Logical Connectives For Explicitation In Chinese-English Interpreting ——Based On Simulated Interpreting For Speeches On China-US High-Level Strategic Dialogue 2021

With the development of economic globalization and more frequent communication between countries,interpreting plays a more and more important role in international communication,and the demand for high quality interpreting work is increasing day by day.Chinese is a high-context language while English is low context language.At the same time,due to the differences in the logical composition of sentences between different languages and the different cultural backgrounds,especially when the speaker is making an impromptu speech,his or her utterances may contain implied meanings.If the implied meanings can be uncovered in time,it will help to convey the true meaning of the speaker clearly and quickly,thus greatly improving the quality of interpreting.Thus,explicitation is usually needed to further express the implicit meanings of Chinese during the Chinese-to-English interpreting as a strategy.There are various specific methods to achieve explicitation,and this paper mainly focuses on the use of logical connectives in the simulated consecutive interpreting（Chinese to English,paragraph by paragraph）experiment with student interpreters as participants.Participants are divided into two groups,one group has passed CATTI Level Ⅱfor interpreting and the other group has not passed CATTI Level Ⅱ for interpreting,and both groups are student interpreters in universities.After the two experimental groups prepare for the interpretation,the author divides the audio into 12 segments,and then the student interpreters do the Chinese-English consecutive interpreting segments by segments,and are allowed to take notes,and the entire interpreting process is recorded.The use of logical connectives in the process of interpreting by the two groups through transcriptions and interviews is analyzed.Quantitative analysis is conducted by counting the types and frequency of logical connectives used by the participants while qualitative analysis is conducted by observing the use of logical connectives in specific paragraphs or sentences by participants and the interview after the experiment.Quantitative analysis mainly results in two major findings.First,student interpreters tend to use logical connectives to achieve explicitation unconsciously or on purpose.Second,student interpreters who have higher interpreting proficiency（have passed the CATTI Level Ⅱ for interpreting）use logical connectives for explicitation more frequently.Qualitative analysis reveals four findings.First,student interpreters who have higher interpreting proficiency have more awareness to use the logical connectives instead of using it coincidentally.Second,using logical connectives can promote interpreters’ memory and accelerate their process of reading the notes so that they can produce higher quality interpreting contents in reproduction stage.Third,student interpreters who appear to use logical connectives may not achieve the explicitation well but can achieve other functions,for example,logical connectives sometimes are used to ease the nerve and buy some time for interpreters to react,which can be seen frequently in those student interpreters with lower proficiency.Fourth,failure to understand the speech thoroughly and memory loss both lead to misuse or non-use of logical connectives.These findings may provide some inspirations for interpreting teaching and learning,such as focusing on the logical structure of speech content,strengthening logical thinking training,and attaching more importance to the correct use of logical connectives during teaching and students’ self-practice of interpreting.