A Corpus-Based Interpreting Study On Adaptors In Diplomatic Interpreting

Fuzziness,the nature of human language,means uncertain extension of the concept delivered by fuzzy language.As one part of fuzzy language,hedges was used to restrain the fuzziness of fuzzy languages.In communication,hedges are often used to promote the acceptability of the discourse,making the discourse more courteous.Only a few researchers adopt corpus to analyze their studies and less studies on the hedges in interpreting.Researches on hedges in interpreting give priority to the translation strategies and its pragmatics functions instead of studying its features of application and reasons.The present study is an attempt to explore the applications of adaptors in diplomatic interpreting.It aims to find out what the overall frequency and distribution of adaptors is in diplomatic interpreting? How the application of the adaptors in English reinforce or undermine the original Chinese meaning or otherwise? and Why these professional interpreters choose to use the adaptors in diplomatic interpreting? The current research based on self-made corpus extracts all the instances of hedges and makes quantitative analysis subsequently.The study turns to politeness principle put forward by Leech(1983)for facilitating analysis of reasons in which approbation maxim,modesty maxim and agreement maxim are employed.The features of diplomatic are also a part of analytical framework.Then politeness principle and features of diplomatic interpreting will be employed as analytical tool to explain the reasons behind.It is found that hedges are frequently applied in diplomatic interpreting among which adaptors account for more than a half.Thus this study mainly focuses on the study of adaptors.According to the statistics analysis,it is found that applications of adaptors are various which can be categorized into four types: strengthening,weakening,equivalence and highlighting the implied meaning among which the first and the forth type account for the largest part.As for the reasons behind,it is held in this paper that politeness principle and features of diplomatic interpreting could account for diplomatic interpreter's choice.The author believe diplomatic interpreters could be passive users or active users of adaptor in diplomatic interpreting.the features of diplomatic interpreting force interpreting to employ adaptors passively so as to avoid making mistakes while in some situations,interpreters actively use adaptor to show politeness.The study reveals the application features of adaptors and reasons behind.It also modifies politeness principle so as to facilitate the analysis of adaptors in diplomatic interpreted texts.However,due to the intrinsic complexity of attitude and the limited corpus size in the study,further research can collect more data and study interpreting trainee's performance in dealing with hedges,or carry out more comprehensive research on hedges in simultaneous interpreting.