A Study Of Interpreting Strategy Of Cohesion In English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpreting

A review of most literature on the quality assessment of interpreting suggests that the subjects surveyed agree that cohesion and coherence are key components of standards by which the quality of interpreting is measured.However,there exists some disparity between the ideal quality standards and the practitioners' actual performance.For simultaneous interpreters,the construction of coherence is constrained by several factors specific to simultaneous interpreting,including the pressure of simultaneous listening and speaking,the gradual accessibility of the source speech,and constraint in terms of cognitive resources.The point of departure of this study is grounded in observation,theoretical reflection and relevant data analysis.Based on a critical review of previous studies,this study probes into a much ignored area,that is the construction of cohesion and coherence by simultaneous interpreters.Sifting through and reflecting on various theories,the author chose the theory of cohesion as defined in the Systemic Functional Grammar by Halliday and Hasan(1976)as the theoretical basis for investigating the task of simultaneous interpreting.Cohesion and coherence are two important features of text.They are closely related.Cohesion is a crucial semantic resource that helps to achieve coherence.Cohesion,realized mainly through five types of cohesive devices,allows interpreters to understand the speaker's information and intention.Failure to re-express them in simultaneous interpreting may lead to an incoherent output and consequently to misapprehension on the part of listeners.Important as it is,few studies have explored how simultaneous interpreters render cohesion or studied factors underlying their choice or preference of interpreting strategy.A critical review of relevant studies indicates that there still exist limitations in these studies,as mentioned in the previous paragraph.Therefore,this research focuses on one of the cohesive devices–conjunction,since conjunction is not only muti-functional but also appears with relatively high frequency.The study aims toanswer the following two research questions: how professional interpreters render conjunctions in English-Chinese simultaneous interpreting? Why do they choose different or similar strategies to render conjunctions? An experiment and a survey were designed and conducted to investigate how conjunctions were interpreted by professional interpreters in English-Chinese simultaneous interpreting.The performance of interpreting trainees was also measured and compared in order to find out whether participants of different levels of expertise perform differently in the rendering of conjunctions.Seven professional interpreters and eight interpreting trainees were asked to listen to a fifteen-minute recording of an authentic speech in English and to interpret it into Chinese.The research findings of this study suggest that conjunctions are most likely to be omitted and leastlikely to be substituted in the interpreting process.While both groups were found to have similar inclination in this regard,they used three strategies differently in handling different types of conjunction.Additive,conditional and causal conjunctions were mostly omitted;adversative,temporal and varying conjunctions were mostly retained by professional interpreters.However,all seven types of conjunction were mostly omitted by interpreting trainees.It is also found that omission is mainly due to five factors with professionals.First,professionals interpreters tended to over-concentrate on interpreting the preceding sentences so that they had to omit conjunctions or even the sentences connected by these conjunctions;second,professionals interpreters failed to identify the logic relations between sentences;third,conjunctions that were deemed as redundant were omitted;fourth,when two conjunctions or conjunction and discourse markers were used simultaneously,the one that was of secondary importance was omitted;fifth,conjunctions were omitted because they were perceived as not conveying the actual logic relation between sentences.The research findings also show that there were four reasons why professionals substituted conjunctions: firstly,professional interpreters did not identify the logic relations between sentences;secondly,professional interpreters overstretchedthemselves while interpreting the preceding sentences;thirdly,the implicit logic relations were substituted by other more appropriate conjunctions or made explicit;lastly,professional interpreters used other conjunctions that were of similar functions or pragmatic values for the sake of avoiding confusion on the part of audiences.Attempting to examine how professional interpreters handle conjunctions in English-Chinese simultaneous interpreting and why they adopt different approaches,this study takes the theory from the Systemic Functional Grammar as its theoretical basis.The research findings suggest that there is a link between the rendering of conjunction and the constraints which are specific to simultaneous interpreting.Moreover,the ultimate objective of communication in simultaneous interpreting motivates professional interpreters to make choices in interpreting conjunctions.Different choices and strategies in turn produce different effect on the coherence of the interpreted output.It is hoped that this study can be a positive addition to interpreting research,pedagogy and practice.