Investigating Simplification In C-E Simultaneous Interpreting

Simplification refers to the hypothesis that translated texts tend to be more simplified linguistically than non-translated texts.After being listed as one universal feature of translation by Mona Baker,many scholars have conducted corpus-based studies to investigate simplification in translations,thus enhancing people's understanding of certain features of translated texts.However,most of the studies attempt to verify simplification in translation with few studies to investigate whether the simplification hypothesis is evident in interpreting.The author attempts to investigate the universality of simplification in interpreting and possible causes for the(in)consistency with the hypothesis by analyzing the linguistic features of C-E SI output.Three questions are thus raised:(1)What linguistic features could be found in C-E simultaneously interpreted discourses?(2)Do those features verify or falsify the hypothesis of simplification?(3)What may be the possible explanation for the(in)consistency with the simplification hypothesis?To answer the above-mentioned questions,a self-made corpus comprising three sub-corpora,namely SI corpus of conversation sessions at Summer Davos Forum,the corpus of original English conversations from Charlie Rose and CNBC,and a parallel corpus,has been built.The author resorts to indicators i.e.lexical density,STTR,list head coverage,core vocabulary coverage,mean word length,and mean sentence length to investigate the linguistic features in C-E Simultaneous Interpreting.Exploration of the possible causes for the(in)consistency with the simplification hypothesis will be conducted based on the Effort Model and the analysis of the parallel corpus.The results show that the interpreted discourses display a lower value of STTR and mean sentence length and a higher value of list head coverage,which indicates that the interpreted discourses are less lexically varied and more syntactically simpler than the original English,thus confirming the simplification hypothesis.However,the interpreted discourses feature higher lexical density,higher mean word length,and greater lexical sophistication than the original English,which suggests the interpreted English are more informative and lexically sophisticated than the non-interpreted original English and run counter to the simplification hypothesis.Based on the Effort Model for SI and analysis of the parallel corpus,the author holds that the redundancy and loose syntax inherent in the impromptu source speeches as well as the time constraints and cognitive constraints combined to make the interpreter adopt the strategies of omission and generalization to produce a condensed output,a move intends to save more time and effort for other tasks,thus leading to the increased lexical density.And the higher mean word length and lexical sophistication are very likely to be attributable to the increased lexical density(i.e.a higher proportion of lexical words in the interpreted discourses).