The Impact Of Mother Tongue Negative Transfer On Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting:A Comparative Analysis Of The Professional Interpreter And Trainee Interpreters

Because of differences between Chinese and English,interpreters with Chinese as their mother tongue tend to transfer Chinese way of thinking and language habits to English output.It brings difficulties for interpreters to improve their quality of interpretation.Therefore,it is significant to avoid negative transfer of Chinese in Chinese to English(hereafter C-E)consecutive interpretation.The study aims to find common challenges that negative transfer poses to MTI students at China Foreign Affairs University(hereafter CFAU)in interpreting from Chinese to English and their coping strategies and make suggestions in this regard by analyzing the interpretation of the professional interpreter and MTI trainees.The research material was selected from the press conference of the 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China(hereafter CPC)on October 15,2022.Based on literature review,the thesis first summarized common problems in C-E interpretation in four aspects: phonetic,lexical,syntactic and discursive transfer.A questionnaire was designed to probe into salient obstacles for MTI students caused by negative transfer.The thesis found that MTI trainees had more difficulties in lexical transfer.Then a comparative study was conducted to explore practical methods to solve the problem.After the comparative analysis of the interpretation of trainee interpreters and the professional interpreter,the thesis concluded that because of lexical negative transfer,trainees have difficulties in inflection,word choice and culture-loaded words.Based on the results of the questionnaire and the comparative study,the thesis also put forward some strategies to bridge the gap between students and the professional interpreter and minimize the negative impact of Chinese.