Explicitation Of Implicit Cohesion In Chinese-English Conference Consecutive Interpreting

Addition is used in interpreting for many purposes,such as facilitating understanding and alleviating the pressure of interpreters.This paper attempts to investigate how addition is used in interpreting as a means to make explicit the implicit cohesion in the source speech in Chinese-English interpreting,with a focus on reference,substitution,and conjunction.It draws inspiration from the cohesion theory.A case study was conducted on the on-site interpreting practices at three press conferences during the “Two Sessions” period.Two surveys were done to verify the existence of implicit cohesion in the selected examples and to measure the effect of explicitation.The thesis consists of six parts.Chapter one introduces research background and summarizes research questions.Chapter two reviews previous studies and points out research gap.Chapter three refers to relevant concepts of the cohesion theory and explains methodology.Chapter four presents survey results.Chapter five is the main body of the thesis.Based on survey results,this part inquires what kind of implicit cohesion the source speech contained,how it was made explicit and how explicitation influenced the delivery of message.Chapter six draws conclusions,pointing out major findings and limitations.The study finds that both cohesion of reference and conjunction are often more implicit in Chinese than in English.The cohesion of reference becomes implicit in Chinese due to the omission of sentence subjects;and the cohesion of conjunction is covert as a result of omitting certain adverbs,conjunctions and conjunction phrases.The analysis shows that the former can be made explicit by adding certain pronouns or extracting information from the context as the subject,and the latter can be made explicit by restoring those omitted conjunctive expressions when interpreting.In many cases,such additions are helpful so as to clarify meaning and the relationship among clauses and sentences.Interpreters can improve the audience's understanding through the addition of those elements in C-E interpreting when their ability allows.