Parallel Texts' Influence On Deverbalization In Chinese To English Consecutive Interpreting: A Study Of Student Interpreters

The Paris school believes interpreting is explanation of the original meaning made by interpreters based on linguistic symbols and their own cognitive complements.It is the equivalence of meaning or effect that the interpreter should pursue,not equivalence of linguistic units.However,observation shows that Chinese student interpreters often have difficulties in "deverbalization" in consecutive interpreting,particularly from Chinese to English,which leads to redundant translation that fails to accurately convey the speaker's communicative intention.As deverbalization requires both linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge,which theoretically can be supplemented through parallel texts,this study proposes a hypothesis:By reading parallel texts beforehand,student interpreters can acquire language knowledge and thematic knowledge to greatly improve deverbalization and thus the overall interpreting quality,producing translation that is logical,cohesive,concise,idiomatic and catering to the pragmatic needs in the situation.To test the hypothesis,eight second-year students from a Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation in China were invited to consecutively interpret an excerpt of the Chinese cultural talk show Morning Call into English and then fill in a questionnaire as part of a comparative experiment with the variable of parallel texts.Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data collected,the following conclusion was drawn:Reading parallel texts before consecutive Chinese to English interpreting indeed helps student interpreters to "deverbalize" and thus upgrades the interpreting quality.Specifically,the students in the experimental group,who were offered parallel texts beforehand,reformulated,elaborated,simplified,and innovated the original text more frequently;yet in terms of cohesive words,the experimental group and control group showed no significant difference.Qualitative analysis indicates that it is probably because the former group gained extra information from parallel texts,understood the original text's theme and logic more thoroughly,and thus were more able to simplify,reformulate and elaborate texts.However,two groups of interpreters showed no obvious difference in deverbalization regarding to information not contained in the parallel texts,which means in that case,the level of deverbalization may largely depend on the interpreter's own language proficiency and interpretation habits.