Orality/Literacy Shifts In C-E Simultaneous Interpreting

An interpreter should not only keep faithful to the content of a source text,but also its style.At present,relevant studies on orality/literacy stylistic shifts in the E-C language pair are scarce.Previous studies show that orality/literacy shifts will occur in E-C simultaneous interpreting,E-C and C-E consecutive interpreting and E-C sight interpreting.Nevertheless,little published comparative research on orality/literacy shifts in C-E simultaneous interpreting has been seen,and former relevant studies have paid little attention to the interpreting product and performance by student interpreters.Given the above facts,this empirical study attempts to disclose orality/literacy shifts and their manifestations among students'C-E simultaneous interpreting products of two press conferences of China's fifth session of 12^th NPC.In the meantime,this study probes into the reasons behind such shifts.Based on literature review,this study first sifts out eight parameters reflecting the orality features of a text.Then,the author conducts a C-E interpreting experiment of the above-mentioned two press conferences on five student interpreters.The frequencies of these parameters occurring in the source texts and target texts are calculated respectively,and the software SPSS is used to test whether there are significant differences.Thus,orality/literacy shifts after the experiment are defined and measured.Based on the above quantitative results and comparative analyses,the major forms of shifts are found.Last,through stimulated recall and semi-structural interview with the student interpreters,this research attempts to analyze the reasons behind their orality/literacy shifts in a relatively scientific manner.The major findings of this study are summarized as follows.1)Orality/literacy features of a text would shift after C-E simultaneous interpreting,generally echoing the“equalizing effect”in previous studies.That is to say,C-E simultaneous interpreting renders a rather oral text more literate and a rather literate one more oral.However,whether the range of the oral-literate continuum of a source text can be reduced remains unjustifiable.2)Despite that the simultaneous interpreting of student interpreters can induce orality/literacy shifts of a text,their effects are different.The degree of shift for different parameters are varied as well.In addition,it is found that some parameters are inclined to shift toward a certain direction.3)students'effects on orality/literacy shifts are often due to their incompetence or inappropriate distribution of efforts,but may also result from the interpreting idea of adaption,and the attempt to make the target text more simplified and explicit.The innovation of this study consists in that it is the first of its kind to investigate orality/literacy shifts in C-E simultaneous interpreting based on an experiment on student interpreters.Moreover,the reasons behind such shifts are explored in a relatively scientific manner.