Different Word Orders Between Chinese And English Attributives And Central Words And Corresponding Coping Tactics In Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpretation

The comparative analysis of and translation studies on Chinese and English attributives have attracted attentions of scholars domestically and internationally, who have made some progress in relevant areas such as the structures, forms, and locations of attributives, the order among multiple attributives and semantic causes behind such order. However, studies on attributives handling in simultaneous interpretation (SI) are still promising due to the lack of academic studies in this regard, and as a result, problems such as ways to handle problems triggered by different word orders between attributives and central words in Chinese to English (C-E) SI especially when attributives are multiple phrases or complex and long sentences or when central words occur at the end the whole sentence are yet to be studied and resolved. During C-E SI learning and practice in past two years, the author has encountered the following difficulties triggered by different word orders between attributives and their central words:firstly, the fact that central words tend to occur after pre-attributives and at the end of the sentence makes a timely start in SI hard to achieve; secondly, the syntactic habit of putting attributives before central words in Chinese makes pre-attributives long and complex, which renders difficulties for interpreters to analyze, memorize and interpret. Therefore, the author of this thesis will, through theoretical and empirical studies, focus on the different word orders between attributives and central words in Chinese and English, explain possible difficulties that may be encountered in interpreting sentences with pre-attributives from Chinese to English, and introduce possible tactics that may be applied to solve such difficulties and to achieve a smooth C-E SI. This thesis is expected to be a meaning facilitation to SI practice and SI teaching in the future.This thesis aims to summarize some coping tactics for interpreting sentences with pre-attributives through daily practice and through some insights gained from Nida’s Functional Equivalence and Daniel Gile’s Effort Model. After that, through a designed experiment, this thesis testifies the effectiveness and limitations of tactics that interpreters adopt to handle such sentences through observing, analyzing, and comparing their performances. Through theoretic and empirical studies, this thesis concludes that different word orders between attributives and central words indeed pose barriers to producing accurate and equivalent interpretations, which may lead to a loss of information or misinterpretation. The long and complex pre-attributives that are composed of multiple phrases or sentences and the central words that occur at the end of a sentence both make the SI task even harder, which challenge the capabilities required for interpreters to listen and analyze, memorize in short term, produce translation and coordinate. Some interpreters are able to proficiently apply certain coping tactics and produce accurate and equivalent interpretation through using them. Some interpreters may not be that active or proficient in applying certain coping tactics and thus failing to some extent to achieve a successful interpretation. Each tactic can be useful in certain situations and can thus facilitate the interpreter to save or allocate energy in a more reasonable way so as to produce a more smooth SI. Some combined tactics, rather than an isolated one, can facilitate the interpreter to better fulfill their SI task. Interpreters with better performances tend to be more active in using tactics and tend to use more diversified tactics; however, this does not mean that interpreters can perform better as long as they apply more or more diversified tactics. The quality of SI is closely related to, besides effective coping tactics, language proficiency, background knowledge, mental state and so on.