A Quantitative Study Of The Source Text Difficulty In Sign Language Interpreting Textbooks

The research on text difficulty of sign language interpreting(SLI)is pivotal to the SLI education and certification.After reviewing the relevant research into English"readability" formulas,Chinese text difficulty,translation and interpreting difficulty,and taking into account the SL specific difficulties,this thesis selects five variables to measure source text difficulty in the Chinese to Chinese Sign Language(CSL)interpreting,i.e.,text length,lexical difficulty,mean sentence length,grammatical complexity(in light of Deaf receivers),and information difficulty.A total of 45 Chinese sources texts from a set of 3 SLI textbooks are selected for quantitative measurements and cross-examinations against the 5 variables.Results show that the text difficulty among the 3 textbooks display a gradual climb in terms of text length,lexical difficulty,mean sentence length,grammatical complexity,and information difficulty.It is also found that the 15 texts within each textbook present a distinct growth only in 4 out of the 5 variables,namely,text length,lexical difficulty,grammatical complexity,and information difficulty,but not in mean sentence length.It may be argued that the concept of a "sentence" in a Chinese speech is itself a controversial one and sentence length may not be suited to be an indicator in interpreting.Besides,the difficulty progression between Level Ⅰ and Level Ⅱ shows a more gradual and smoother climb than that between Level Ⅱ and Level Ⅲ.Overall,from the statistics,the texts in this set of textbooks are compiled in a scientific progression of difficulty.This thesis is only an exploratory attempt to measure source text difficulty in SLI.It is hoped that more research will be conducted by the academia and the initial results of the current study can be of some theoretical and practical reference for future studies into issues imperative to the professional education and development of SLI in China.