An Empirical Study On Segmentation Of Translation Unit Of Sentences With “It” As A Formal Subject In English-chinese Simultaneous Interpreting

This thesis focuses on sentences with “it” as a formal subject in order to probe into the segmentation of translation units in English-to-Chinese simultaneous interpreting of student interpreters and the interpreting strategies accordingly under the guidance of Gile's Effort Model so as to reduce the cognitive load and improve the interpreting quality as well.Up till now,a large number of studies on the segmentation of translation units in academia from the textual level have been done.In contrast,neither the empirical study nor the descriptive study centers on the smaller level or chooses research objects from sentence level.By adopting the Think-Aloud Protocols with questionnaires and translation analysis,this study explores the inner thinking process in English-Chinese simultaneous interpreting of 9 interpreting majors.This study is designed to answer the following five questions:(1)Do the experiment subjects have any difference in terms of the degree of awareness of segmentation?(2)Is there a correlation between the degree of awareness of segmentation and the number of segmenting positions?(3)How many groups can the segmenting positions be divided into in sentences with “it” as a formal subject? And what are they?(4)What are the features of the translation units in sentences?(5)For different translation units,what interpreting strategies are suggested accordingly?It is found that all the experimental subjects have the awareness of the translation unit in translation process,but they are either weak or moderate.There is no correlation between the degree of awareness and the number of segmenting positions as subjects with a stronger awareness of segmenting may segment less than those with weak awareness.As for the segmenting positions,it can be classified into four groups,namely,preposition,relatives,conjunction,and other segmenting positions.And evident pause is the dominant type among other segmenting positions.From the perspective of the translation unit,further research is conducted to explore the interpreting strategies in the sentences composed of different translation units so as to improve the interpreting quality and reduce the cognitive load as well.To be specific,the interpreting strategies include selecting proper subjects,adding and adjusting word order.In this study,the focus is not text but the sentence with “it” as a formal subject.This thesis intends to make a profound analysis of the segmentation of translation units,including features of segmenting positions and corresponding interpreting strategies.Based on the findings mentioned above,it can be concluded that segmenting is an essential skill in simultaneous interpreting.Still,to work out a high-quality version,it should be in coordination with interpreting strategies,without which,the segmenting may be invalid.It is hoped that this study can serve as a supplement to the current study on segmentation of translation unit and interpreting strategies.