The Importance And Strategies Of Reformulation In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpretation

In the process of interpreting,different language pairs pose different challenges.EnglishChinese interpreting is relatively difficult because of the huge language and cultural gap,which makes it irresistible to reformulate the source language in order to produce meaningful target language and effective delivery.The reformulation can take place subconsciously in the process of comprehension,note-taking or expression.Research or papers devoted to reformulation itself,however,are comparatively limited.This paper takes the press conference of 2017 world internet conference to make the case that reformulation is essential to good delivery,because the author finds that the occasional word-to-word or sentence-to-sentence translation which caused many delivery problems stems from the lack of reformulation strategies.This paper proposes word-level and sentence-level reformulation strategies based on the specific differences between Chinese and English.Word-level reformulation strategies include the simplification of Chinese 4-character words,putting words with special cultural meanings into contexts,the use of more nuanced words when the source language is too general and obscure.Sentence-level reformulation strategies include generalization and omission,adding logical connections,and the adjustment of sentence order or reasonable restructuring.This paper also proposes three training methods(listing relevant words,retelling without note-taking,and rewriting)in the hope of providing insights to interpreters' training and work.