Analysis On Interpreting Strategies For Politeness Expressions By Student Interpreters

Politeness is key to our relationships and plays a fundamental role in communication and in the way we define ourselves.It is not limited only to conventional aspects of linguistic etiquette,but encompasses all types of interpersonal behavior.Numerous scholars have given definition to Politeness Language2.This thesis is based on the framework of Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory in 1978.There are four types of politeness strategies,namely: the bald-on-record strategy,positive politeness strategy,negative politeness strategy,and offrecord politeness strategy.The implicit politeness language requires interpreters to convey not only the literal meaning but the implicatures.To explore the techniques chosen by interpreters and students when interpreting politeness language,and to find out the reasons of the disparity on technique selection of interpreter and students,the author collects 32 senior-year student recordings and analyses their recordings.Given the important role of politeness language in CATTI tutorial books and the inadequate studies of trainee interpreters in this aspect,the author sets out to explore how 32 trainee interpreters managed politeness language in interpreting,the pragmatic effects after interpreting and the possible reasons behind.The results of this study reveal the following findings:First,the frequency of politeness language is as high as 70% among the CATTI tutorial books.Second,CATTI interpreters will flexibly use literal interpretation to cope with Bald-onrecord politeness.For the remaining three types of politeness language,the interpreters will employ deverbalization strategies.Amongst all the sentences which were dealt by deverbalization strategies,reformulation,and creativity strategies both account for more than 30%.The total usage of deverbalization strategies is more than 90%,compared with the only 1.6% literal interpretation.In contrast,students tend to use literal interpretation and generalization,with a percentage of more than 40%.Third,for students,their interpretations show increasingly large disparity with expert interpreters.Students need to clarify the subtle different semantical meanings between synonyms and expressions.To better their interpretation for politeness language,students are supposed to strengthen their ability to employ various techniques,especially when interpreting subjunctive mood and other grammatically complex sentences.Previous studies have seldomly combine politeness language,deverbalization and CATTI together,while this thesis covers the relevant part of the three fields.Through the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data,this thesis is supposed to discuss the specific use of interpreting strategies on politeness language in textual level,presenting a systematic analysis of the distribution of both CATTI interpreters and student interpreters.