Abstract

The increasingly frequent exchanges in various areas around the world have brought about the new development of interpreting activities. Interpretation training has gained more and more popularity in universities and training institutions. However, according to the former researches, most courses over-emphasize on the training of language ability and note-taking but ignore the training of memory ability in interpretation.

Interpretation is a complex and difficult mental work. During the process of interpretation, interpreters have no chance to repeatedly analyze the source language information. They have to listen to the source language information for merely one time and conduct a series of processing tasks such as the understanding of the source language information, the temporary storage of the input information, the expression of the target language, etc. Therefore, the interpreters must have excellent ability of keeping information, or memorizing languages. Only when the coordination of the three mechanisms (sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory) is realized can the target language win accuracy and the interpreting activity achieve success.

This thesis first introduces two representative researches in the interpretation field that is Danial Gile’s Effort Model and Danica Seleskovitch’s de-verbalization theory. The next part of the thesis probes into the types of memory, their distinctive characteristics and functions. Then the author summarizes four memory training methods based on the previous researches and carries them out on the junior students majored in interpretation in the School of Foreign Languages of Chongqing University. In addition, the training results have been analyzed and concluded at length. The research in this thesis is based on the literature review. The author sincerely hopes that this thesis can make some contributions to the further improvement of the studies of interpreting theories and interpreting teaching.

Key words: interpretation, consecutive interpretation, memory mechanism, memory training