| The general topic of this thesis is discourse coherence in English to Chinesesimultaneous interpreting (SI). Discourse coherence is one of the criteria against whichto measure SI quality. However, because of the complexity of SI task, it is verydifficult to achieve a highly coherent target discourse. In actual SI activities, it canoften be observed that output of SI shows weaker coherence than the original discourseor even incoherence. It has been assumed theoretically that coherence relations wouldremain constant in translation under normal circumstances. Based on this assumption,the thesis hypothesizes that weaker coherence or incoherence in SI is possibly causedby changes of coherence relations from source text (ST) to target text (TT).To test the hypothesis and to classify incoherence in SI, an experiment is conductedin this thesis on SI from Boao Forum for Asia2013. The specific aims are (1) tocompare discourse coherence of English speeches and that of their Chinese SI;(2) toexplore the correlation between changes of coherence relations in SI and causes ofincoherence found by interpretation users; and (3) to classify incoherence in SIactivities and test its frequency of occurrence.In this empirical research, a coherence coding procedure is adopted and applied toa set of English speeches with Chinese SI. Comparison of the resultant representationsof discourse coherence for ST and TT shows that there are changes of coherencerelations in SI from ST to TT. In addition, through interviews with subjects as SI users,statistics concerning their assessment on discourse coherence are collected. The resultof comparing the statistics and changes of coherence relations in SI is consistent withthe research hypothesis. Furthermore, incoherence that subjects commonly agree on isclassified into different types of violation of condition for discourse coherence. Thestatistical results indicate that certain types of violation occur more frequently thanothers in English-Chinese SI. |
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