An Experimental Report On The Effect Of Four-character Idiom Interpreting Strategies On The English Accuracy In Chines E-english Consecutive Interpreting

Four-character idioms,as words with Chinese characteristics,are short but rich in meaning.The most of literatures on the CNKI generally studied four-character idioms in consecutive interpreting.Professional interpreters would cleverly choose interpreting strategies when interpreting four-character idioms,so that the target audience could understand four-character idioms well in a short time.Previous studies have mentioned that flexible use of four-character idiom interpreting strategies could improve the quality of interpretation.But there were no quantitative articles which analyzed the influence of four-character idiom interpreting strategies on the English accuracy based on the skopos theory and experiment.The English accuracy was considered from three aspects.The first was interpretations’ meaning in source language context.The second was interpretations conformed to target language context.The third was the number of words of four-character idiom interpretations.Therefore,this study invited student interpreters as experiment subjects,explored the effect of Chinese four-character idiom interpreting strategies on the English accuracy in C-E consecutive interpreting with the guidance of skopos theory and asked two questions:(1)In C-E consecutive interpreting,the more four-character idiom interpreting strategies were used by student interpreters,the higher the English accuracy would be?(2)In C-E consecutive interpreting,what four-character idiom interpreting strategies were used by student interpreters? The subjects of the experiment were 10 second-year graduate students of English interpretation major in Yanbian University.They were both native and first language Chinese.They had received one-year interpreting training and had the same cognitive levels in Chinese and English.The experiment place was 431,Qin Xue building of Yanbian University.Questionnaires and interviews were conducted before and after the experiment.The tools of analyzing experimental data were line graphs,IBM SPSS Statistics Version20 and bar charts.The results were as follows:(1)In C-E consecutive interpreting,the more four-character idiom interpreting strategies were,the higher the English accuracy would be.But the four-character idiom interpretation should express the overall meaning of the four-character idiom in the source language context,conform to the target language context and be within 4 words.When omission interpreting strategy was used,the number of four-character idiom interpretation’s words was zero.If other interpretations in the sentence could express the overall meaning of the four-character idiom and was easy to understand,the English accuracy was recognized.(2)In C-E consecutive interpreting,when student interpreters interpreted four-character idioms whose overall meaning and literal meaning were the same or similar,free interpreting strategy was used most followed by reduction and literal interpreting strategies.And omission strategy was not used;when student interpreters interpreted four-character idioms whose overall meaning were figurative,free interpreting strategy was used most followed by the omission and the literal interpreting strategies.And reduction interpreting strategy was not used.Furthermore,this research also had some findings on how to interpret four-character idioms in different source language contexts.This research aimed to offer references for student interpreters interpreting Chinese four-character idioms in consecutive interpreting in the future:(1)Student interpreters should know the meanings of Chinese four-character idioms more and more.(2)After knew the meanings of Chinese four-character idiom,students should use four-character idiom interpreting strategies to make four-character interpretation express the overall meaning of the four-character idiom in the source language context,conform to the target language context and be within 4 words.(3)Student interpreters should try to interpret four-character idioms more and more,study common expressions of them and accumulate experience.