An Empirical Study On Syntactic Linearity As A Strategy In English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpretation ——A Case Study Of WHO Director-General’s Speech At The Media Briefing Of COVID-19

The majority of studies on syntactic linearity of English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation currently focuses on economic,cultural,and political domains,with only a few studies on health fields.The selected material is from WHO Director-General Tedros’s speech at the media briefing of COVID-19 on December 2021.An empirical investigation is undertaken based on Daniel Gile’s Effort Model to see whether syntactic linearity can improve translation quality and whether it can be substituted.Eight trainee interpreters were invited to participate in this study by simulating simultaneous interpretation over an internet conference and recording the entire procedure.For quantitative and qualitative analysis,the recorded content was converted into text.It was found that syntactic linearity could help trainee interpreters reduce their memory load and allocate more energy to listening and translation production,thus contributing to the improvement of translation quality.Tactics like waiting,prediction,compression,and omission can be used to substitute syntactic linearity in some cases.The findings of this study can inspire trainee interpreters to improve their translation quality by mastering syntactic linearity more expertly,considering and flexibly using translation strategies according to certain scenes.