Abstract
Although structural differences have been reported as one of the problem triggers in Japanese/English and German/English interpreting, the issue of language specificity in Chinese/English interpreting has received virtually no systematic exploration. Based on the bilingual parallel corpus of Chinese-English Interpreting for Premier Press Conferences (CEIPPC), the paper presents a descriptive study into the effect of syntactic asymmetry on Chinese-English (C-E) interpreting and the relevant rendering tactics employed by interpreters. The analysis is focused on how the long and complex attributive modifying structures, which are typically front-loaded in Chinese, are interpreted into English, a language that is characterized by back-loaded modifying structures. It is found in the corpus that over 80% of the long and complex front-loaded attributive modifying structures in Chinese are interpreted into back-loaded structures or a mixture of front and back-loaded structures in English, which means extra cognitive effort of restructuring is required when interpreting between the structurally contrasted language pair. Such a cognitive-taxing effect of restructuring in C-E interpreting is triangulated with findings from a study of the comparable corpus composed of the interpreted English discourse from the corpus of CEIPCC and the original English discourse from the corpus of daily press briefings of the U.S. government. This study may shed new light on the role of language specificity as a factor impacting reproduction in C-E interpreting and implies the necessity of considering it as a variable in the theoretical account of interpreting behaviors, especially those between European and non-European languages that involve wide differences in linguistic structures and cultural conceptualization.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The press briefings were collected from the website of the U.S. Department of State [http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/index.htm].
- 2.
The nine press briefings collected in the corpus were held on January 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13 and 14, 2014.
- 3.
TTR/STTR is often regarded as an index of lexical diversity (or lexical variety, see Laviosa 1998). According to Yu (2009), TTR is sensitive to sample size; and according to Sadeghi (2013), lexical diversity is closely related to genre. In the current study, both the interpreted discourse and the press briefing discourse are similar in terms of sample size and genre.
- 4.
According to Stubbs (2002, p. 40), function words in English include auxiliary and modal verbs, pronouns, prepositions, determiners and conjunctions.
References
Dawrant, Andrew. 1996. Word order in Chinese-English simultaneous interpretation. An initial exploration. Unpublished MA thesis. Fu Jen University.
Flesch, Rudolph. 1948. A new readability yardstick. Journal of Applied Psychology 32 (3): 221–233.
Gile, Daniel. 2004. Issues in research into conference interpreting. In An international encyclopedia of translation studies, vol. I, ed. H. Kittel, A.P. Frank, N. Greiner, T. Hermans, W. Koller, J. Lambert, and F. Paul, 767–779. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Gile, Daniel. 2005. Directionality in conference interpreting: A cognitive view. In Directionality in interpreting. The ‘Retour’ or the native?, ed. R. Godijns, and M. Hindedael, 9–26. Ghent: Communication and Cognition.
Gile, Daniel. 2009. Basic concepts and models for interpreter and translator training, Revised ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gile, Daniel. 2011. Errors, omissions and infelicities in broadcast interpreting: Preliminary findings from a case study. In Methods and strategies of process research: Integrative approaches in translation studies, ed. C. Alvstad, A. Hild, and E. Tiselius, 201–218. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Guo, Liangliang. 2011. An analysis of the word order pattern in the SI target language and its underlying reasons in the language combination of English and Chinese. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Shanghai International Studies University (郭靓靓. 2011. 中英文同传译语语序处理方式的选择与原因研究. 上海外国语大学博士学位论文).
Harwood, Kenneth. 1955. Listenability and readability. Speech Monographs 22 (1): 53–57.
Harald, Kittel, Armin Paul Frank, Norbert Greiner, Theo Hermans, Werner Koller, José Lambert, and Paul Fritz (eds.). 2004. An international encyclopedia of translation studies, vol. I. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Laviosa, Sara. 1998. Core patterns of lexical use in a comparable corpus of English narrative prose. Meta 43 (4): 557–570.
Li, Dechao, and Kefei Wang. 2012. A corpus-based study on lexical patterns in simultaneous interpreting from Chinese into English. Modern Foreign Languages 35(4): 409–415 (**德超. 王克非. 2012. 汉英同传中词汇模式的语料库考察. 现代外语, 35 (4): 409–415).
Riccardi, Alessandra. 1996. Language-specific strategies in simultaneous interpreting. In Teaching translation and interpreting 3: New horizons, ed. C. Dollerup, and V. Appel, 213–221. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Sadeghi, Karim. 2013. The relationship between lexical diversity and genre in Iranian EFL learners’ writings. Journal of Language Teaching and Research 4 (2): 328–334.
Seeber, Kilian. 2007. Cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting: A psychophysiological approach to identifying differences between syntactically symmetrical and asymmetrical language structures. Unpublished PhD dissertation. University of Geneva.
Seleskovitch, Danica. 1978. Interpreting for international conferences: Problems of language and communication. Washington, D.C.: Pen and Booth.
Setton, Robin. 1993. Is non-intra-IE interpretation different? European models and Chinese-English realities. Meta 38 (2): 238–256.
Setton, Robin. 1999. Simultaneous interpretation: A cognitive-pragmatic analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Stubbs, Michael. 2002. Words and phrases: Corpus studies of lexical semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Uchiyama, Hiromichi. 1991. Problems caused by word order when interpreting/translating from English into Japanese: The effect of the use of inanimate subjects in English. Meta 34 (2/3): 404–413.
Wang, Enmian. 2008. Interpreting into B: Experiences of East-Asian countries. Chinese Translators Journal 29(1): 72–75 (王恩冕. 2008. 从母语译入外语:东亚三国的经验对比. **翻译, 29 (1): 72–75).
Wang, Binhua. 2009. Description of Norms in Interpreting and Its Application—A Study Based on the Corpus of Consecutive Interpreting in Chinese Premier Press Conferences. PhD dissertation, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.
Wang, Binhua. 2012. A descriptive study of norms in interpreting: Based on the Chinese-English consecutive interpreting corpus of Chinese premier press conferences. Meta 57 (1): 198–212.
Wilss, Wolfram. 1978. Syntactic anticipation in German-English simultaneous interpreting. In Language interpretation and communication, ed. D. Gerver, and H.W. Sinaiko, 343–352. New York: Plenum.
Xu, Jia**, and Yunlong Jia. 2009. Readability Analyzer 1.0: A text difficulty analyzing tool. Bei**g: The National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education, Bei**g Foreign Studies University.
Yu, Guoxing. 2009. Lexical diversity in writing and speaking task performances. Applied Linguistics 31 (2): 236–259.
Zhu, Chunshen. 1996. Translation of modifications: About information, intention and effect. Target 8 (2): 301–324.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Professor Daniel Gile for his insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wang, B., Zou, B. (2018). Exploring Language Specificity as a Variable in Chinese-English Interpreting. A Corpus-Based Investigation. In: Russo, M., Bendazzoli, C., Defrancq, B. (eds) Making Way in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies . New Frontiers in Translation Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6199-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6199-8_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-6198-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-6199-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)