Difficulty Study:English Recursive Structures In Sight Translation

Difficulty study is gaining evermore importance as the results are very helpful to interpreting training,market practices and accreditation tests.Source text factors are major concerns of interpreting difficulty but most studies are related to CI&SI.Relevant studies upon ST are few and seldom target at one single text factor.This study focuses on interpreting difficulty in ST from English to Chinese and examined the relations between interpreting difficulty and recursive structures by adopting indicators of holistic assessment(self-perceived difficulty&sight translation scores),fluency(time-on-task&silent pauses)and fidelity(errors&omissions and corrections).Eight beginners and eight advanced learners of English Interpreting Program in a key university in China were tested with two cohesive and coherent excerpts from David Cameron's resignation speech delivered in 2016.Excerpt 1 has more recursive structures than Excerpt 2.The results show that 1)Using error&omission,time-on-task,pauses,and corrections and sight translation scores as indicators,this study holds that recursive structures of the English language make the material more difficult to interpret for both beginners and advanced learners in English-Chinese ST;2)The difficulty level of the same text is different across interpreters of various levels.The results of indicators show that the recursive structures have a stronger impact on beginners than advanced learners.3)Based on the above two findings this paper also highlights that the impact of various recursive rules on interpreting difficulty level is different.The embedded recursions are most difficult,with subordinated recursions taking the second place and coordinated ones the third.The results of this study are thought to be useful in selecting proper training and test materials for student interpreters across different levels.Also,it may shed light on the design of accreditation tests and market practices.