Practice-based Analysis Of Syntactic Linearity Difficulties In English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpretation

Simultaneous interpretation is a highly demanding task with the features of simultaneity and heavy load on short-term memory. These features determine that syntactic linearity must be applied in simultaneous interpretation. As the most notable principle in SI, syntactic linearity has received great attention with a large amount of researches being done to prove its feasibility and necessity. Based on former researches and the author‘s experiences, this paper analyzes the main difficulties in realizing syntactic linearity in E-C simultaneous interpretation and the coping strategies.In order to identify the exact obstacles for the smooth application of this principle in English to Chinese simultaneous interpretation, the author selected five English speeches from Field Simultaneous Interpretation written by Doctor Kevin Lin as the practicing material. The obstacles are identified and classified after studying the output of the author and solutions are proposed after comparing and analyzing the author‘s output and the provided version of Doctor Lin.In this thesis, the author concludes four types of sentences that are difficult to interpret, namely adverbial clauses, attributive clauses, sentences in passive voice and sentences with ―it‖ as the formal subject. It is suggested to add or omit the antecedent or replace it with a pronoun to deal with long attributive clauses, to convert the predicate into a noun or adjective in interpreting sentences in passive voice, to repeat the predicate or convert the preposition into a noun to reproduce adverbial structures and to omit the formal subject ―it‖ in dealing with sentences with formal subjects.This thesis introduces four techniques to achieve linearity and summaries the strategies for their application in four types of difficult sentences. Hopefully, it will be of assistance to learners of simultaneous interpretation.