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Article published In: Babel
Vol. 67:2 (2021) ► pp.222–244

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Is interpreting of China’s political discourse becoming more target-oriented?

A corpus-based diachronic comparison between the 1990s and the 2010s

 | Huazhong University of Science and Technology
 | University of Leeds
Published online: 9 June 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00215.pan
Abstract
Interpreting is an activity embedded in a particular socio-cultural context that underpins norms of interpreting. Adopting the descriptive translation studies approach, this study aims to find out whether the interpretation for the Chinese government by institutional interpreters is becoming more target-oriented in the decade of the 2010s in comparison with the 1990s. Through both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the Corpus of Interpreted Chinese Government Press Conferences in the 1990s and that of the 2010s, the study reveals that there is a significant increase in the total number of target-oriented shifts in the 2010s, manifested predominantly in “inserting hedges before propositional statements” and “modality shifts to attenuate ST’s categorical force.” Only minimal differences are found for the number of shifts in “explicitation of emphatic meanings,” “specification of Chinese source deictic lexis,” and “explicitation of implicit logic relations” between the two periods. The results thus indicate a general trend of becoming more target-oriented in interpreting, particularly a tendency to mitigate ST’s illocutionary force to a greater extent in the 2010s. Such changes in China’s institutional interpreting are correlated with the evolving socio-political context and the norms of institutional interpreting.
Résumé
L’interprétation est une activité inscrite dans une contexte socio-culturel particulier qui lui-même influe sur les normes de l’interprétation. En adoptant une approche empruntée à la traductologie descriptive, cette étude entend démontrer si l’interprétation fournie au gouvernement chinois par les interprètes institutionnels a évolué entre les années 1990 et les années 2010 vers une approche plus orientée vers le public cible. Au moyen d’analyses qualitatives et quantitatives d’un corpus constitué d’interprétations de conférences de presse tenues par le gouvernement chinois dans les années 1990 et les années 2010, l’étude démontre qu’il y a eu une augmentation significative des exemples de changement d’orientation vers le public cible durant les années 2010. Ceux-ci s’expriment principalement par le biais de « l’ajout de dérobades avant les énoncés propositionnels » et d’« une modification de la modalité pour atténuer la force catégorique du texte source ». Cependant, seules des différences minimes ont été observées pour les glissements en termes de « l’explicitation des sens emphatiques, » « la spécification du lexique déictique des sources chinoises » et « l’explicitation de relations logiques implicites ». Les résultats indiquent donc une tendance générale dans les années 2010 à l’interprétation orientée vers le public cible, en particulier une tendance à atténuer davantage la force illocutoire du texte source. De tels changements dans l’interprétation institutionnelle en Chine sont étroitement liés à l’évolution du contexte sociopolitique et des normes de l’interprétation institutionnelle.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research background
    • 2.1Institutional interpreting as a norm-governed activity
    • 2.2“Shift” in interpreting
  • 3.Research design and data
    • 3.1Research questions and methodology
    • 3.2Research data
    • 3.3Institutional interpreting of Chinese premiers’ discourse
  • 4.Quantitative results
  • 5.Qualitative analysis
    • 5.1Changes in “inserting hedges before propositional statements”
    • 5.2Changes in “modality shifts to attenuate ST’s categorical force”
    • 5.3Changes in “explicitation of emphatic meanings”
    • 5.4Changes in “specification of Chinese source deictic lexis”
    • 5.5Changes in “explicitation of implicit logic relations”
      • 5.5.1Explicitate “manner-purpose” and “cause-effect” relations
      • 5.5.2Explicitate illustrative and Adversative relations
    • 5.6Summary
  • 6.Discussion
  • References
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