The Impact Of Using "Kernel Sentence" On Chinese-English Sight Interpreting

As the foundation for simultaneous interpretation (SI), sight interpreting is very important for students majoring in SI. The reason why sight interpreting underpins SI is that it focuses on teaching students syntactic linearity, namely interpreting source language while maintaining its word order.According to Daniel Gile’s "Effort Model" and his theory of problem triggers, a major problem trigger for syntactic linearity in SI and sight interpreting is syntactic and structural differences between Chinese and English. Since Chinese has many relatively closed sentence pattern like long pre-attributives, pre-adverbials and pre-objects, Chine-English (C-E) sight interpreting is full of obstacles.In this paper, the author tries to use Eugene Nida’s "kernel sentence", namely "who does what", to dissect the closed sentence patterns in Chinese. An experiment is conducted, aimed at proving that the use of "kernel sentence" can facilitate syntactic linearity in C-E sight interpreting. The author hopes that this experiment could provide some useful reference for SI major students during C-E sight interpreting, thereby helping them better master syntactic linearity skills and laying a solid foundation for SI.