Empirical Study On The Interpretation Techniques In Syntactic Linearity And Discourse Linearity In E-C Simultaneous Interpretation

Simultaneous interpreting, as a service allowing participants to speak and follow proceedings in their own language at roughly the same time, is widely employed in international conferences due to its high efficiency, both the quantity and quality of which are increasingly in high demand with the deepening of the international communication.Syntactic linearity, as a key topic in processing-oriented research of simultaneous interpretation, is still researched by the traditional linguistic analysis or from the perspective of Cognitive Psychology. For the few empirical researches, most of them focus merely on testing the phenomenon of simultaneity, seldom did they experiment the actual mechanism functioning during the process to achieve simultaneity.The thesis, by employing the Interpretive Theory, discusses the necessity and feasibility of discourse linearity and analyzes the characteristics of the techniques under each principle. Based on a controlled empirical study with4professionals interpreting president Obama’s speech delivered at Shanghai in2009simultaneously from English to Chinese, the thesis parsed and matched the meaning assemblies in transcribed texts with time marked. By quantitative and qualitative analysis on syntactic linearity and discourse linearity and the techniques used respectively, the thesis has the following findings:The cooperation of syntactic linearity and discourse linearity contribute to95%successful interpretation. In general, the interpreters have a slight preference to follow the syntactic linearity, the proportion of which is57.4%on average, higher than discourse linearity. Longer meaning assemblies prefer to be interpreted by following the discourse linearity; The error rate of discourse linearity is0.37%higher than that of syntactic linearity; Techniques like "anticipation","literal interpretation" are used to achieve syntactic linearity, while "inversion","liberal interpretation’, and "negation" are ones to achieve discourse linearity. The "omission" and "division" share nearly the same proportion under the two principles, while techniques like "conversion","repetition","addition" and "restatement" are inclined to be used under syntactic principle. On the whole, the "omission" technique is the most frequently employed technique, accounting for19.4%, while "anticipation" and "restatement" are least used; Syntactic linearity is a process-oriented principle, the techniques of which aims at coping with high-load-inducing input, but may result in unidiomatic expression redundancy. By contract, discourse linearity is a product-oriented principle, the techniques of which highlights the communicative effect and used in sentences with complicated structure, dese information and fast speed, but may lead to missing or misunderstanding of key information.The principles and techniques of simultaneous interpretation has been a core topic in interpretation research. The thesis hopes to gives some suggestions to the implementation of interpretation techniques in future simultaneous interpretation.