An Empirical Study On Native Language Transfer In Business Chinese-English

With the in-depth advancement of the Belt and Road Initiative,foreign activities have seen a great increase,bringing a bigger demand for high-level Chinese-English interpreters with professional business contexts and outstanding interpreting skills.Based on "Native Language Transfer Theory" in second language acquisition,this study mainly aims to investigate how Native Language Transfer occurs to native Chinese students and what influences Native Language Transfer will bring when these students are doing business Chinese-English interpreting.Native Language Transfer Theory believes that native language transfer is caused by the similarities and differences between the native language and target language,among which that the similarities can promote the target language acquisition is called the positive transfer of native language.Conversely,the interference of native language to the target language acquisition caused by the differences of the native language compared with the target language is called the negative transfer of native language.Interpreting is an oral conversion activity between two languages.Interpretating learners influenced by native language habits and cultural factors are easily to add the rules and linguistic systems that exists in native language into target language while interpreting,thus causing native language transfer.Business Chinese-English interpreting belongs to a specialized field of interpreting,therefore,it is reasonable that native language transfer may occur to interpreters while they are interpreting business Chinese to English.By adopting the methodology of empirical study,15 native Chinese postgraduates majoring in English Interpreting are selected as the participants to conduct business Chinese-English interpreting simulation.This study analyzes how native language transfer is reflected in their interpreting,explains the causes,and summarizes the influences brought by such language transfers according to their business Chinese-English interpreting performance.This dissertation also proposes some corresponding strategies accordingly that can effectively help native Chinese students to utilize native language transfer while they are interpreting Business Chinese-English texts.The author has adopted the contrastive analysis and the comparison-induction method to analyze native language transfer of interpreters from individual level and group level under the reference of the official interpreting texts provided by the selected business Chinese materials.The analysis finds that native language transfer,both positive and negative,has occurred to native Chinese students due to the influences of linguistic factors such as phonetics and lexis and non-linguistic factors such as linguistic awareness and social psychology when they are interpreting the selected materials.The influences brought by such native language transfers in their interpreting are mainly reflected in the linguistic aspects of lexis,syntax,and phonetics.According to the summarization of the linguistic manifestation of native language transfer occurred to these students,the dissertation claims that interpreters can effectively make use of positive transfer while avoiding negative transfer by making efforts in expanding business Chinese input,correcting and exercising pronunciation and intonation,increasing the vocabulary of business English interpreting and strengthening the ability of both business Chinese-English and English-Chinese interpretation and translation,through which interpreters can improve their business Chinese-English interpreting skills and be more competitive in the interpreting market.