Hedges In Interpreting For Chinese Government Press Conferences

The Chinese government press conferences during the �two conferences�(namely National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference)are held annually with the aim of increasing mutual understanding with the public,especially the international community,and promoting the government's image.One of the key features is that interpreting services are provided for international correspondents,who are the major players in processing and disseminating the messages to global media.In this case,interpreters act as the bridge in mediating the communication between government spokesperson and international correspondents,and play a crucial role in influencing the latter's perception of the government.It is generally expected that interpreters are completely faithful to the original discourses on such formal occasions but this may not be always the case.In fact,interpreters are found to have a variety of strategies at hand to mediate discoursal meanings in order to achieve particular purposes,among which hedging is an important and recurrent means.Therefore,it shall be interesting to observe how interpreters make use of hedges in a consistent manner in cross-cultural communication to achieve the intended effects.This study aims to analyze the application of hedges in interpreting for Chinese government press conferences and to explore how interpreters' regular linguistic behaviors interact with factors at wider situational and sociocultural contexts.For this purpose,the Chinese-English Conference Interpreting Parallel Corpus,which collects interpreting materials of Chinese government press conferences from 1990 to 2014,was compiled.In order to �arrive at global inferences about the interpreted text(1)in relation to other forms of oral discourse;and(2)in relation to other forms of translation�(Shlesinger,1998: 487),two comparable corpora were also created,which collect parallel texts from the Chinese government work report translation and texts transcribed from American government press conferences respectively.The software AntConc was used to retrieve concordance lines and to examine contexts larger than single lines in the English texts.Besides,the software ParaConc was also used to retrieve parallel texts in order to examine the corresponding relationship between TT and ST.And Hyland's(1996a,1996b)category model of hedges was adapted for description in the present study,which include accuracy-,speaker-,and audience-oriented functions.Quantitative analysis based on corpus approach shows that hedges are frequently used in interpreted English texts,amounting to about 70 tokens in every 10,000 words.Among them,epistemic verbs are the most frequently used while adverbs represent the most varied category.Modal verbs form the third largest group while adjectives and nouns are seldom used.Functional analysis reveals that hedges fulfill three major functions in interpreted texts though in a disproportionate way.It is found that hedges are most frequently used at interpersonal level to smooth out social relationship.Following this,they are also frequently found functioning at propositional level to qualify statements for accuracy.However,they are seldom exploited by interpreters at utterance level to protect the speakers from overstatement.The comparison among interpreted,translated and the original English texts shows that there are significant differences in the overall frequencies and functional distribution of hedges in the three forms of texts.The examination of the government work report translation reveals that translated texts use much fewer and less varied forms of hedges than interpreted texts.And hedges are predominantly used at propositional level to increase the precision of statements,but are seldom used to limit the writer's commitment to claims or to show attention to the readers.The results of statistical test indicate that translated texts differ significantly with interpreted texts in terms of functional distribution.The examination of texts transcribed from American government press conferences reveals a completely opposite trend.Namely,the original English texts employ a larger number of hedges than interpreted texts and include more varied forms.In terms of functional distribution,the original English texts surpass interpreted texts in the percentage of audience-oriented function but falls behind in accuracy-oriented and speaker-oriented functions.The results of statistical test indicate that the original English texts also differ significantly with interpreted texts in terms of functional distribution.In order to uncover the possible reasons for the above differences,an analysis of the interpreting process is conducted subsequently.And four major types of corresponding relationship between TT and ST are identified,namely direct transfer,indirect transfer,shift and addition.Interpreters' optional behaviors,namely shift and addition,are counted by frequency.And the numbers and percentages were compared with those identified in the translation process(of government work report),the result of which shows that interpreters more frequently resort to �shift� and �addition� of hedges as strategies to achieve particular purposes during interpreting process.The results,in combination with the above findings,were discussed by drawing on the register analysis theory.It was found that interpreters' distinctive patterns of behavior in the use of hedges,as compared with translators and native speakers,interplay with the particular field,tenor and mode to a certain extent.Specifically,because the translator can always refer back to the original linguistic forms,direct correspondence is more common in translation;in contrast,as �de-verbalization� is more prominent in interpreting and re-verbalization of the �sense� is more challenging,interpreters need more hedging to achieve various purposes such as accuracy and caution.Besides,the differences in production manner(spontaneous vs.well-planned),recipients(insiders vs.outsiders),communicative purposes(interpersonal vs.informational)and diplomatic features(diplomatic vs.non-diplomatic)between interpreted and translated texts all contribute to their different uses of hedges.In addition,the differences between interpreted and the original English texts might be accounted for in terms of their differences in social distance between conversational parties,preference for different types of face between Chinese and American cultures(positive vs.negative politeness),and modes of interaction(monologic vs.dialogic).What's more,the different norms of hedging between English and Chinese and the speaker's competence in English are also believed to have an impact on the use of hedges in interpreted and translated texts in general.This study has implications for future interpreter training and interpreting teaching and may also provide some insight for more corpus-based interpreting studies.