An Empirical Study On Correlation Between Ear Voice Span Of Simultaneous Interpretation And Length Of Segments In Sight Translation

The thesis explores correlation between Ear Voice Span (EVS) of English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpretation (SI) and average lengths of segments in English-Chinese Sight Translation (ST) for novice interpreters and discusses different ways of concatenation after segmentation.According to Daniel Gile’s "Effort Model"(2011:149), the process of SI involves four alternating efforts, namely, listening and analysis, short-term memory, speech production and coordination. One problem trigger that could overtax short-term memory is the syntactic difference, and in the case of English-Chinese SI, lengthy and complicated English sentences. To tackle this problem trigger, interpreters follow the principle of syntactic linearity and use segmentation to varying degrees.This empirical research shows that for the same interpreter, his EVS is strongly correlated to the average lengths of segments in ST. The interpreter’s segmentation habits are consistently shown in SI and ST. Furthermore, a wide array of concatenation methods can be used along with segmentation, including repetition, transforming parts of speech, using cue words, and adding logical links.