Experiment-based Study On Deverbalization Skills In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting

Interpreting,especially consecutive interpreting is playing an increasingly important role in enhancing the communication between China and other countries.Consecutive interpreting usually delivers 120 to 150 words per minute with each word remaining in the head for no more than 3 to 4 seconds.The reason why the interpreter could remember the nuances of various sense and convey such sense in his mother tongue is because he has got rid of the linguistic form of the original speech.According to the interpretive school,the core of interpreting lies in deverbalization,conveying the comprehended content and emotion in another language.This paper aims at carrying out experiment-based research on deverbalization skills in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting.Deverbalization,in this paper,is defined as sense-based interpreting.The author has repeatedly conducted unprepared training for the Chinese-English consecutive interpreting of the textbook,A Coursebook of Consecutive Interpreting(Renwen,2009,2~ndd Edition)and collected the training records under the guidance of the supervisor.Then,6 typical samples full of inspiration have been selected for the research,with which it has analyzed reasons for such deverbalization phenomena from the perspective of interpretive theory and contrastive linguistics and summarized deverbalization skills adopted and the principles for their application so as to improve the quality of the interpretation and interpreter’s capability.The author has reached the following conclusion with reference to relevant books and papers:1)Through analysis we can see that deverbalization mainly occurs due to two reasons.First,the interpreter should abide by the communicative interpreting principle during the consecutive interpreting process,which means he should conduct his interpretation based on sense instead of language;and second,there are huge differences between Chinese language and English language.For example,Chinese features parataxis,short sentences and topic-prominence while English hypotaxis,compound sentences and subject-prominence.2)Through analysis it is proved that the interpreter has adopted various deverbalization skills during Chinese-English consecutive interpreting,including logic integration,omission,information addition,sentence restructuring and paraphrasing,etc.Among them,logic integration means to integrate short Chinese sentences into long English compound sentences through the application of logic connectors;omission refers to conduct zero interpreting to content with self-explanatory truth which can be deduced through analysis;information addition intends to add some necessary information during the interpretation of cultural-loaded words so as to make it easier for foreign audiences to understand;sentence restructuring aims at reducing the pressure of memory through sentence segmentation or sentence adjustment and paraphrasing means to conduct context-based interpreting without too much attention on the rhetorical devices like analogy.3)Through analysis of the samples and with the guidance of interpretive theory and contrastive linguistics it is believed that the application of deverbalization skills should also satisfy the three principles of interpreting,i.e.immediacy,fluency and accuracy.It is expected that the research results can shed some light on future learning and training of consecutive interpreting as well as help interpreters enhance their interpretation and capability.