Cohesion Devices And Techniques In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting

Interpreting is an instantaneous activity that makes possible the communication between users of different languages.About interpreting,what interpreters and their clients care most is the output of the interpreting,or specifically,the quality of the interpreting.However,whether in traditional interpreting courses or interpreting activities,the focus of the output of Chinese-English consecutive interpreting has been laid on the completeness and the overall logic of the information while the cohesion between sentences has remained overlooked.But the differences between the two languages,between the two cultures and other relative factors may result in the use of different cohesion devices in Chinese and its translation.If interpreters fail to notice those differences and interpret the Chinese they hear directly into English,the renditions may be incohesive and incoherent and even strike the audience with the impression that the speaker just jumps from one topic to another without a focus or that the speech is not well-organized and difficult to understand.With such problems,the author hopes to enhance the awareness of interpreting students and interpreters of the differences between Chinese and English cohesion devices and to classify the techniques used by professional interpreters to make their renditions more cohesive.These techniques can serve as references for the aforementioned students and interpreters when they encounter similar situations.Therefore,based on the cohesion theory of M.A.K.Halliday and R.Hasan,the thesis first discusses the concept of cohesion and its relationship with coherence and text.Then,it makes a contrastive study of the five common cohesion devices in Chinese and English,namely reference,substitution,ellipsis,conjunction and lexical cohesion to help interpreters better understand the differences between those two languages in cohesion.Finally,the thesis compares the Chinese and English transcripts of the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's meetings with the press after the conclusion of the “Two Sessions” in 2014 and 2015 so as to sort out the specific techniques that interpreters can adopt when interpreting Chinese sentences whose cohesion devices are inapplicable to their English translations.After analysis and classification of the cohesion techniques employed by the interpreter,the thesis finds that the techniques used most are addition,conversion and specification.