（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）外交语篇汉英口译质量忠实度研究.pdf

iv 摘 要 摘 要 随着社会对口译需求的日益增长， 人们对口译质量的忠实度也越来越重视。 但是，至今为止尚无一致的评估标准。这些忠实度评估标准可以从译语与原语 的语言形式和内容两个方面来加以探讨。本文将从口译质量忠实度评估出发， 总结出有效提高外交语篇汉英口译质量忠实度的策略方法，这两个方面来研究 外交语篇口译质量忠实度。本文从语篇分析理论出发，探讨外交语篇的口译特 点，结合中西学者对口译质量的调查研究，提出了一套口译质量忠实度的评估 标准及有效提高的策略方法。 本文分为五部分进行阐述。第一部分介绍了目前口译质量忠实度的研究前 沿以及整篇论文的布局。第二部分从理论上阐述了外交语篇分析，口译质量， 并系统介绍了中西学者对口译质量评估进行的理论与实证研究。第三章从外交 语篇在口译过程中对不同信息接受者的忠实程度以及丹尼尔吉尔的最低忠实 度这两个角度分别总结出了外交语篇汉英口译质量忠实度的标准。本文第四章 在口译质量忠实度评估的基础之上总结出了口译员在外交语篇汉英口译过程中 有效提高口译质量忠实度的一些策略方法。第五章是全文的总结部分，包括本 文的主要研究观点，本研究对口译质量评估的启示，研究的局限性，以及作者 对今后口译研究的建议。 关键词：关键词：外交语篇；口译质量；评估标准；忠实度；翻译策略 ii abstract with the growing demand for interpretation service, there has been an ever increasing attention on the evaluation of faithfulness in interpretation quality. however, there has never been a unanimous evaluation criterion. through discussing this issue for a long time, there is a consensus on being loyal to the content. this thesis will focus on the interpretation quality study of faithfulness and further explain it from two aspects. the first one is the evaluation of faithfulness in chinese-english interpretation of diplomatic discourse. the second one is the coping techniques to improve faithfulness in the interpretation of diplomatic press conference. this thesis aims at defining a set of quality evaluation criteria on faithfulness based on the theories of daniel gile，cai xiaohong and some other quality-related surveys. this thesis is divided into the following five chapters. chapter one is the introduction, describing the background of the present study, the purpose and the organization of this thesis. chapter two explains the theoretical framework of discourse analysis in diplomatic discourse, introduces the quality of interpretation as well as a brief review of the evaluation of interpretation quality. in chapter three, this thesis analyzes the evaluation of faithfulness in the interpretation of diplomatic discourse, including the effective ways to assess faithfulness from different perspectives and the minimum level of faithfulness in the interpretation quality of iii diplomatic discourse. in chapter four, three coping techniques are drawn from the above evaluation. the thesis concluded a set of coping strategies to improve faithfulness and offers suggestions on cultivating qualified interpreters. chapter five is a summary of this thesis with a call for more attention and further studies in this field. key words: diplomatic discourse, interpretation quality, evaluation criteria, faithfulness, coping techniques i acknowledgements my deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to my supervisor, professor yan yixun, for her constant encouragement and guidance in my interpreting practice and studies. she has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis, without her consistent and illuminating instruction, this thesis would never be in the present form. i am also greatly indebted to professor shi, professor li and professor hao for their valuable suggestions in my fidelity studies in interpretation and provided the basis of the idea in the thesis. they have instructed and helped me a lot in the past three years and provided with me insightful +opinions in my thesis writing. their instructions have benefited me a lot and will stay with me all my life. my thanks would go to my beloved parents for their loving considerations in the hardest days of thesis writing and great confidence in me all through these years. they gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult course of the thesis. last but not the least, i would like to thank my significant other and my friends, who have generously shared materials, thoughts and ideas with me about interpretation studies and continuously helped and supported me. 1 chapter 1 introduction 1.1 background of the present study since interpretation became a profession in the end of the world war ii, the evaluation of interpretation performance has been conducted for the purpose of formulating its professional criterion. in the beginning, it was spontaneous, fragmented, individual or even one-sided. half a century has passed, however, there has never been any universally accepted evaluation criterion of interpretation performance. in recent years, the evaluation of interpretation quality has become one of the most influential issues in press conference interpretation research community. both the interpreters and the service employers must follow due standards and principles. interpreters regard the quality of interpretation performance and the professional standards as their major objectives. it has been argued for a long time about the criteria of quality evaluation and the appropriate strategies to assess it. these convincing standards of interpretation quality are often used to guarantee the quality of interpretation now and in the future. in the end of 20th century, the interpretation circles began to focus on the evaluation of interpretation quality. it is often to find out some related articles published in academic journals such as the most famous one called “chinese translators journal”. 2 in china, many scholars have done a series of researches and contributed a lot to the development of theories and practice on interpretation. compared with the acknowledged translation criteria of “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance” put forward by yan fu, scholars much more emphasized on “faithfulness” and “expressiveness” in interpretation. li yueran (1987) summarized the principle of interpretation quality into “accuracy, fluency, promptness” in translation express, which has influenced the academic field for a long time. (p. 9) according to cai xiaohong, “flexibility of interpretation should be considered in quality evaluation” is proposed by qian wei (1996) in foreign language and translation. (p. 4) besides, bao gang (1998) concluded that “completeness, accuracy, fluency” should be regarded as the major evaluation criteria for interpretation quality in an overview of interpreting theories (p. 259). however, as a matter of fact, the above discussions are short of the theoretical foundation and the convincing empirical data. it is meaningful for us to grasp the future academic direction in interpretation quality based on summarizing the present researches. obviously, making a general survey of the past experience, it is helpful for us to widen the vision by drawing lessons from the abroad. in the western world, professional interpreters and researchers have also contributed a lot to this subject, such as daniel gile, ingrid kurz, barbara moser-mercer, d. seleskovitch and m. lederer. on behalf of paris interpretive theory, d. seleskovitch and m. lederer founded the “interpretive model”. this theory emphasized the comprehension of the 3 source information in the context of discourse. gile thought that there is no universally accepted criterion in interpretation quality, because many variables existed in the process of interpretation. in 1996, moser-mercer proposed three kinds of evaluation models in interpretation quality: assessment, measurement and judgment. recently, the research has been conducted through multi-disciplinary research. new research models and evaluation criteria have been explored. however, to some extent, all research efforts are limited. for example, in some cases, the relationship between the efforts made by the interpreters and the responses from the target language receivers about the effect of the interpretation does not draw great attention. in other cases, different requirements about different interpretation tasks fail to attract enough concerns. therefore, up to now, there has never been a complete and systematic set of quality standards and evaluation criteria which could provide us convincing results. quality evaluation of interpreting quality involves many factors such as different requirements for different tasks, efforts made by the interpreters at work, the comments and the response from source language speakers and target language receivers, as well as the purpose of the evaluation. since all the above factors have not been taken in to consideration, the previous studies did not set up convincing quality evaluation criteria. the thesis will focus on the study of faithfulness in diplomatic discourse, because that is the most controversial feature whether it is in interpretation or in translation, and the author will explain it into two aspects, the 4 way how to evaluate the quality of faithfulness from different perspectives and then summarizing the coping techniques to improve faithfulness in the interpretation quality of diplomatic discourse. the present study will produce both practical and theoretical significance. 1.2 purpose of this study in current, the international exchanges in politics, economy, science, culture and trade is becoming more and more frequent. under this situation, due to the language barrier in communication, interpreters shoulder great responsibility to facilitate the exchange smoothly and effectively. in discourse and the translator, basil hatim and ian mason has commented on the role of translator: “we hope to have shown that the translator stands at the centre of this dynamic process of communication, as a mediator between the producer of a source text and whoever are its tl receivers. the translator is first and foremost a mediator between two parties for whom mutual communication might otherwise be problematicand this is true of the translator of patents, contracts, verse or fiction just as much as it is of the simultaneous interpreter, who can be seen to be mediating in a very direct way” (p. 221). generally speaking, the purposes of interpretation quality evaluation could be classified into three kinds: for interpretation training, for the interpretation service and for the interpretation research. obviously, different purposes may have different 5 emphasis by taking various evaluation strategies. from the perspective of users expectation and satisfaction, many interpreting researchers have conducted lots of empirical studies and obtained different quality-related standards. although the issue of interpretation quality has always been discussed for a long time, there is a consensus on faithfulness which is the most frequent expectations from speakers and the audience. besides, faithfulness has been given the highest grade. it can be said that faithfulness is the soul of interpretation. therefore, concerning on the practical significance, the present study only focused on faithfulness of interpretation quality in the interpretation of diplomatic discourse. therefore, the significance of the present study lies in the following two aspects. first, it can shed light on the evaluation on faithfulness in interpretation quality of diplomatic discourse. second, it guided us to improve faithfulness in the quality of interpretation performance by summarizing coping techniques, so that we can offer better service to target language receivers. the present study is of both theoretical and practical value. from both professional interpreters and theory researchers points of view, the present study on faithfulness in interpretation quality is of great feasibility and positive significance. 1.3 organization of the thesis this thesis is divided into the following five chapters. chapter one is the introduction, describing the background of the present 6 study, the purpose and the organization of the thesis. chapter two explains the theoretical framework of discourse analysis in diplomatic discourse, introduces the quality of interpretation as well as a brief review of the evaluation of interpretation quality. in chapter three, this thesis evaluated the faithfulness in the interpretation of diplomatic discourse, including the effective ways to assess the level of faithfulness and summarized the bottom line in interpretation quality from the point of minimum level of faithfulness. in chapter four, the author concluded some coping techniques to improve the level of faithfulness in interpretation quality and offers suggestions on cultivating future interpreters. chapter five is a summary of this thesis. the major findings and limitations are concluded with a call for more attention and further studies in this field. 7 chapter 2 a general review of the literature 2.1 discourse analysis of diplomatic discourse in the field of linguistics, diplomatic discourse has always been a hot topic to research on. many linguists, home and abroad, have conducted academic studies on diplomatic discourse, such as van dijk, bell, and fowler. while, in china, ren xiaoping, xu yanan, and li jianying have gained a lot achievements in the studies of diplomatic discourse. mary snell-hornby (2001) argued about discourse analysis in his book of translation studies: with the development of text-linguistics and the gradual emergence of translation studies as an independent discipline in its own right, there has been an increasing awareness of the text, not as a chain of separate sentences, these themselves string of grammatical and lexical items, but as a complex, multi-dimensional structure consisting of more than the mere sum of its parts a gestalt, whereby an analysis of its parts cannot provide an understanding of the whole (p. 69). in the following, language styles and interpretation features of diplomatic discourse will be discussed in the following parts. 2.1.1 language styles in diplomatic discourse diplomacy is of great seriousness. the direct foreign affairs in diplomatic 8 work always stand for the national interest rather than the individual behavior. what it touched upon in diplomatic affairs is about policies with serious content. ren xiaoping (2000) has summarized: “languages used in diplomatic discourse is formal. its expression in language style shows easy and accurate. grammars are formulated to be concise and rigorous” (p. 40). scholars all agreed that policy served as the most significant feature for diplomatic discourse. obviously, the language of diplomatic discourse is serious. since it is related with national interest about the social intercourse between leaders and officers in different countries, the diplomatic discourse always represents for the perspective of each nations diplomatic standpoint. the content in diplomatic discourse is after much consideration with predestinated policy background and plot choices. the summarized conclusion is taken great attention by busy readers and listeners. the principle for the length of the story in diplomatic discourse is: to make it serious but brief. the language style for diplomatic discourse is also famous for fairness and balance. each parties involved in the affairs got a chance to express its idea. in order to dramatize the feeling of the spokesperson, he or she would employ the usage of modifiers in to the diplomatic discourse. however, the unfair and unbalanced diplomatic discourse might be considered as failure in expression, because the aim of the spokesperson is to be objective. hence, the spokesperson intends to give facts without bias in terms of convincing evidence. 9 just as any other kind of discourse, diplomatic discourses employ various kinds of devices to make the whole message cohesive, which play an important role in the formation of the whole discourse. however, due to their language features, diplomatic discourses use special devices to achieve connectivity between textual elements. hence, cohesion is considered as a necessary requirement for diplomatic discourses. to sum up, discourse language is a kind of phraseology with formal styles, which evolved from the needs of international association. the signs and symbols, tones and tongues in diplomatic discourse all serve to effectively communicate a particular message to the audience. seriousness, objectivity, fairness and cohesion are considered to be the typical language styles in diplomatic discourse. in the following, this chapter will summarize the researches on the interpretation features of diplomatic press conference. 2.1.2 researches on the interpretation features of diplomatic press conference in terms of the application of high technology, interpretation in press conference refers to the consecutive or simultaneous interpretation. hence, the press conference interpretation served as the top grade interpretation in the perspective of interpreters capability and equipment resources. from the view of communication effect, the interpretation features in diplomatic press conference could be found in the following way: first of all, in the process of diplomatic press conference interpretation, 10 language from the speaker is often very formal with cultural background features, serious with predestinated policies. there are usually some fixed expressions for both the speaker and the interpreter to follow. since it is related with national interest about the social intercourse between leaders and officers in different countries, the diplomatic discourse always represents for the perspective of each nations diplomatic standpoint. the content in diplomatic discourse is after much consideration with predestinated policy background and plot choices. secondly, different political persons show various speech styles. thus, the interpreters should exactly reflect such kind of speech style in the interpretation, in order to better represent the connotative information contained in the source speech. based on the linguistic studies, the language expression depends on the communication context such as the topic. ren xiaoping (2000) has ever sta