| A language,B language and C language refer to the working languages of interpreters,and are commonly used by interpreting practitioners,teachers and researchers.B language is a working language that interpreters are proficient in,and is used as the output language in interpreting.However,the ideal competence level as described in the definition of B language is not achieved among interpreting trainees.This dissertation investigates the meaning of B language,and aims to answer the following three questions: 1)When were the concepts of A,B and C language proposed,and under what historical context? 2)What are the assessment criteria for B language in conference interpreting? 3)How do these assessment criteria affect interpreter training? When the profession of conference interpreting was first born,such as during the Nuremberg Trials,interpreters had varied opinions on directionality.AIIC proposed the idea of A,B and C language back in 1958 to regulate professional interpreter’s language service.The Paris School banned interpreters from working into B language,for fear that lowquality B language service would sabotage the reputation of the whole profession,but later on welcomed working into B as EU enlargement created more interpreting demands.B language teaching methods that originated from Europe was then introduced to China with Chinese translations of Théorie du Sens,and has had a profound impact on China’s interpreting training.This qualitative research applies two research methods,i.e.,literature review and naturalistic observation.The study first builds a multimodal B language resource pool by collecting online B language teaching materials,with the aim of generalizing the B language assessment criteria and training methods proposed by over 20 trainers.Then,the study digs specifically into B language assessment in Chinese-English language pair by observing a Chinese to English simultaneous interpreting class given by an experienced SCIC Trainer(A language: English;C language: French,Italian,Spanish,Finnish)from March to June,2021 and analyzing his assessment of students’ actual interpreting performance in class,including nearly 200 error correction examples.The findings of this dissertation are listed as follows.Firstly,this study adds descriptors for the three most frequently mentioned assessment criteria in B language,i.e.,fluency,accuracy and clarity,which are interrelated with each other.Generally speaking,fluency is the overall impression that interpreters leave on listeners,and is the foremost criteria when assessing B language quality.Clarity is explained as the avoidance of ambiguity and the emphasis on text coherence as well as the principle of economy in language expression.Accuracy,i.e.,the completeness of original information being interpreted,could be damaged by language errors that break logical connections within the text.In Chinese to English interpreting,the most frequent mistakes,i.e.,noun,article and sentence mistakes,affect the clarity of message,while tense,jargon,pronunciation and article mistakes affect accuracy by interfering with listeners’ understanding.Secondly,the implication of assessment criteria on interpreter training is the simplification of B language output in Chinese to English interpretation.In terms of interpreting technique,students should fully understand the original text,segment sentences as much as possible,use simple word and sentence structure and choose the appropriate register,and avoid redundancy and complex expressions.Students are recommended to use substitution,omission and intonation to further simplify their output.As for B language enhancement,it is recommended that trainers improve students’ B language competence by applying traditional foreign language learning methods,practicing language flexibility and interlingual transfer capability and designing tailor-made exercises targeting individual weaknesses.This dissertation investigates the historical development of B language,explores its assessment criteria,and looks into its implication on professional interpreter training,aiming to interpret the concept of B language from different perspectives.The findings of this dissertation are significant to both interpreting practitioners and scholars.Firstly,it further explores the history of conference interpreting,stating that the dispute on directionality in conference interpreting started as early as the birth of conference interpreting,and evolved with the professionalization of conference interpreting.Secondly,it explains the assessment criteria of B language concretely with descriptors extracted from either interpreting classroom or training materials,laying the groundwork for the development of B language rating scales.Thirdly,it sheds light on Chinese to English interpreter training as well as English teaching by collecting and analyzing about 200 typical English errors and Trainer X’s corrections and suggestions in class. |
