Influence Of Cross-lingual Differences On English-Chinese And Spanish-Chinese Sl Strategies And Quality

Chinese, Spanish and English are three very different languages. For example, in English and Chinese, there is no conjugation, which is an integral part of the Spanish verbs. Chinese use separate words to express meanings that Spanish expresses with these conjugations, while English is somewhere in between these two languages.Speech rate is usually calculated in WPM (words per minute) or SPS (syllables per second). There are conceivable differences in speech rate among different languages. In connection with these differences, there are also such gaps in word and syllable complexity and information rates. In the same language combination, changes in speech rate of the original text will result in changes in the quality of SI. It is commonly believed that the faster the speech rate, the higher the load for the interpreter, the higher the chance for them to make mistakes, and therefore the lower in terms of quality. A few scholars believe that high speech rate will prompt the interpreter to use certain translation strategy that may easy the load and increase the SI quality.This thesis involves an SI experiment of the English and Spanish versions of two texts. Participants are divided into two groups according to their working language, six in the English group, and five in the Spanish group. All twenty-two interpreted texts will be evaluated according to the Grading Tools for SI of Professor Dawrant by three volunteers with adequate knowledge of both English and Spanish. The means of the grades will be calculated, compared and analyzed. The translation strategies present or absent from these interpretations will also be explored and compared.The author then compares the grades of different translations and analyses the strategies that were used, and puts forward some conclusions about how to choose the best translation strategies.