A Study Of Cohesion In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpretation

As a significant subdiscipline of translation study, consecutive interpreting carries a big weight in the interpretation study. It is well-accepted that being one of the most important types of interpretation, consecutive interpreting is now widely adopted in various high-profile conferences which sets a high demand on interpreters. A well-experienced interpreter should not merely have a good command of bilingual knowledge and extensive subject knowledge, he or she is expected to be excellent with interpreting skills.Most speeches for consecutive interpreting are well-organized texts which are coherent in both meaning and structure. Interpreters are also required to be well-thought in delivery on the basis of good understanding of the source text language and skillful application in cohesion.Under the theoretical framework of Halliday and Hason’s cohesion theory, this thesis attempts to make a contrastive study of five widely-used cohesive devices in CI with the supporting examples from interpretation of press conferences by Premier Wen Jiabao. It aims at exploring the application of different types of cohesive devices between Chinese and English and providing suggested interpreting strategies.The qualitative approach with some quantitative date is adopted to conduct the research. Based on a thorough analysis of the field interpreting version, this research achieves four major findings:firstly, reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion are five frequently-used cohesive devices in the practice of CI. Secondly, Chinese and English share similarities in the classification of cohesion on the whole but differ in their specific application. Implicit connectives are often used in Chinese while explicit connectives are frequently adopted in English. Thirdly, references are less used in Chinese than in English while repetitions are found to be used more. The most frequently-used cohesion is conjunction in C-E consecutive interpreting while substitution and ellipsis are seldom adopted. Last but not least, the application of cohesion can be shifted among different kinds of cohesive devices when necessary. There are four major forms of shifts, namely, reproduction, addition, omission and substitution.There have been some achievements in domestic research of interpreting. However, with the limits in both its paper numbers and influence, interpreting study is a weak link and still on the edge of the whole translation study. Most of the past interpreting academic papers are seen studying from professional personal experiences, few studies are found from theoretical perspective and even fewer are combined with Halliday and Hason’s cohesion theory. This thesis tries to apply cohesion theory into the study of interpreting. It is hoped the findings will provide some scientific and effective solutions for interpreters in the use of cohesion in CI. Meanwhile, application of cohesion in translation study into interpretation will offer some valuable references for future study in this field.