A Study On Cohesive Devices In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpretation

With the growth of global exchanges in today’s word, the interpreters become increasingly important for providing language services. However, interpreting is not simple process of doing word-for-word translation, it needs interpreters to ensure the logic in text, so as to make audiences understand the speaker’s original meanings. There are two factors affecting text logic, one is interpreter’s bilingual ability, the other one is cohesion in text. Therefore, Cohesion Theory plays a vital role in interpreting study.The author chooses Chinese-English consecutive interpretation of Premier Wen’s Press Conference as study material, uses qualitative method to compare the texts of professional interpreters and interpreting learners on the basis of Halliday&Hasan’s Cohesion Theory, and then finds out their differences and similarities on cohesive devices use.At first, this paper expounds the concept of Halliday&Hasan’s Cohesion Theory and its cohesive devices, such as grammatical and lexical cohesive devices, and then introduces relevant theoretical researches and empirical studies at home and abroad. Moreover, the concept of consecutive interpreting and the relationship between interpreting and cohesion are also presented in the literature review. Second, the author chooses Chinese-English consecutive interpretation of Premier Wen’s Press Conference as study material, makes the learners do interpreting according to the study material and transcribes the tape recording into text, meanwhile, organizes the professional interpreters’ interpreting text. The10interpreting learners are undergraduates who major in interpreting in Foreign Language School of Hubei University, including8females and2males, all of them have received the consecutive interpreting courses for a year and a half and have passed TEM-4, their grades of specialized courses are also similar. Furthermore, the text of professional interpreter’s interpreting is directly transcribed from Zhang Lu’s interpreting in this conference. Third, on the basis of Halliday&Hasan’s classifications of cohesion devices, the author compares two interpreting texts from four aspects, including addition, consolidation, embodiment and ellipsis, and this study attempts to answer the following questions:(1) What kinds of cohesive devices are used in Chinese-English consecutive interpretation of Press Conference?(2) What are the differences and similarities between professional interpreter and interpreting learners on the use of cohesive devices?This paper comes to the conclusion according to the contrastive study. Firstly, addition, consolidation, embodiment and ellipsis are the main cohesive devices used in conference’s consecutive interpreting. Secondly, comparing with interpreting learners, professional interpreter’s interpreting text is more cohesive and closer to the original text, and they have distinctive differences on cohesive devices use, especially the frequency and accuracy of use, such as underuse or overuse the same cohesive device, catachresis, ambiguous expression and misuse the cohesive devices etc. In the end, this paper puts forward some study implications, limitations and suggestions, in order to promote further study on cohesion in interpreting.