Prosodic Encoding Of Information Status In Sight Translation By Advanced Chinese Learners Of English

Language conveys information in daily communication.Prosody,as information conveyor,is characterized by stress,rhythm and intonation in spoken languages.It is encoded by three acoustic parameters—duration,pitch(F0)and intensity.The information structure theory suggests that new information is usually accentuated while old information is attenuated to maintain effective communication.Since semantically important information can be mirrored in prosody,a translator should take prosodic cues into consideration.The current study investigates the prosodic mechanism advanced Chinese learners of English use to encode information status in source language as well as in target language.Duration(ms),intensity(d B)and F0 range(ST)are measured for acoustic analysis.The results reveal duration reduction and F0 range compression in Chinese advanced learner’s production of both languages,though intensity increases.This observation slightly differs from the prosodic mapping on information status in previous studies,suggesting that information status is most steadily reflected in duration,followed by F0 range.Other factors,including syntactic structure,semantic context,and language proficiency,may affect intensity besides information status.