Analysis Of And Coping Strategies On Logical Incoherence In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting

Logic is the speaker’s train of thought embedded in a discourse,connecting and integrating ideas into a complete speech with a clear structure.It is also conducive to audiences’ comprehension of the deeper meanings and intentions of the speaker during the speech.Logical coherence is one of the critical criteria to assess the quality of interpreting.In Chinese to English interpreting,interpreters should pay special attention to teasing out and reproducing the logic of the discourse because Chinese speakers tend to use logic more loosely under the effect of parataxis,the intrinsic characteristic of the Chinese language.The thesis,taking the mock conference of Urbanization: Global Trends & Issues in China as an example and based on Halliday’s and Hu Zhuanglin’s theories on logical cohesion,classifies logical inherence into two types: absence of logic and incorrect logic.Then it pinpoints the potential causes of these problems: for the absence of logic,major reasons include the omission of information induced by improper allocation of cognitive resources,abandonment of logic due to failure in understanding,and a lack of logic links in notetaking;incorrect logic is attributable to the author’s misunderstanding of logic in the source language,reproduction of apparent but not real logic,and abuse of logical connectives.To improve logical coherence,the thesis proposes coping strategies in the three stages of interpreting: in listening and analysis,interpreters should enhance the ability to analyze logic,and optimize allocation of cognitive resources to keep information complete;in notetaking,interpreters should reasonably take down logical links and ensure clarity of the notes’ structure;in production,interpreters should utilize self-repair to finetune logic and self-monitoring to ensure correct use of logical connectives.The author hopes to build on the thesis to improve logical coherence in interpreting in the future,and also hopes that the research can be helpful to those facing similar problems in the same profession.