On Syntactic Transfer In Interpreting

Cross-linguistic influence(CLI), also called language transfer, is defined as the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously(and perhaps imperfectly) acquired.Similarities between the source and the target languages are thought to promote the second language acquisition(SLA), a process termed positive transfer; differences tend to pose obstacles, which is termed negative transfer. The influences can be found in a wide variety of linguistic subsystems, including phonetics, phonology, lexicon,syntax, semantics, discourse and writing system in the target language. This theory,though focused on the SLA, is applicable to the study of interpreting, as both SLA and interpreting are linguistic processes involving close interaction of two languages.Most of the previous research on CLI is centered on SLA and some on written translation and translation teaching. Hardly any of them touches the area of interpreting.Against such a backdrop, this thesis in broad scope intends to investigate what are the traces of CLI in the course of interpreting, and how the two languages influence each other. Given that the perspective of CLI is too broad to focus on, and the distinctive difference of syntax between English and Chinese, the focus of this study will be narrowed down to the syntactic transfer, namely what are the traces of syntactic transfer in the output of interpreting and how syntactic similarities and differences between English and Chinese affect the interpreting. In order to answer these questions, this thesis begins with an observational study centering on analyzing the disfluencies of interpretation by novice interpreters with an aim to sort out the traces of syntactic transfer. In addition, based on the widely-accepted opinion on the roles of positive transfer and negative transfer in SLA, as well as the descriptiveconclusion of the observational study, the author proposes a hypothesis – syntactic differences between the source and target languages will pose more obstacles than syntactic similarities do. To examine this hypothesis, experiment of Chinese-English interpreting tests is designed and carried out to see how positive transfer and negative transfer affect the interpreting results. The design of these experiments highlights the similarities and differences in syntactic system between the two languages and the results serve as guidance for making suggestive advice on mitigating negative transfer and improving interpreting skills.Through the analysis of the results from both the observational study and the experiment, this thesis found that different forms of syntactic transfer appear in interpretation, including addition, omission, restart, error and syntactic restructuring etc. In addition, the thesis also verifies the hypothesis that negative transfer poses more difficulties than positive transfer to the interpreting. Studying the interpreting output from the perspective of cross-linguistic influence provides a unique linguistic lens for interpreting studies, sheds light on the roles of language influences and can be taken as teaching guidance in the language proficiency part of interpreting training.With the conclusion presented, the author also proposes some suggestions on how to mitigate the negative syntactic transfer based on the characteristics learned from the observational study and the experiment.