A Comparative Study Of Syntactic Linearity In English-Spanish And English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpreting

This thesis explores,through theoretical and empirical studies,the general rules and differences in the application of syntactic linearity in EN-ES and EN-CH simultaneous interpreting(SI).By analyzing how the professional interpreters applied the strategy of syntactic linearity in a real-life case and what is the influence of such application on their performance,this thesis elaborates on some practical skills,explores the problems occurred in real practice and gives suggestions on tackling these problems.The thesis starts with the Economy Principles from the Minimalist Program proposed by Noam Chomsky,and syntactic linearity is the precise example showcasing how the Economy Principles are applied to speech production in SI.Then the thesis discusses Daniel Gile's Effort Model,demonstrating the components of the SI process,the importance of a balanced allocation of energy,as well as the possible impact of language-specific differences such as word order,speech rate,information density and other problem triggers.It also showcases the differences in word order between the language pair of English and Chinese,as well as those between English and Spanish.Then the thesis presents that syntactic linearity can be employed to tackle problems caused by such differences,and showcases the relevance of the Economy Principles and the Effort Model to the application of syntactic linearity.For the exploratory study,the thesis chooses a panel discussion themed A Compact for Responsible Business Leadership realized in the World Economic Forum 2017 as the corpus.The panel discussion was conducted in English,and the author transcribed the SI in Spanish and Chinese.By analyzing representative paragraphs,the thesis proves the necessity of applying syntactic linearity in both EN-ES and EN-CH SI and finds out the general rules and differences when applied in those two language pairs.This thesis recognizes that syntactic linearity is an indispensable strategy for SI,and compared with EN-CH SI,EN-ES SI should focus more on offering a concise interpretation.Based on the results of the research,it is recommended for multi-lingual students(EN-ES-CH)to do targeted practice by actively using the strategy of syntactic linearity and simplifying their expression in speech production so as to improve their SI performance.