Difference In Explicitation Between Professional Interpreters And Trainee Interpreters In Consecutive Interpreting

Since first proposed nearly sixteen years ago,explicitation has been studied by researchers worldwide.Scholars conducted various research focusing on the definition of explicitation,the categorization of explicitation and motivations behind explicitation in translation.Yet the explicitation in interpreting has remained relatively untouched and no systematic framework has been established for the categorization of explicitation in interpreting study.This research focuses on explicitation patterns of both professional interpreters and student interpreters.The aim of the research is to investigate the difference between the two groups in order to help with the training of student interpreters.Three professional interpreters and fifteen student interpreters were invited to conduct consecutive interpreting from Chinese to English.Records of the interpreting from the experiment were transcribed into source texts and target texts.Based on the transcription,a small Chinese to English consecutive interpreting corpora was build.From the analysis of the corpora,579 explicitation cases were found and were sorted into 12 categories.From the aspect of motivation,this paper distinguishes two types of explicitation: unconscious explicitation and conscious explicitation.The former one consists of explicitation from norms of target language,explicitation due to the utterance habit of interpreters and explicitation from poor interpretation.The latter one includes explicitation for improving the quality of interpreting and explicitation to solve the problem in interpreting process.The analysis of the data shows that professional interpreters used more explicitation from norms and explicitation for quality improvement.While student interpreters conducted more explicitation due to the utterance habit,explicitation from over interpretation and explicitation to solve the interpreting problems.This research came to the conclusion that the difference between professional interpreters and student interpreters resulted from two aspects: bilingual capability and the understanding of the dominant role in interpreting.Professional interpreters had better bilingual capability over student interpreters.In addition,professional interpreters had better understanding of audienceship whereas student interpreters attached great importance to the role of interpreters.