A Study On E-C SI Segmentation Pattern Of Student Interpreters

This thesis aims at probing into the pattern of segmentation in English-to-Chinese simultaneous interpreting of student interpreters under the guidance of theme-rheme theory and information structure.It is generally accepted that segmentation is an important and basic tactic in SI.There has being some study on the segmentation features of professional interpreters and few on the features of student interpreters.In this study,ten recordings from ten student interpreters majoring interpreting in their second year of postgraduate study are collected.The recordings are transcribed and marked up with pauses that segment students' output.Based on their production,pauses are analyzed to explore the pattern of how student interpreters segment the incoming source text.Common features are found and theme-rheme theory and information structure are applied to explain the reasons behind the segmentation pattern.Since theme-rheme theory deals with the relation between information and its distribution within a sentence in a linear way without breaking the sentence into several layers,it serves as an ideal theory to help me explain the segmentation pattern revealed in this study.And information structure,which describes how information distribution relates to communication,serves as a complement.The E-C SI segmentation pattern found in student interpreters features the following characteristics: a).Student interpreters usually work on units no larger than a sentence.However,when two or more sentences expresses almost the same meaning,they are clustered as a whole segment.b).If the information layout is known or predictable,student interpreters tend to take longer segments.If the information layout is unusual or unexpected,it would hamper the output of student interpreters.c).The number of segments is in positive correlation to the number of clauses in a sentence.On the whole,a segment contains at least one thematic structure in the source text.d).For the most cases,the first segment of a sentence has theme plus rheme or part of rheme,and at least a verb.This means that rheme is a must for segments and only textual themes in multiple and clausal themes get to be parsed in a single segment.In this study,the focus are not words or phrases,but rather the information and its distribution in the sentence and how they influence the segmentation of student interpreters.The above findings are further explained with theme-rheme theory and information structure.Hopefully,this study can serve as a supplement to the current study on segmentation study.