A Study Of The Differences Of Register Control Between Novice And Expert Interpreters In E-C Consecutive Interpretation

This thesis aims to find out differences of register control performed by noviceand expert interpreters in English to Chinese consecutive interpretation, causes of thedifferences and the possible advice to novice interpreters’ after-class training byobserving transcribed texts from the experiment which the author conducts usingrecorded speeches delivered in a meeting between business leaders and governmenthigh-ranking officials.Register, as an important research filed in functional linguistics is closely relatedto the lexical and grammatical features of the language used in different situations forspecific functions. In interpretation tasks, the original speech with its special linguisticfeatures has its special functions. Professional interpreters, as required by expectancynorms and code of ethics, should try their best to convey the message from theoriginal speech completely, accurately and faithfully into the target language so as torealize the function of the original speech in the target language and culture. To fulfillthe task, the author believes that interpreters must consciously control the register oftheir performances by using appropriate words and grammatical structures in thetarget language. However, due to various reasons, expert and novice interpretersshould have differences in performing register control.To exam the above presumptions, the author does an experiment involved teninterpretation students who are second-year postgraduate students at the school ofInterpreting and Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies(GDUFS) and have received systematic training of English to Chinese consecutiveinterpretation. The performance of the expert interpreter used in this experiment isperformed by an experienced interpreter trainer, researcher and interpreter from theschool of Interpreting and Translation Studies, GDFUS. With the help of thetranscribed materials from the experiment, the author hopes that the presumptions canbe proved as true and that causes of the differences and possible advice to studentinterpreters after-class training can be given. The first chapter is an introduction on the background, rational, significance,objectives, questions, methodology, data collection of the research and the detailedorganization of the thesis. The second chapter reviews the previous researches relatedto the thesis such as the register theory, expectancy norms, researches on thedifference between expert and novice interpreters in translation and interpretation, etc.The third chapter presents the theoretical foundation and the analytic framework ofthe thesis as well as the working definitions of concepts in the thesis. Chapter four andfive focus on the analysis of the transcribed texts from the experiment to answer theresearch questions and to achieve the research objectives. Chapter six is theconcluding part where the author makes a conclusion on the research and the thesis.