Text Linguistic Models For The Study Of Conference Interpretation

Since the beginning of human history, interpretation has played a pivotal role in the relationship between people of different origins. From inter-personal barter in primitive times to international trades at present days, from a short dialogue between two primitive tribes to the establishment of long-term relation between two countries, interpretation has become an indispensable vehicle for people from different cultural background to exchange ideas, and facilitate peace and prosperity of our society.Two aspects are especially significant in the activity of interpreting: orality and interaction. The interpreter translates oral discourse (which may or may not have been prepared as written text) in various communicative situations, where messages are exchanged, through the interpreter, between people. In working on this study, the contemporary text linguistic approaches of de Beaugrande & Dressler (1981) and Van Dijk & Kintsch (1978, 1983) have been especially inspiring.As a multi-disciplinary field, the research of interpretation demands more than merely the knowledge of two languages, namely, the source language and the target language. It is a discipline that can be connected to various fields like linguistics, psychology, cross-cultural communications, sociology, etc. Text-linguistics is a brand new field and some linguists may refer it as"discourse analysis". Cook (1989) hold that text is"A sequence of language which is interpreted by structure, and which could be understood without any context."For years, researchers have paid their interest and attention on the process of interpretation while doing their researches. However, the author of this paper has tried to take another perspective of the research—to study the original text (interpreting task), the interpreted text (the product), as well as the notes taken by the interpreter.By analyzing two typical conference interpretation materials, the author has tried to show that awareness of text types, text structure etc., does play a major role in the performance of interpreters. The two significant case studies, with the help of some related data analysis, show the natural linguistic relationship between the original text and the interpreted text. The research is also done in the purpose of looking for some practical models and strategies to facilitate the process of interpreting as well as the training of interpreters.Internationally speaking, conference interpreting is a relatively new research field, and in China there is virtually no empirical or theoretical research in this area. The aim of this paper is to find some useful and practical ways in the process of interpretation. As a result of this, we also expected to get a preliminary inventory of linguistically and theoretically interesting topics for future research.