Can Machine Translation Assist to Prepare for Simultaneous Interpretation?

Abstract

With the rapid development of machine translation, the research of man-machine coordinated translation is drawing much concern. This paper explores roles of machine translation on advance preparation for simultaneous interpreting. We carry out a comparative study on 14 student interpreters, which are divided into experimental group and control group. The students in experimental group are allowed to use machine translation to prepare for a simultaneous interpreting, while the students in control group are not. The experimental results show that errors in machine translation might mislead the student interpreters in the simultaneous interpreting practice. On the other hand, if the time of preparation is limited, it is better not to resort to machine to make preparation because of time-consuming proofreading, or twice the effort would achieve half the result.