Simplification In Chinese-English Interpreting Of Economic Discourse

One main research strand of corpus-based translation studies is perhaps the exploration of translation universals,in which simplification is one of the hypotheses that has been extensively investigated.However,corpus-based empirical studies on interpreting are still rare,and existing literature on simplification focuses predominantly on lexical patterns and political discourse.Therefore,much remains to be explored in this field,such as simplification patterns at syntactic or stylistic levels,and in more diverse registers and genres.The current study approaches the investigation of simplification in interpreting from a syntactic complexity perspective.The research is based on a self-built,intermodal and comparable corpus containing interpreted speeches(Chinese-English simultaneous and consecutive interpreting)of economic discourse and non-interpreted English speeches delivered by native speakers.All selected speeches are confined within similar settings,namely conferences on the theme of economy,business,and innovation.The corpus is evaluated by L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer,which contains fourteen measures in five subconstructs(length of production unit,sentence complexity,subordination,coordination,and particular phrasal structures).Pairwisc comparisons among the three sub-corpora demonstrate mixed results.Specifically,simultaneous interpreting(SI)is more simplified than original English speech(OR),with nine indicators providing evidence for statistical significance.Consecutive interpreting(CI)is significantly less complex in five metrics and more complex than OR in terms of complex nominals per clause.As far as different modes of interpreting are concerned,SI presents a more evident tendency toward simplification than CI,with significance observed in eleven measures and lower scores in the rest three measures despite statistical insignificance.The study is to some extent supportive of the simplification hypothesis in interpreting and identifies that the mode of interpreting is an important variable as simultaneous interpreting is more simplified than consecutive interpreting.