A Corpus-based Study Of Explicitation Of Logic In Chinese-English Interpreting

In1990s, the cultural turn experienced by the translation field has made translation study move from being prescriptive to a descriptive study. With the support of descriptive translation study and corpus linguistics, corpus-based translation study has mushroomed during the past twenty years. Currently, the most prominent contribution made by corpus-based translation study is the study of translation universals, of which the study of explicitation is the most comprehensive one. As a translation skill, explicitation refers to the process of specifying information in the target language, which exists implicitly in the source language and can only be inferred from the context or the situation. At present, all these studies are confined to written translation corpus. Few scholars have carried out the study of explicitation in the process of interpreting or the degree of explicitation in interpreting corpus.Compared with the process of written translation, the interpreting process requires that interpreters make more explanations for both sides so as to facilitate the successful communication. Therefore, there is more room for explicitation in the process of interpreting. Accordingly, to study explicitation in interpreting is more realistic and meaningful. The thesis makes a probe into the manifestation of explicitation of logic in Chinese-English interpreting process with the empirical research method of corpus analysis. The research chooses PACCEL as its corpus and, based on the tagged PACCEL, explores the corpus of explicitation of logic in Chinese-English interpreting process with the key focus on the five categories of conjunctions that embody the logic of the text. They are conjunctions of condition, cause and effect, adversation, intention and concession. To intensify the efforts of anticipating and explaining the phenomenon of explicitation, the thesis attempts to explore the motivations for using the strategy of explicitation from three perspectives: differences between Chinese and English, the inherent features of interpreting and individual interpreter’s linguistic habits. The main research methods taken by the paper include literature review, combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis and combination of description and explanation. Through literature review, the paper summarizes the achievements and limitations of explicitation studies carried out in the translation field. The paper adopts the empirical study, attempting to make a corpus-based analysis of explicitation of logic in the process of interpretation, of which making statistics of the amount and frequency of the usage of logical connectives based on PACCEL is a quantitative study. On the other hand, description, analysis and explanation can never be separated from qualitative factors. Therefore, the paper also employs the research methods of combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses and combination of description and explanation.According to the comprehensive analysis of the statistics, the paper gets the following findings. First, there exists obvious explicitation in Chinese-English interpretation, which proves that explicitation exists not only in written translation but also in interpretation. Second, subject to the influence of the paratactic nature of Chinese and the hypotactic nature of English, Chinese-English interpreting process presents the obvious features of explicitation, which is mainly manifested by the frequent use of logical connectives. Third, taking the inherent features of interpretation into consideration, interpreters tend to employ the strategy of explicitation to improve the logical coherence and logical clarity of the interpreted text for the audience’s comprehension so as to finally realize the purpose of promoting successful communication for both sides.The findings of the research provide enlightenment not only to interpreting studies but also to interpretation teaching. First, statistics analysis reaches the conclusion that there exists obvious explicitation in Chinese-English interpretation, which provides evidence for explicitation hypothesis. Based on quantitative analysis, the thesis attempts to overcome the subjectivity of interpreting study so as to make the interpreting study move from being qualitative to the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis. On the other hand, the research findings of the study can be applied to the guidance of interpreting teaching, interpreting practice and the compilation of interpreting textbooks. While teaching interpreting skills in real interpreting situations, teachers of interpretation should help students understand the great differences between Chinese and English in terms of syntax to help students master the strategy of explicitation and improve their interpreting skills on real interpreting occasions.The thesis falls into six parts. It starts with the introduction of the development of corpus-based translation studies as well as the significance, methodology and layout of the paper. Chapter two is about literature review. Chapter three mainly introduces the research methodology. Chapter four explores the manifestation of explicitation in Chinese-English interpreting by using the method of the combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses. Chapter five explores the motivations for explicitation in Chinese-English interpreting. Chapter six is the conclusion, shortcomings and future research directions of the study.