| In linguistics,lexical bundles are frequently occurring multi-words stored in memory that can be directly retrieved and used without processing and analysis.At present,studies have demonstrated that they are positively correlated with interpreting fluency,accuracy and idiosyncrasy.However,the number of interpreting studies on lexical bundles is insufficient,and most of them focus on students’ use of lexical bundles in interpreting teaching.Given the above,this thesis takes the four-word English lexical bundles used by professional interpreters in Chinese-English interpreting at the government press conferences as the research objects,with an aim to answer the two questions:(1)In terms of the structure and function of lexical bundles,how is the distribution of the four-word lexical bundles used by professional interpreters?(2)Based on the distribution of the four-word lexical bundles,what strategies have been employed by the professional interpreters in pursuit of favorable interpreting effects?The reason for targeting four-word lexical bundles is that they are relatively complete in structure and meaning,which can better reflect the prefabricated feature of lexical bundles,and their high frequency of occurrence can make the findings more representative.As for the research framework,this thesis is guided by the classification of lexical bundles proposed by Douglas Biber:in terms of structures,lexical bundles are divided into three types:verb phrase fragments,dependent clause fragments and noun and prepositional phrase fragments;in terms of functions,they are divided into three categories:stance bundles,discourse organizing bundles and referential bundles.As for the text selection,this thesis selects the Chinese-English interpretation at the Premier’s press conferences from 2020 to 2022 to build a small-size corpus according to proposed research questions.The data are obtained from the official website of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China.As for the research method,the study adopts a corpus-driven approach.The tool N-grams in the AntConc,the corpus retrieval software,is used to extract the four-word lexical bundles with the minimum frequency of three and the minimum range of three to guard against idiosyncratic use of lexical bundles and ensure a manageable size of the extracted bundles.To sum up,the main conclusions of this thesis are drawn as follows:First of all,by categorizing and counting the four-word lexical bundles from structural and functional perspectives,the study finds out the distribution of the four-word lexical bundles used by the professional interpreters:from structural perspective,noun phrase and prepositional phrase fragments are adopted by the professional interpreters with the largest number,followed by verb phrase fragments and dependent clause fragments;from functional perspective,the professional interpreters use more referential expressions and fewer stance bundles and discourse organizers.Second,a futher analysis of the distribution reveals the strategies deployed by the professional interpreters:from structural perspective,the strategy of equivalence is used to interpret noun phrase and prepositional phrase fragments,in order to achieve unmarked interpretation to improve the efficiency of interpreting.In addition,the professional interpreters consciously use modal verbs with middle or high value,with an aim to more vividly display a "reliable,admirable and respectable" image of China;from functional perspective,the professional interpreters avoid using epistemic bundles and imprecision indicators to reflect the objective position of the Chinese government.The strategy of addition is used to interpret stance expressions to achieve the communication effects and establish harmonious relations between the government and the general public.In addition,the professional interpreters exploit the phonetic advantage of discourse organizers to improve the fluency of interpreting and relieve the comprehension efforts of the audience. |
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