Loyalty Principle In Simultaneous Interpretation

Simultaneous Interpretation (SI) came into existence at the end of the Second World War as a means of cross-cultural communication. Since then, thanks to its advantages as quick transmission of information and effectiveness, it has been widely accepted in international conferences. At the same time, there have been more and more works or articles dealing with the assessment on SI. SI is a communicative activity, which requires people to take into consideration various factors such as parties concerned and their purposes as well as the characteristics of SI when people set standards for assessing SI. Furthermore, SI aims to facilitate the immediate flowing of information between speakers and audience. Based on these ideas, the present author attempts to borrow a principle in translation theory—the Principle of Loyalty, and employ it in SI assessment. Generally speaking, the structure of this thesis is a process of spotting problems and providing solutions.The first chapter is an introduction to the overall purpose and structure of this thesis. In this part, readers can see how the author arranges the whole thesis.The second chapter is devoted to the feasibility and necessity of applying Loyalty Principle in SI. To begin with, the author examines the relations between translation and interpretation with an aim to prove that some of the translating criteria can also be used in interpretation. This is followed by a review of criteria for translation and interpretation. From the review, limitations of the existing criteria and the general trend of development of the translating and interpreting research are discussed. Since the existing criteria emphasize too much on the textual equivalence between the source and target texts while translation and interpretation are purposeful communications by nature, the author proposes a new criterion in interpretation, that is, Loyalty Principle. This chapter also discusses the feasibility and necessity of applying the Principle ininterpretation and SI in particular.The third chapter centers on the Principle of Loyalty in SI. First of all, the author makes a brief introduction to the background of this Principle by reviewing the Functionalist theory. The second part goes into particulars about Nord's"Function Plus Loyalty". After that, the application of Loyalty Principle in simultaneous interpretation is expounded. Apart from the features of SI, the author mainly expounds the nature of loyalty in SI such as the parties involved, the objects of Loyalty and the composition of Loyalty as well as the specific ways to achieve loyalty in SI. Later on, the author proposes an equation of the loyalty in SI, which is, Loyalty = Message + Coherence + Register.The last chapter concludes the thesis by stressing a dynamic and pragmatic approach in assessing SI. It is hoped that the present thesis can provide a new perspective to assess the quality of SI.