A Corpus-Based Study On The Explicitation Strategies In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting

This study investigates the explicitation strategies in consecutive interpreting (CI) with reference to the language combination of Chinese and English. Explicitation refers to a strategy translators (interpreters) draw on to address the linguistic and socio-cultural differences between the source text and the target text in order to make their translating (interpreting) output more accessible to the target audience. So far, research on explicitation has primarily been conducted in the field of translation and simultaneous interpreting (SI) and has focused on identifying and testing the existence of explicitation. Against this background, this study attempts to explore the underlying principles behind the genesis of the explicitation strategies in CI.Three research questions will be addressed: (1) Are the explicitation strategies prominent in CI with reference to the language combination of Chinese and English? (2) Under what circumstances do professional interpreters of the Chinese-English combination utilize the explicitation strategies in their rendering in the context of CI? (3) Why are the strategies of explicitation adopted by professional interpreters for the language combination of Chinese and English?Accordingly, three hypotheses are formulated in this study. They are: (1) In CI, the explicitation strategies are prominent because professional interpreters are more likely to be aware of the linguistic and socio-cultural differences concerning the source language and the target language. Therefore, it is their natural tendency to make their interpreting output more accessible to the target audience so as to get the message of the source text across, circumventing the above differences. (2) Professional interpreters will adopt explicitation as a basis for their delivery, particularly when their interpreting performance is linguistically and socio-culturally constrained. (3) Given the linguistic and socio-cultural constraints to be encountered in the process of interpreting, professional interpreters tend to make their rendering more explicit than the source text, for they process the source text in more depth and thus are more inclined to convey the source text's content (implicature) rather than merely its form, thanks to their interpreting expertise.The discussion in this study is based on Shoshana Blum-Kulka's Explicitation Hypothesis, Hans Vermeer's Skopos theory and Daniel Gile's IDRC framework.Both quantitative and qualitative methods will be utilized in this research. First, a parallel corpus of CI will be compiled for the investigation of the data. Corpus-based analysis of the prominence of the explicitation strategies will also be supplemented by means of the multilingual concordance program of ParaConc developed by Michael Barlow. Comparable written translation and back-translation will also be selectively used in order to cross-verify the findings and to facilitate the qualitative analysis.The findings will augment previous research on explicitation in the area of translation and SI. The research endeavor will also help interpreting trainers and practitioners to make more informed decisions regarding appropriate application of the explicitation strategies in CI, in particular, in Chinese-English CI.