Court interpreting as a type of dialogue or liaison interpreting has recently drawn an increasing level of attention in a variety of disciplines, including legal science, applied linguistics, and translation studies. ...Court interpreting as a type of dialogue or liaison interpreting has recently drawn an increasing level of attention in a variety of disciplines, including legal science, applied linguistics, and translation studies. Amongst discussions relevant to court interpreting, the area of sight translation has yet to be emphasized, despite its importance to the outcome of a trial. In this study I first had observations of court interpreting activities on several occasions. Based on these observations, I then formulated a questionnaire and distributed it to 86 interpreters in two training workshops organized by the Taiwan High Court in 2013. The key findings are as follows： most interpreters consider sight translation to be more difficult than other forms of interpretation in the courtroom; while conducting sight translation many interpreters pause in order to seek clarification or are interrupted; most interpreters would prefer the judge or the prosecutor to orally summarize the text to be sight translated; and, after ＂negotiation,＂ most practitioners tend to lower the level of formality when dealing with a text written in a formal style. These findings imply that interpreters conducting sight translation render a translation through ＂negotiation＂ with other participants of the activity; this negotiation can be seen as an attempt to build a ＂context＂ from the perspective of liaison interpreting. This study intends to raise the awareness of court interpreters regarding a number of key issues in sight translation, and the results are hoped to be conducive to the future study of other types of liaison interpreting and interpreting as a whole.展开更多
Sight Translation is regarded as an indispensable skill prior to the study of Simultaneous Interpreting.And Sight Interpreting is employed in some settings like court interpreting and formal conferences.The importance...Sight Translation is regarded as an indispensable skill prior to the study of Simultaneous Interpreting.And Sight Interpreting is employed in some settings like court interpreting and formal conferences.The importance of studying Sight Translation and Sight Interpreting is apparent.This paper reviews the previous literatures on the studies of Sight Translation and Sight Interpreting in the West and in China over the past four decades for attaining a full picture on the studies in this field.This paper focuses on the function and significance of studying Sight Translation and Sight Interpreting from both home and abroad.展开更多
Spoken language is marked by para-verbal and non-verbal dimensions,such as silent pause,hesitation,and intonation.Fluency is considered as an essential parameter for evaluating the quality of oral output.Sight transla...Spoken language is marked by para-verbal and non-verbal dimensions,such as silent pause,hesitation,and intonation.Fluency is considered as an essential parameter for evaluating the quality of oral output.Sight translation is a hybrid form of written translation and oral interpreting;however,fluency in sight translation is an underresearched topic.This paper examines the disfluencies in the sight translation of professional and novice translators working from English to Chinese.It adopted a statistical approach to compare the silent pauses and hesitation fillers in the delivery of professional and student participants.According to the independent samples t-test results,the differences were significant in the occurrence and ratio of hesitation between professional and student participants.It can be inferred that professional translators are more apt at coping tactics,such as pausing for several seconds,rather than inserting hesitation fillers unconsciously.Furthermore,the corpus-assisted analysis suggested a higher lexical density among professional participants,followed by the think-aloud approach,which revealed the causes for disfluencies.By drawing upon the Speech Production Theory,the paper found six most influential factors:vocabulary,emotion,syntactic category,speaking habit,lexical ambiguity,and topical difficulty.It is hoped that translation and interpreting studies will not be confined to linguistic dimensions.Paralinguistic signs should have their places in the domain of translatology.Semiotics of translation,which views translation as a pure semiotic act,thereby provides a valued perspective for translation and interpreting studies.展开更多
文摘Court interpreting as a type of dialogue or liaison interpreting has recently drawn an increasing level of attention in a variety of disciplines, including legal science, applied linguistics, and translation studies. Amongst discussions relevant to court interpreting, the area of sight translation has yet to be emphasized, despite its importance to the outcome of a trial. In this study I first had observations of court interpreting activities on several occasions. Based on these observations, I then formulated a questionnaire and distributed it to 86 interpreters in two training workshops organized by the Taiwan High Court in 2013. The key findings are as follows： most interpreters consider sight translation to be more difficult than other forms of interpretation in the courtroom; while conducting sight translation many interpreters pause in order to seek clarification or are interrupted; most interpreters would prefer the judge or the prosecutor to orally summarize the text to be sight translated; and, after ＂negotiation,＂ most practitioners tend to lower the level of formality when dealing with a text written in a formal style. These findings imply that interpreters conducting sight translation render a translation through ＂negotiation＂ with other participants of the activity; this negotiation can be seen as an attempt to build a ＂context＂ from the perspective of liaison interpreting. This study intends to raise the awareness of court interpreters regarding a number of key issues in sight translation, and the results are hoped to be conducive to the future study of other types of liaison interpreting and interpreting as a whole.
文摘Sight Translation is regarded as an indispensable skill prior to the study of Simultaneous Interpreting.And Sight Interpreting is employed in some settings like court interpreting and formal conferences.The importance of studying Sight Translation and Sight Interpreting is apparent.This paper reviews the previous literatures on the studies of Sight Translation and Sight Interpreting in the West and in China over the past four decades for attaining a full picture on the studies in this field.This paper focuses on the function and significance of studying Sight Translation and Sight Interpreting from both home and abroad.
基金This paper is part of the research project“A TAPs-Based Cognitive Approach to Interpreting Studies”(2016SJB740029)funded by Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education.The author would like to acknowledge with gratitude the comments on this paper from the anonymous reviewers.
文摘Spoken language is marked by para-verbal and non-verbal dimensions,such as silent pause,hesitation,and intonation.Fluency is considered as an essential parameter for evaluating the quality of oral output.Sight translation is a hybrid form of written translation and oral interpreting;however,fluency in sight translation is an underresearched topic.This paper examines the disfluencies in the sight translation of professional and novice translators working from English to Chinese.It adopted a statistical approach to compare the silent pauses and hesitation fillers in the delivery of professional and student participants.According to the independent samples t-test results,the differences were significant in the occurrence and ratio of hesitation between professional and student participants.It can be inferred that professional translators are more apt at coping tactics,such as pausing for several seconds,rather than inserting hesitation fillers unconsciously.Furthermore,the corpus-assisted analysis suggested a higher lexical density among professional participants,followed by the think-aloud approach,which revealed the causes for disfluencies.By drawing upon the Speech Production Theory,the paper found six most influential factors:vocabulary,emotion,syntactic category,speaking habit,lexical ambiguity,and topical difficulty.It is hoped that translation and interpreting studies will not be confined to linguistic dimensions.Paralinguistic signs should have their places in the domain of translatology.Semiotics of translation,which views translation as a pure semiotic act,thereby provides a valued perspective for translation and interpreting studies.
