Jingyi Wu

“A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF THE USE OF COLLOCATIONS BY TRAINEE INTERPRETERS IN CHINESE-TO-ENGLISH CONSECUTIVE INTERPRETING”

Word strings frequently used by language users become conventionality of a language and are named as collocations (Sinclair 1991; Cowie 1991). In translation studies, collocations are known as indicators of features that distinguish translated texts from non-translated texts (see for example: Baker 2004; Laviosa 1998). The use of collocations reflects the naturalness of translated texts. In Chinese-to-English consecutive interpreting, interpreters who have English as their second language (L2) are expected to reproduce the meaning of source speeches as close as possible, and in the meantime, they work under pressure to complete multi-tasks: to listen to the source speeches, comprehend the meaning and convey the message with the help of notes and short-term memory. Therefore, one may wonder whether English interpreted speeches have some unique collocational features, compared with L2 English spontaneous speeches and non-interpreted language uttered by L1 speakers. Given that none of these have been investigated in the interpreting literature, my research explores the use of collocations by trainee interpreters in Chinese-to-English consecutive interpreting. It is hoped that this study on English collocations in interpreting would identify patterns repeatedly observed in interpreting output by trainee interpreters, and reveal linguistic features typically occurring in interpreted language, which have pedagogical implications on the quality of interpreting output for interpreter training.

Jade Du, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University

Ya-yun Chen, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University

Publications

Book Translation:

Rachel Carson, The Silent Spring (Beijing: Friendship Press, 2018).

Edited volume:

Jingyi Wu, Xianfa Hua (eds.), “Research on the Metaphorical Frames in the TV Debate of 2016 US Presidential Election”, Translation and Cultural Studies, vol. 11 (2018), pp. 351-355.

Article in journal:

Jingyi Wu, “An Ethics View on Medical Terms Translation: A case study of Alzheimer’s disease and its translation”, Journal of Hubei University of Education, no.2 (2018), pp. 121-124.