An Empirical Research On The Cohesive Devices Adopted By Student Interpreters And Professional Interpreters In Chinese-english Interpreting

In traditional interpretation teaching and practice,most of interpreters tend to attach more importance to the integrity of interpretation and the content equivalence with the source language,while ignoring the cohesion between sentences in the text.English is a hypotaxis language while Chinese is a parataxis one,making the cohesion relationship in English more obvious than that of in Chinese.Thus,interpreters failed to recognize the invisible cohesive relations in Chinese and not be able to adopt an appropriate cohesive devices when transferring one language into another due to the significant difference between two languages.It could make the output of the interpretation incoherent or improper or may even impress the audience with misunderstanding to the speaker’s intention that the speaker has been changing the topics without focus.In view of the above problems,the thesis tries to draw interpreters’ attention to the application of the cohesive devices based on exploring the different performance on Chinese and English cohesion devices by student interpreters and professional interpreters.It is an effective way to deliver what the speaker means by achieving the flexible conversion of the different cohesive devices between Chinese and English,making a more compact and natural interpretation on discourse cohesion.Based on the theory of cohesion of Halliday and Hassan,the thesis made an empirical research on the application of cohesive devices between two different subject groups with the remarks made by the Foreign Minister Wang Yi in 2019’s Press Conference as an experimental material.The purpose of this thesis is to explore whether interpreters are aware of the cohesive relationship of sentences or in possession of the mental routine to transfer the cohesive devices flexibly and appropriately between Chinese and English.Studies have shown that the interpreters of the two subject groups are able to be aware of the cohesion relationship most in the application of additive conjunction and the interpretation is proved to be more coherent as well,while performed worst in the application of nominal substitution and the interpretation lacks logic;The result has also shown that there is a minimal difference between two groups in the application of additive conjunction,comparative reference and repetition,however,the difference between two groups in the application of causal conjunction,collocation and verbal substitution are huge;The experimental results are directly proportional to the difference in the application of the cohesive devices between the two languages of English and Chinese.The more different of the application of cohesive devices between Chinese and English,the greater difference is on the performance of the two groups,and much more the professional interpreters outperformedstudent interpreters,which is closely related to the rich experience of the professional interpreters who are being more proficient and reacting faster in the conversion of the different cohesive devices between English and Chinese.At the same time,both of the two groups performed poor in the application of the cohesive devices that are greatly different between the two languages.Interpreters can learn that which cohesive devices are more difficult to be applied from this experimental result and to take more practice on it.Cohesion is a significant device for achieving coherence in interpretation.It is recommended that interpreters develop a cohesive thinking mode in learning and practice interpreting and strengthen the training in the conversion of the cohesive devices between Chinese and English to better deliver the speaker’s semantics and intentions.