Use Of Cohesive Devices And Quality Assessment In E-C Consecutive Interpreting

Interpreting, as an important branch of translatology, is interdisciplinary which involves a variety of disciplines and research orientations. E-C consecutive interpreting is an important form of interpreting which aims to deliver information orally. So it’s a must for interpreters to establish a kind of textual awareness. They should process the information received at the discoursal level. Additionally, interpreters are expected to consciously use cohesive devices, on top of a good command of source language and target language, as an important part of their interpreting techniques.M. A. K. Halliday has already summarized five important and frequently-used cohesive devices (which are reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion) of English discourse in his work, An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Cohesion and coherence are the key to discourse analysis. What really matters in E-C translation is cohesion and coherence of discourse, no exception to E-C Consecutive Interpreting(CI). Because of the instantaneity of CI, it is not fair and practical to apply the same evaluation criteria to translation and interpreting. However, whatever the communicative purpose is, factors like integrity of information, fluent delivery, and continuity in logic are considered to be very important. In order to follow these criteria in a more informed manner, it’s necessary to do some research on textual cohesion in CI.This thesis is composed of five parts. Part one makes an analysis on the characteristics of E-C CI and cohesive devices. Part two makes a brief introduction to the background and significance of the research on E-C CI. Part three is the body of the thesis which is divided into three subdivisions presenting the three phases of the case study. The first phase makes an illumination of the pre-work of E-C CI, involving the judgment of source speakers, background and topic, specialized vocabulary reserves, and the most important element is an overall perspective in discourse which contains the situation with and without manuscript. The second phase firstly analyzes handling strategies of textual cohesion on a macro level, and then discusses the cohesive devices from the perspective of morpheme, relationship between words, and relationship between sentences. The third phase is a review of the E-C CI work, including three aspects which are embodiments of cohesive devices in E-C CI, the checking of the tapescript. In the light of the theoretical framework elaborated in part three, part four compares the interpreting versions by the author of the thesis and the reference translation and draw a conclusion of different cohesive devices aiming at different information, and different criteria of assessment on interpreting quality with the help of questionnaires. All the examples in this chapter are taken from the remarks by President Obama on the reopening of the Federal Government of the United States in the year of2013. Part five consists of a general conclusion of the four parts mentioned above and a speculation on further studies, theoretical or empirical, in this regard.