Case Study Of The Application Of Hedges In English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpreting

Simultaneous interpreting(SI)is to interpret the meaning of the source language into the target language at nearly the same speed of the speaker,which involves rapid switching between modules or channels.As a common language phenomenon, hedges have to be dealt with by the interpreters in SI frequently.Hedges are belonging to vague language.They are the words that make the meaning fuzzier.The usage of hedges in SI usually includes three ways:omitting,adding and maintaining the hedges in the original speech.Through this study,we hope to find more valuable rules about the usage of hedges in SI.The method of the study is qualitative and descriptive by analysis and comparison of the cases chosen,which is about the recording from a real SI class.It is hoped to find more conclusions about the usage of hedges in SI.The questions are: 1)Do the interpreters add hedges in their interpreting?2)If the answer is positive, then what are the conditions and reasons for addition of hedges?3)Are there any differences between the novice and veteran interpreters in using hedges?The theoretical framework is mainly based on hedges,communication strategy, pragmatic equivalence theories and others.The subjects of this study are ten graduate students of Grade 2 majored in SI and their teacher in Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.We can find that the veteran interpreter is more flexible in using hedges,while the students seem to be more literal in their renditions.The data is a spontaneous speech on social righteousness.Due to the time limit, not all the interpreting samples are analyzed except the ones made by the best and the worst students,and their teacher as representatives.But it is still hoped that this study can arouse the academic interest on the usage of hedges in SI,and be instructive to the future SI pedagogy.