A survey to profile conference interpreting practice in China

This report presents findings from an online survey of 140 English/Chinese conference interpreters, conducted as a follow-up of an exploratory diary study (Han 2015), to provide a detailed account of real-life interpreting practice in China. Three main tendencies are identified: a) conference-related materials (mainly programmes and speakers’ scripts/notes) are often received late, leaving little preparation time; b) interpreters do a much wider variety of simultaneous interpreting tasks than previously thought, albeit with varying degrees of frequency; c) difficulties are felt to arise mainly from technical subject matter and terminology, speakers’ delivery (strong accent, speed), and lack of preparation. These findings largely support the diary study results and previous scholarly descriptions.