Explicitation In E-C And C-E Consecutive Interpreting

The concept of explicitation was first proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet in 1958.It refers to making explicit in the target text what is implicit in the source text.Explicitation in translation has gained great attention among researchers.It is gradually acknowledged that explicitation is one of the translation universals.However,most studies are conducted in the field of translation studies.More attention should be given to the field of interpreting studies.The present study aims to explore the explicitation phenomenon in consecutive interpreting between Chinese and English among interpreting trainees.To achieve that,this study will first describe the characteristics of explicitation in CI and then compare the explicitation characteristics between C-E and E-C CI.Motivations behind the phenomenon will also be investigated.The analysis and discussion are based on an experiment where fifteen interpreting trainees are asked to finish two CI tasks and a retrospective interview.In the present study,explicitation in consecutive interpreting among interpreting trainees can be classified into three different types: experiential explicitation,interpersonal explicitation,and textual explicitation.Based on this classification,the current study has two findings: First,in both Chinese to English and English to Chinese consecutive interpreting among interpreting trainees,textual explicitation appears with the highest frequency,followed by experiential explicitation.Second,interpreting trainees tend to make more explicitations in Chinese to English consecutive interpreting than they do in the other direction.Further analysis shows that there are three kinds of motivations behind the explicitation phenomenon.First,interpreters adopt explicitation to further explain the information of the source texts.Through explaining,interpreters could help the audience to understand the source texts more easily.Second,interpreters use explicitation to reinforce the speaker's attitude and idea.In this way,the attitude of the source texts could be made more explicit.Last,since interpreters are faced with limited time and cognition resources,explicitation is also used by them to gain more time in the interpreting process.