The Impact Of Monotonous Intonation On Information Reception And Quality Perception Of English-to-Chinese Simultaneous Interpreting:An Empirical Study

The study of intonation has become an important trend in international research on the simultaneous interpreting(SI).The role of intonation in the production of SI has been discussed and proved in many language pairs.Yet literature on the English-to-Chinese SI is still scant.Therefore,the thesis presents an empirical study designed to investigate the impact of monotonous intonation(or monotone)on audience’s reception and perception of the simultaneous interpretation into Mandarin Chinese(MC).A controlled experiment is designed to investigate how audience react to SIs with varying degrees of monotony.Sixty participants of two separate groups have listened to two pairs of SI,one in original intonation and one in monotonized intonation.Their responses are collected in two types of questionnaires:a comprehension test of 18 multiple choice questions;a perception survey of nine parameters measured on a five-point scale,preceding one last open question.The experiment results reveal three major tendencies in the context of English-toChinese SI:(1)Interpreters tend to speak in a monotone in complex tasks.(2)Monotone could negatively impact the audience’s reception of the interpreted information.(3)Monotone negatively impacts the audience’s perception of the overall quality of SI.Three reasons for the tendencies are summarized through discussions of the qualitative results:(1)The monotone is associated with the interpreter’s limited "cognitive-operational margin";(2)Monotone impedes the audience’s recognition and reception of key messages;(3)The vocal traits of monotone constitute the emotional cues for boredom and sadness.