Hedges In Chinese-English Conference Interpreting

Interpreters’ role has been a persistent point of interest over the past 40 years.The true nature of interpreters’ role has always remained something of an intriguing myth,attracting many scholars to delve into this important and interesting topic.It arouses interest because interpreters’ role directly and indirectly relates to other areas within interpreting studies and even studies of neighboring disciplines.However,current theoretical studies on interpreters’ role are mostly limited to controversial discussions of the name and nature of interpreters’ role,and lack systematic theoretical framework.Furthermore,empirical studies on interpreters’ role are mostly confined to example-based discourse analysis.Against this backdrop,the present dissertation takes a corpus-based discourse analysis approach and quantitatively and qualitatively explores interpreters’ role deviation when interpreting for Chinese government press conferences.It draws on theories from sociology,pragmatics and cognitive linguistics and takes hedges in interpreting products as the intervening point of the study.Conference interpreters’role,hedges and corpus-based discourse analysis are the three critical points in this dissertation,and as such,the dissertation will be organized around these three points.Firstly,interpreters’ role,as a broad and abstract concept,is defined within the confines of interpreting discourse.And it is reasoned that interpreters’ role can be perceived through the use of hedges,because hedges,when analyzed from the semantic,pragmatic and cognitive functions,can reflect interpreters’ potential discourse intentions or possible communicative purposes and this,in turn,can point to interpreters’ roleSecondly,this present study shares and later utilizes Prince et al.’s(1982)classification of hedges for its clear descriptors and operational identification.For descriptive adequacy of linguistic features,a scaled Chinese-to-English conference interpreting corpus(CECIC)is built.It is a Chinese-English bilingual and parallel corpus which is composed of 30 instances of Chinese government press conference interpreting and covers various topics relating to politics,diplomacy,economics etc.Subsequently,natural language process technology Python is integrated into corpus-based discourse analysis to extract data on hedges.Interpreters’role is analyzed by using hedges distribution,hedges shifts,and shifting regularities.The main body of this dissertation is devoted to empirical investigation into the following areas:hedges distribution in Chinese corpus and English corpus;whether hedges shifts and shifting regularities occur when rendered from Chinese to English;whether role deviation of conference interpreters can be perceived through the use of hedges;and finally what roles have conference interpreters actually performed in role deviation.The major findings in this dissertation are:●Hedges distribution and statistical differences:there is no significant difference between adapters in Chinese and in English;there is significant difference between rounders in Chinese and in English;there is significant difference between plausibility shields in Chinese and in English;there is significant difference between attribution shields in Chinese and in English.●Role deviation via hedges shifts and shifting regularities:adapters are the most common in the equivalences category;plausibility shields are the most common in the additions category;adapters are the most common in the abridgments category;attribution shields are the most common in the substitutions category●Actual roles in role deviation of conference interpreters:conference interpreters have actually performed the following roles:keepers of semantic information through adapters and rounders;regulators of pragmatic tone through plausibility shields;distributors of discourse responsibility through attribution shields;controllers of cognitive resources through adapters.Above all,the present study reveals that role deviation of conference interpreters in Chinese-English conference interpreting exists,and that role deviation of conference interpreters can be perceived through the use of hedges.This dissertation is believed to contribute some theoretical as well as empirical significance.First,role deviation of conference interpreters is a conceptual breakthrough in the discussion of interpreters’ role,which refreshes our understanding of conference interpreters’ role.Second,we contribute a theoretical and analytical framework which can be applied in future studies of interpreters’ role.Third,corpus-based discourse analysis is a noteworthy methodological contribution in this dissertation,generating evidences of interpreters’ patterns of behavior and making empirical studies,especially on the concept of interpreters’ role,possible.In addition,Python,as a new technology in natural language processing,is introduced and integrated into corpus interpreting studies for the first time.It is a courageous and innovative attempt in corpus interpreting studies.