Cohesive Devices In English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpretation

Nowadays, with the progress of globalization,countries have enhanced their mutual communication, in which interpreters have played an important role. The main aim of interpreting is to express clearly the meaning of the speaker’s speech. In order to achieve this aim, right cohesion is needed to make interpretation coherent. Cohesion theory is an important concept in the field of discourse analysis and draws a lot of attention of scholars both home and abroad. Among these researches, the most influential one is the cohesion theory put forward by Halliday and Hasan. At present, most cohesion researches and practices aim at consecutive interpretation and little of them involves simultaneous interpretation field. This thesis will combine skopos theory and cohesion theory, analyze the interpretation of Obama’s inaugural speech and discuss whether the same or different cohesion device is applied to English and Chinese, as well as the reason why a certain kind of cohesion device is chosen. This thesis may make some contribution to the field of interpretation, and the research outcome may be used as references for both translators and interpreters in order to improve their interpretation practice.