to Britain. Chinas National Peoples Congress also has some legislating to do. By next June the legal formalities, if not all the details, should have been dealt with. Britain will have finally accepted notice to quit one of its last bits of empire. Mrs. Thatcher has said that the agreement must be acceptable to the people of Hongkong. When the British Members of Parliament debate the matter, they will have an “assessment” of local opinion carried out by the Hongkong government. The assessment got off to a bad start, when it was disclosed that the opinion offered by Hongkongers would be made public not for 30 years, to be sure, according to the Hongkong government, but this did not seem to reassure nervous opinion expressers. Since the agreement was unchangeable, the assessors added, non suggested changes would be welcomed.The Hongkong government later changed its mind, promising to destroy individual statement after the agreement has been ratified, and saying that all views would be interest. In the event, Hongkongs 5m people produced fewer than 3.000 letters from individuals, plus submissions from 250 local groups. Most of Hongkong who spoke up seemed to feel that the draft agreement is a lot better than the plan the Chinese had threatened to impose off their own bat if no agreement with the British had been achieved. This shrug-of-the-shoulders, best we can do attitude, was reflected in an opinion poll of 6,140 Hongkongers published on November 25th?The meaning of the part written in italics is relatively simple, but some apparent usage of idiom such as “The assessment got off to a bad start, not for 30 years, to be sure, opinion expressers, assessors” may probably cause distraction, and as a result interfere the grasp of information. Interpreters at the particular moment should ask themselves: what is the agreement talked in the article? What is its content? Who are the two sides? Whose feelings are to be known? When these questions are asked again and again, interpreters would get to know the main idea is: the Hongkong authority must let the British Parliament know the respond of Hongkongers to the agreement signed between Britain and China recently. The local residents are unwilling to express their ideas, although they are promised that their reply would be keep covered for a rather long time. They worry that their answers would be took advantage by some unkind people. In order to remove their worry, the Hongkong authority make promise to destroy the paper after they are handed in. In spite of that, few Hongkongers raise suggestions. But a recent opinion poll shows that people think its better getting to a agreement by both sides than letting China alone raise program compressing to the residents. Chapter3 The Psychological Mechanism of Simultaneous Interpreting Process3.1 The Inner InterpreterAll living creatures are continually exposed to intra and extra-corporeal stimuli but only we, humans, can put those sensations into words and communicate to others what we fee both physically and emotionally. On the other hand, out of the endless number of stimuli that bombard us simultaneously visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory and taste we only become aware of some of these, i.e. we select some of them, elaborate them and transform them into sensations. The same happens with stimuli produced by processes within our own bodies.Now, how dose this selection occur? What sets this process in motion? How are stimuli turned into sensations that we can then “decode” and translate into words?I will be bold enough to take the interpreters case and use it allegorically. Let us imagine for a moment that there is a witness within us that silently perceives, observes, records and interprets a witness who can stay silent and calm. Let us call that witness our inner interpreter. Deep inside, this inner interpreter witnesses how thousands of perceptions of a different nature are permanently being selected, processed and combined. The inner interpreter then translates perceptual units of one sense into the other senses, and also instincts, feelings and emotions into ideas, actions and thoughts.Out of an enormously rich variety of elements of all sorts that bombard us, the interpreter within will select and present some organized “units” which he will eventually translate again, if necessary.As Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote in Spanish depicting the fruit “natanja” back in 1926,“We feel a round shape by touching, we see a heap of light at dawn, a tingling fills our mouth with joy and we melt those three heterogeneous things into what we call an orange.”Is it surprising to see in a scientific video that the reconstruction of the process in the brain literally follows Borges poetic and intuitive description? We can see in the computerized simulation of the video how the “feel”, the “color”, “the taste” come from different brain areas and ate synthesized in the unifying “word”.It was more even more exhilarating to me to find in Jeff Hawkins recent book On Intelligence (2004) some descriptions of brain functioning that fit my own tentative descriptions of language functioning . Hawkins hypotheses on the neocortex processes encouraged me to develop these ideas a little further.“When we assign a name to something say Hawkins we do so because a set of features consistently travel together” like in Borges orange “the rich glow at dawn, the roundness and the tickling filling our mouth with joy”Let us imagine then some of the processes that may take place when we are babies. I use the word imagine since what follows is naturally based on inferences. When babies are born, they abandon the warm, liquid, sonorous, intimate environment of the womb and enter a dry, airy and probably (for them) chaotic environment full of new and indefinable sensations. Little by little through experience they start getting used to their new habitat and they start recognizing similar tones and pitches of a voice, similar smells and tastes, etc. across different situations. Similar features that seem to travel together. They can probably then start identifying some similar elements within the ever-changing ambiguous uncertain unknown environment. Let us suppose that at some given point in time, the baby starts making connections between different types of sensations: what he/she feels, tastes, sees, touches, hears. The baby will then eventually isolate different traits and will link them to certain sounds repeatedly heard simultaneously with those sensations, making an internal connection between say “mom”, and the array of normally pleasant protective nourishing sensations associated with mother. And the same is true for other external objects in his or her “word”.Connecting, linking, binding, associating, or relating is perhaps one of the very first mental activities we engage in. This a