A Study On The Shift Of Texts’ Position On The Oral-Literate Continuum In Consecutive Interpreting Between English And Chinese

Translation universals have long been the focus of academic research.Among all universals in interpreting,Schlesinger’s hypothesis of "equalizing effect" in simultaneous interpreting is the most essential hypothesis.The "equalizing effect" is influenced by the interpreters’fluency,grammar,and mistakes.Therefore,further verification and cause analysis of this universal would shed light on the future focus of interpreter training and delivery.In recent years,a more significant number of researches have been conducted by scholars both home and abroad to prove this hypothesis further.However,in general,there is still a lack of sufficient data to prove this hypothesis.On this basis,this thesis adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods to conduct a descriptive analysis of the shifts of texts’position on the oral-literate continuum during C-E/E-C consecutive interpreting.The author selected four speeches as source texts（two in Chinese and the others in English）,two were more literate,and two were more oral.The source texts are 1)Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s speech at the 46th annual meeting of the 2016 World Economic Forum;2)the interview of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the 46th annual meeting of the 2016 World Economic Forum;3)the Zhejiang Provincial governor Yuan Jiajun’s speech on the World Young Scientist Summit and 4)Pan Xiu’s analysis of Premier Wen’s 2013 government work report during an interview.The author then invited eight trainee interpreters to perform consecutive interpreting of the source texts and transcribed the recordings verbatim.Afterwards,the author selected eight quantifiable parameters of orality/literateness based on previous studies of Hong Lei and Wang Binhua.Then,the author compared and analyzed the frequency of each parameter that appeared in the source text and the translations.With data collected,the author intends to figure out 1)whether the source texts have shifted their position on the oral-literate continuum during E-C and C-E consecutive interpreting;and 2)what is the difference between the shifts of more oral and more literate texts.The author concluded that 1)E-C and C-E consecutive interpreting also exert an"equalizing effect",i.e.,the more oral discourse becomes significantly less oral and the more literate discourse becomes significantly less literate through the interpreting;The source texts shifted toward the middle point of the oral-literate continuum.2)the shifts of texts’position on the oral-literate continuum are similar in E-C and C-E consecutive interpreting,i.e.,the shifts are more determined by the orality/literateness of the source texts instead of the translation direction.3)The shifts appearing in interpreting more oral and more literate texts are opposite.When the source text is more oral,the frequency of expressive features changes more significantly than those of the grammatical ones.In contrast,when the source text is more literate,the frequency of grammatical features changes more significantly than those of the expressive ones.Finally,the author attempted to make a preliminary cause analysis of the shifts with the focus on interpreter training and the effort model of consecutive interpreting proposed by Daniel Gile.1)According to the effort model,the total capacity of interpreters is limited.Therefore,when more capacity is required for understanding and note-taking,less is remained for language production.This explains that when the source texts are more literate,the translations tend to be more oral in language;2)the focus of interpreter training can explain the different changes of parameters.Interpreters are trained to limit their disfluencies.Therefore,their expressive features tend to be limited regardless of the literateness of the source texts.Therefore,when the source text is more literate,the changes of grammatical features are more significant than those of the expressive ones.The conclusion and cause analysis of this thesis could remind trainee interpreters of effort distribution in interpreting and therefore help them to allocate their effort better.Besides,the different changes of parameters caused by training can also shed light on the future focus of interpreter training.