Using Multimodal Approach to Interpreting Performance Evaluation: Taking 2016 Cross-Strait Chinese-English Interpreting Contest as an Example

Since the establishment and development of translation and interpreting discipline in universities around the world, interpreting contests are held to (1) raise wild interests in interpreting activities; (2) promote interpreting training programs and interpreting pedagogy research; and (3) enhance individual's language proficiency and interpreting skills. This paper, with an eye to the rubrics on Chinese-English dialogue interpreting performance in interpreting contests, adopts a multimodal approach to the examination and comparison of interpreting performance in the 2016 Cross-strait Chinese-English Interpreting Contest--The Final Round. Compared to the monomodal interpreting evaluation of language proficiency, this paper proposes a multimodal interpretation evaluation model from linguistic mode, aural mode, visual images, spatial arrangement, and kinetic movement (The New London Group, 1996). Following a comprehensive analysis of multimodalities in terms of type, orientation and value, the study shows that linguistic mode, aural mode, visual images, spatial arrangement, and kinetic movement can all contribute to the meaning-making and meaning transfer process. This paper proposes a multimodal interpreting evaluation model (MIEM) and argues that all these meaning-making and meaning transfer parameters should be taken into account in interpreting performance evaluation. The paper sheds some light on the methodological innovation for Chinese-English interpreting contest rubrics, as well as implies novel insight for interpreting evaluation in a broad sense.