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Corpora and Intercultural Studies 1
Xin Li
The Reconstruction
of Modality in
Chinese-English
Government
Press Conference
Interpreting
A Corpus-Based Study
Corpora and Intercultural Studies
Volume 1
Series editors
Kaibao Hu, School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
Shanghai, China
Hongwei Ding, School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
Shanghai, China
This book series publishes original monographs and edited volumes in the
investigations of different types of corpora (including text, speech and video) with a
particular focus on intercultural studies. The differences in language use expressed
in comparable corpora can be analyzed from an intercultural perspective. The
emphasis is on excellence and originality in scholarship as well as synergetic
interdisciplinary approaches and multicultural perspectives. Books exploring the
role of the intercultural studies in the research fields of translation, linguistics, and
culture, with a corpus-based approach will be especially welcome. The series
publishes books that deal with emerging issues as well as those that offer an
in-depth examination of underlying issues.
The target audiences of this series include both scholars and professionals who are
interested in issues related to intercultural communication across different cultures
and social groups, which are reflected by the investigation in comparable corpora.
Corpora and Intercultural Studies book series is published in conjunction with
Springer under the auspices of School of Foreign Languages (SFL), Shanghai Jiao
Tong University (SJTU). The first series editor is the Dean of SFL at SJTU, and the
book series editorial board consists of leading scholars in the research field of
corpora and intercultural studies in the world.
The Reconstruction
of Modality
in Chinese-English
Government Press
Conference Interpreting
A Corpus-Based Study
123
Xin Li
School of Foreign Languages
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Shanghai
China
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. part
of Springer Nature
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore
Acknowledgements
The present work is based on my doctoral thesis completed at Shanghai Jiao Tong
University (China). Therefore, my deepest gratitude goes to my supervisor Prof. Hu
Kaibao1 for his constant encouragement, insightful comments, and unfailing
guidance throughout all phrases of this research project.
I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to other experienced translation
scholars in China, including Prof. Zhang Boran from Nanjing University, Prof.
Chai Mingjiong and Prof. Sun Huijun from Shanghai International Studies
University, Prof. Huang Libo from Xi’an International Studies University, Prof.
Wang Jiankai from Fudan University, Prof. Wang Zhenhua, Prof. Liu Huawen, and
Prof. Yang Bingjun from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, all of whom offered
critical and constructive suggestions on my research proposal and writing.
My special thanks go to Mr. Chen Mingming, the former Director of Department
of Translation and Interpreting, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who kindly accepted
my invitation for a telephone interview and responded to my questions with
patience despite his busy schedule at work.
I am grateful to my colleagues and friends at the Center for Translation and
Intercultural Studies, including Prof. Tao Qing, Dr. Zhu Yifan, Dr. Kyung Hye
Kim, Dr. Li Tao, Dr. Pan Feng, Dr. Liu Huidan, Dr. Meng Lingzi, Dr. Xie Lixin,
Dr. Li Xiaoqian, Dr. Hei Yi, and Dr. Sheng Dandan, who have given me
encouragement and support in different ways.
I have also been blessed with the help and support from many respectable
scholars in the field of Translation and Interpreting Studies home and abroad. In
addition to warm encouragement and positive suggestions they gave me through
personal communication, Prof. Qin Hongwu from Qufu Normal University kindly
1
For the sake of authenticity, the Chinese scholars’ full names in most parts of the book (including
acknowledgements and appendices) are presented in accordance with the Chinese naming con-
vention, i.e. family name before given name. For the convenience of citation in English, the
author’s name is put in reverse order (i.e. the western naming order) in the front cover.
v
vi Acknowledgements
provided technical support for my data coding and statistical analysis, Prof. Mona
Baker from the University of Manchester, Prof. Xiao Xiaoyan from Xiamen
University, Prof. Miriam Shlesinger from Bar-Ilan University and Dr. Sun Tingting
from Beijing Foreign Studies University all generously shared otherwise unob-
tainable academic resources that I needed for my research.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my amazing family for their support,
understanding, and unconditional love over the years. In particular, I would like to
dedicate the present work to my son Yuchen, whose warm hugs and brilliant smiles
have lit my life and pulled me through whatever difficulties in my research and
writing.
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 1
1.1 Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 2
1.1.1 Corpus-based Interpreting Studies as an Offshoot
of Corpus-based Translation Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.2 GPC Interpreting in the Chinese Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.3 Modality in GPC Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Organization of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2 Previous Literature on Interpreting and Modality . . . . . . . . . . . .... 11
2.1 Corpus-based Interpreting Studies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 11
2.1.1 An Overview of Corpus-based Interpreting Studies. . . .... 11
2.1.2 Corpus-based Studies on the Sociocultural Aspects
of Interpreting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 14
2.1.3 Corpus-based Studies on GPC Interpreting in China . . .... 18
2.2 Studies of Modality in Translation Between Chinese
and English. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 23
2.2.1 Studies on the Translation of Modality from English
to Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 24
2.2.2 Studies on the Translation of Modality from Chinese
to English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 26
2.2.3 Contrastive Studies on Modality in Chinese
and English Political Speeches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 28
2.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 29
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 30
vii
viii Contents
Note: This list does not include those abbreviation forms used in one particular
table only, or used for the coding of modality shifts. They are explained in footnotes
or in a specific table (e.g., Table 3.6). Commonly used abbreviations for countries
and organizations (e.g., the USA, ROK, WTO) are also excluded here.
xi
Chapter 1
Introduction
Despite the undisputable sibling relationship between Translation Studies1 (TS) and
Interpreting Studies (IS), these two disciplines have followed divergent paths of
development. Presumably, IS has a lot to borrow from TS as an “elder brother” with
better established theoretical and methodological foundations, yet in reality, IS so
far “has been shaped much more decisively by approaches from other than its
sibling discipline” (Pöchhacker 2009, p. 48). Under the influence of Descriptive
Translation Studies (DTS) developed by Toury (1978, 1980, 1995), TS since the
1980s “has largely focused on exploring literary translations in their social con-
texts” (Diriker 2008, p. 209), while IS has been primarily concerned about the
“cognitive and psycholinguistic aspects” (ibid.) of simultaneous conference inter-
preting, which is considered as “the most salient type of interpreting in the 20th
century” (Diriker 2004, p. 1). In fact, the impact of DTS and its central concept of
“translational norm” has been so strong in the translation literature that some
interpreting scholars also attempted to explore various norms governing interpreting
behavior in the 1990s (Harris 1990; Schjoldager 1995; Gile 1999), following
Shlesinger’s (1989) skeptical discussions on the possibility of extending the theory
of translational norms to interpreting. However, as Straniero Sergio and Falbo
(2012a, p. 25) points out, most of these norms “seem not to fit Toury’s definition of
norms” because these norms are “cognitive-based” rather than socially situated.
It was not until the 21st century that visions of IS and TS came to converge, with
both translation and interpreting scholars calling for efforts to address more criti-
cally the relationship between the translating/interpreting practice and its socio-
cultural context. For TS, it means to move beyond the “objective” description of
translation products and explore more systematically the sociocultural and ideo-
logical factors shaping translators’ choices. For IS, it means to shift away from the
1
“Translation Studies” here is used in the narrow sense, to refer to studies of written translation.
The broad-sense counterpart will be called “Translation and Interpreting Studies” to avoid con-
fusion. However, “translation” is used either in the broad sense or the narrow sense depending on
the specific context throughout the book and notations will be offered in cases of ambiguity.
1.1 Rationale
Corpus-based Translation Studies (CTS) has received growing concern and acknowl-
edgement as a valid approach to translation studies since Mona Baker first advocated
that applying corpus linguistics methods into translation studies would help “uncover
the nature of translated texts as a mediated communicative event” two decades ago
(Baker 1993, p. 243). Enlightening studies following this approach include empirical
investigations into “translation universals” (Laviosa 1998; Olohan and Baker 2000;
Xiao and Dai 2010), language-pair-specific features of translated texts (Huang 2008;
Hu 2009), translation shifts (Munday 1998), translator style (Baker 2001; Han and Fan
2016), translation teaching (Zhu and Mu 2013; Xiong 2015) and diachronic change of
translated language (Xia 2013). The fruitful findings reveal the strength of corpus
methods in identifying generalizable linguistic features and behaviors about translation.
Since Translation Studies in its broad sense include Interpreting Studies as its
sub-discipline, there is no reason for restricting the corpus-based approach to studies of
written translation. As Shlesinger (1998, p. 1) once argued, “corpus-based interpreting
1.1 Rationale 3
studies offer a tool which is both viable and revelatory not only for the study of
interpreting, per se, but for translation studies as a whole”. However, despite the
flowering of CTS, literature in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies (CIS) so far is lagging
far behind, due to the difficulty of compiling interpreting corpora and limited access to
authentic data. Besides, the limited studies in CIS seem to have a predominant focus on
simultaneous interpreting (SI) in the European setting, as shown in the special volume
of papers in Breaking Ground in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies edited by Straniero
Sergio and Falbo (2012b). Therefore, the recent attempts by Chinese scholars to
explore norms and strategies of consecutive interpreting (CI) in the GPC setting (Wang
2009; Liu 2010; Hu and Tao 2012; Sun 2013; Pan 2014), although sporadic, strongly
complements the picture of the Eurocentric CIS literature.
As Straniero Sergio and Falbo (2012a, p. 22) rightly points out, “corpora find-
ings may tell us how translators translate, but not why they translate the way they
do.” Granted, pure descriptions of linguistic features of translation with corpus
methods have in the past yielded fruitful insights into our understanding of the
translation-specific phenomena such as “translation universals” and “interpretese”.
However, in order to understand translation and interpreting as situated practices,
we need to go beyond the mere observation of linguistic regularities in the trans-
lated texts and seek explanations for translators/interpreters’ choices in their
sociocultural context. Therefore, the present study will attempt to explore both the
linguistic reconstruction of modality (“how”) in Chinese–English GPC interpreting
and the sociocultural motivations behind it (“why”).
acquired through formal schooling and personal study” (ibid., 109). Different from
many western countries with a large number of immigrants, where interpreting is
often employed by various organizations and businesses for different commu-
nicative purposes, in China, “[g]overnment (both central and local) is by far the
largest employer, with most routine day-to-day interpreting done by civil-servant
interpreter-translators with language degrees, but who often have other duties and
other career plans” (ibid., 109). This distinctive Chinese context with its socio-
cultural and ideological implications needs to be explored for the world to under-
stand the reality of interpreting in China.
GPC interpreting to be explored in the current study refers to interpreting at the
central-government-level press conferences during the annual “Two Sessions”
(known as “两会” in Chinese) of National People’s Congress (NPC, the national
legislature of China) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
(CPPCC, the top political advisory body), which are considered the most important
and influential GPCs in China. My choice of the GPC interpreting as the subject of
study in China is motivated by three reasons.
First, GPCs during the “Two Sessions” serve as in important window for the
world to access first-hand information about the Chinese government’s policies and
stances towards important domestic and diplomatic issues. As China grows into a
strong economic power attracting increasing attention from the world, the gov-
ernment has realized the importance of a more proactive and effective public
diplomacy. Because of “ideological differences and interest clashes”, “biased or
seriously distorted reports about China” have been published by western media and
unfriendly ideas such as the “China threat theory” have been promoted, seriously
undermining China’s image (Zhao 2007). Therefore, the Chinese government
cannot “expect foreign media to portray China justly, or close the opinion gap they
have created” (ibid). Instead, “China must present an accurate picture of itself to the
world” through better “public diplomacy” (ibid). This is why China has been
promoting a “proactive public diplomacy campaign” (Sun 2013, p. 59) in the past
decades, during which the GPC system was established and developed. Since GPCs
play such an important role in communicating China’s visions to the world, it will
be significant to explore how interpreters are mediating this dialogue between the
Chinese government and the foreign media.
Second, GPC interpreting during the “Two Sessions” is performed by well-trained
in-house interpreters from the Department of Translation and Interpreting affiliated to
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who represent the top-level of professional interpreting
competence in China. As interpreting in China is mostly initiated by the government
agencies instead of businesses and organizations, this top-level GPC interpreting can to
a large extent reveal the interpreting reality and professional norms in China.
The last reason is a practical one. As Shlesinger (1989, pp. 112–114) points out,
the obstacles hindering descriptive interpreting studies include the “virtual nonex-
istence of textual corpora” for interpreting and the inevitable interference of
“monitoring” in interpreting performance. Fortunately, these problems are solved
with the availability of the corpus CECIC (Chinese–English Conference
1.1 Rationale 5
Interpreting Corpus), details of which will be discussed in Sect. 3.2.1. For one
thing, the live-broadcast tradition of Chinese GPCs during the “Two Sessions” has
made it possible for us to collect authentic data and build a fairly large interpreting
corpus for descriptive analysis. For another, the GPC as an event is available to the
public anyway through live broadcast, so the recording will not affect the actual
performance of the interpreters.
2
ST and TT are generally used for written translation. But as this study is mainly based on the
transcriptions instead of the audio data, I will use ST and TT to refer to the transcribed source
speech and target speech respectively.
3
Note that “possibility” and “necessity” are used in the broad sense to cover all types of modality:
epistemic, deontic and dynamic.
6 1 Introduction
have been completed by Chinese scholars, but their linguistic observations are
limited to the shifts of “addition”, “reduction” and “correction” in terms of idea-
tional meaning (Wang 2009), and shifts of personal pronouns, terms of address, and
intensifiers (Liu 2010; Sun 2013) with only occasional examination on
modality-related hedging devices (see Sun 2013, pp. 148–166). In-depth analysis of
modality shifts is yet to be conducted in GPC interpreting. Therefore, the present
study attempts to explore this lacuna and hopefully will contribute to a deeper
understanding of GPC interpreting in the Chinese context.
The current study consists of seven chapters. Following this chapter that introduces
the general background and research objectives, Chap. 2 presents a review of
relevant literature on interpreting studies as well as modality. As the present study
takes a corpus-based approach to investigate the reconstruction of modality in GPC
interpreting and attempts to seek explanations in the sociocultural context, previous
CIS studies with a focus on the sociocultural aspects, studies on GPC interpreting,
studies of modality in translation will be given the most weight in the review.
Chapter 3 discusses the research framework and methodology for the present
study. First, the major theories that provides theoretical and analytical insights for
the current research are presented, including the ST–TT comparative model of
translation shifts from Toury’s (1995) DTS framework, the systemic functional
view of modality from Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014), and the integrated model
of sociocultural context analysis inspired by Diriker (2004), Alexieva (1997) and
Pöchhacker (2009). That leads to a summary of my integrated working model for
descriptive–explanatory study of modality in GPC interpreting. Then, the research
method is described through the discussion of the corpus data and the research
procedure.
Chapters 4, 5 and 6 constitute the core of the study, presenting the corpus-based
analysis, findings and discussions in response to the research questions. Chapter 4
presents the corpus-based findings of modality shifts in Chinese–English GPC
interpreting by proceeding from the English TT. In this direction, I will first identify
the English modality markers in the TT, and then go back to the ST to explore what
Chinese forms have triggered the use of English modality markers, and finally
compare the ST–TT coupled pair for translation shifts. Chapter 5 presents a similar
8 1 Introduction
analysis from the ST direction. Proceeding from the Chinese modality markers in
the ST, I will investigate what solutions are used by the interpreters to render them
into English and then compare the ST–TT coupled pair for translation shifts.
Analyses from the two directions will give a comprehensive picture of how
modality is reconstructed in GPC interpreting. Following the descriptive studies,
Chap. 6 maps the modality shifts in GPC interpreting onto the sociocultural context
and discusses the motivational factors including the institutional norms and the
typological features of GPC interpreting.
As the concluding chapter, Chap. 7 summarizes the major findings of the study,
discusses its contributions, implications and limitations, and offers suggestions for
future research.
References
Alexieva, Bistra. 1997. A typology of interpreter-mediated events. The Translator 3 (2): 153–174.
Angelelli, Claudia V. 2012. The sociological turn in translation and interpreting studies.
Translation and Interpreting Studies 7 (2): 125–128.
Baker, Mona. 1993. Corpus linguistics and translation studies: implications and applications. In
Text and technology: In honour of John Sinclair, ed. Mona Baker, Gill Francis, and Elena
Tognini-Bonelli, 233–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Baker, Mona. 2001. Towards a methodology for investigating the style of a literary translator.
Target 12 (2): 241–266.
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan. 2000.
Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and
Research Press.
Cronin, Michael. 2002. The empire talks back: Orality, heteronomy and the cultural turn in
interpreting studies. The Interpreting Studies Reader, 386–397. London: Routledge.
Diriker, Ebru. 2004. De-/Re-Contextualizing conference interpreting. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Diriker, Ebru. 2008. Exploring conference interpreting as a social practice. In Beyond descriptive
translation studies, ed. Anthony Pym, Miriam Shlesinger, and Daniel Simeoni, 209–219.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Gile, Daniel. 1999. Norms in research on conference interpreting: A response to Theo Hermans
and Gideon Toury. In Translation and norms, ed. C. Schäffner, 98–105. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters Limited.
Halliday, Michael A.K., and Christian Matthiessen. 2014. Halliday’s introduction to functional
grammar, 4th ed. Abington: Routledge.
Han, Jianghong 韩江洪, and Qing Fan 凡晴. 2016. 基于语料库的路易•艾黎和许渊冲“三
吏”“三别”英译风格对比探究 [A corpus-based comparative study on the translation style of
two versions of Du Fu’s “Sanli” and “Sanbie”]. 山东外语教学 [Shandong Foreign Languages
Teaching Journal] (6): 93–100.
Harris, Brian. 1990. Norms in interpretation. Target 2 (1): 115–119.
Hu, Kaibao 胡开宝. 2009. 基于语料库的莎剧《哈姆雷特》汉译文本中“把”字句应用及其动
因研究 [Corpus-based study of Ba-construction in the Chinese versions of Hamlet by
Shakespeare]. 外语学刊 [Foreign Language Research] (1): 111–115.
Hu, Kaibao 胡开宝, and Qing Tao 陶庆. 2012. 记者招待会汉英口译句法操作规范研究
[Syntactic operational norms of press conference interpreting (Chinese–English)]. 外语教学与
研究 [Foreign Language Teaching and Research] (5): 738–750, 801.
References 9
As the present project is a corpus-based interpreting study with the aim to inves-
tigate the reconstruction of modality in GPC interpreting in China and the related
sociocultural context behind the interpreting choices, this chapter will provide a
selected review of corpus-based interpreting studies and studies of modality in
translation that either constitute the research background or have been illuminating
in terms of methodology.
Although CIS is still a “cottage industry” compared with “the relatively organized
and coordinated landscape of CTS” (Setton 2011, p. 34), it proves to be a fruitful
paradigm to reveal regular patterns about the interpreting product, which con-
tributes to our understanding of the interpreting process and the shaping factors. As
Cencini and Aston (2002, p. 47) wittily puts it, “Like all speech, interpreting dies on
the air. In order to study it, we need to resurrect the corpse by recording and
transcribing it, thereby transforming the corpse into a corpus”.
In fact, CIS projects had started before Shlesinger’s (1998) landmark article
“Corpus-based interpreting studies as an offshoot of corpus-based translation
studies”, with the earliest attempts represented by research projects from the Paris
School (Seleskovitch 1975; Lederer 1981) in the 1970s and early 1980s. For
example, Seleskovitch (1975) sought evidence for her “deverabalization” hypoth-
esis for the interpreting process in an experimental corpus of consecutive confer-
ence interpreting from English to French. Lederer (1981) explored units of meaning
and illustrated the interpretive theory with authentic examples based on a corpus of
simultaneous conference interpreting from German to French. After a short
Against the background that traditional interpreting studies are preoccupied with the
cognitive process of interpreting, recent years witness a growing interest among
CIS scholars (Straniero Sergio 2003; Diriker 2004; Monacelli 2005; Beaton 2007;
Wang 2009; Liu 2010; Hu and Tao 2012; Sun 2013) in the sociocultural aspects of
interpreting, with issues like norms, situation-specific quality, meta-discourse of
interpreting, politeness, face, ideology, etc. discussed along with the description of
ST-TT relations in the corpus data. As the studies (Wang 2009; Liu 2010; Hu and
Tao 2012; Sun 2013) conducted by Chinese scholars are all related to GPC inter-
preting in China to be reviewed in Sect. 2.1.3, this section will only discuss those
socially-oriented studies by non-Chinese scholars.
Following Toury’s (1980) introduction of the sociology-oriented concept of
“norms” into translation studies to refer to the middle-ground constraints between
“rules” and “idiosyncrasies” (ibid., 51) which result in “regularities of translation
behavior within a specific sociocultural situation” (Baker 2004, p. 163), the 1980s
and 1990s witnessed a turning point of translation studies from the ST-oriented,
prescriptive research on “equivalence” to the TT-oriented, descriptive research on
“norms”. While it is still true that “most of the scholars who tried their hands with
the notion of norms were first and foremost engaged in the study of literary
translation” (Toury 1999, p. 13), it has attracted increasing attention from inter-
preting scholars since Shlesinger (1989a) first discussed the possibility of extending
the theory of translational norms to interpretation. For example, Harris (1990,
2.1 Corpus-based Interpreting Studies 15
pp. 115–118) discussed the norm of “speak[ing] in the first person” (ibid., 115) and
the norm of the “honest spokesman” (ibid., 118) in professional interpreting;
Schjoldager (1995, p. 84) suggested the norm that “[a]n interpreter is allowed to say
something which is apparently unrelated to the source-text item in question, …
provided that s/he can say something which is contextually plausible”; Gile (1999,
p. 99) identified the norms of “maximizing information recovery”, “maximizing the
communication impact of the speech” and “minimizing recovery interference”; and
Garzone (2002, p. 114) suggested the “basic norm” of “giv[ing] a complete ren-
dition of the ST”. However, as Straniero Sergio and Falbo (2012, p. 25) pointed out,
most of these norms were discussed “[w]ithin the cognitive paradigm” and their
socially-situated nature was underexplored. Among the discussions on the elusive
concept of “norms” in interpreting, two corpus-based interpreting studies (Straniero
Sergio 2003; Diriker 2004) stand out in their emphasis on the sociocultural and
situation-specific aspects of norms.
Straniero Sergio (2003) conducted a corpus-based study of English-to-Italian
simultaneous media interpreting for Formula-One press conferences. By comparing
the ST and TT segments in the transcribed data, he identified a translational norm
specific to Formula-One press conference interpreting (or media interpreting):
interpreters regularly use “emergency strategies” (e.g., “summarizing”, “general-
ization” and “metatextual glosses and tautological repetitions”) which “usually are
considered ‘last resort’” (ibid., 140). After associating this norm with the specific
situational context (e.g., the “phatic” function of SI on TV) of Formula-One press
conference interpreting, he further discussed the gap between the “ideal quality
expectations” for SI and the “real world criteria” and concluded that “quality
standards should be adjusted to concrete SI situations” (ibid., 169–171). Although
the translational norm of using “emergency strategies” in media interpreting is also
related to the cognitive constraints of SI, Straniero Sergio put more emphasis on the
situational factors specific to media interpreting behind this norm instead of dis-
cussing a norm constraining all SI performances. Therefore, this study is a step
away from the cognitive-based discussion of norms to the identification of norms
for specific situations.
With a more overt emphasis on the analysis of SI behavior in relation to its
sociocultural context, Diriker (2004) attempted to contextualize SI through its
meta-discursive representation which “does not embody just a neutral description of
intrinsic professional features, but presents a selected and hierarchized set of
‘norms’” (ibid., 25). To Diriker, translational norms of SI were not a research object
to be extracted from the “textual” data in the interpreting corpus, but rather existing
social realities to be revealed by the “extratextual” sources (for the two terms in
quotation marks, see Toury 1995, p. 65). With this view of norms, she didn’t have
to make the difficult decision on whether the regular patterns in interpreting per-
formance are norm-induced, but was able to discuss the dialectic relationship
between the interpreting performance and the perceived norms and offer tentative
explanations for the “convergences and divergences between what is said and what
is done in simultaneous conference interpreting” (Diriker 2004, p. 5, original
emphasis). She first explored the broad sociocultural context of SI through
16 2 Previous Literature on Interpreting and Modality
these analyses led to two important findings or implications: first, “EU institutional
hegemony is strengthened by simultaneous interpreters”; second, “the simultaneous
interpreter is an additional subjective actor in heteroglot communication” (ibid.,
271). Beaton’s study well illustrates how translation shifts can reveal the active and
subjective mediation of interpreters in an institutional setting, but she failed to
discuss the ethnographic information about the interpreters, which might have
offered explanations for their preference to strengthen the EU institutional
hegemony.
All the above studies illustrated the value and prospect of using parallel inter-
preting corpora in analyzing the sociocultural aspects of interpreting, including the
exploration of situation-specific quality and norms, the discussion of the interplay
between interpreting performance with the meta-discourse, the investigation of
interpreters’ politeness strategies and face work through linguistic indicators, and
the impact of interpreting on ideological discourse. However, all these
socially-oriented CIS studies by non-Chinese scholars concentrated on SI with the
“to A” direction (i.e., interpreting into the interpreter’s mother tongue), which
reflects the Eurocentric tradition of conference interpreting. Interpreting practice in
China where “history, demographics and present-day demands are shaping a pro-
fession somewhat different from the one that grew up in Europe fifty years ago”
(Setton 2009, p. 109) is less known to the world. For instance, CI and “to B”
interpreting (i.e., interpreting into a working language different from the inter-
preter’s mother tongue) is common practice in China. Thus it remains the
responsibility of Chinese scholars to conduct descriptive and empirical interpreting
studies based on authentic data to help the world understand the interpreting reality
in the Chinese context. Fortunately, in recent years, a considerable number of
Chinese scholars have conducted corpus-based studies on GPC interpreting (rep-
resenting the top-level of professional interpreting competence in China), and their
works will be reviewed in the next section.
Just like all the other CIS projects, corpus-based studies on GPC interpreting in
China by Chinese scholars either looked at the linguistic/para-linguistic features of
the interpreting product (Li 2011; Li and Hu 2013; Pan and Hu 2013; Pan 2014; Hu
and Xie 2014; Wang and Li 2014; Xie and Hu 2015) or explored the ST-TT
relations (Wang 2009; Liu 2010; Hu and Tao 2012; Sun 2013). It is noteworthy that
most of these studies on the ST-TT relations are socially-oriented, suggesting the
Chinese interpreting scholars’ acute awareness of the socially-situated nature of
interpreting. Considering their relevance to the present study, this section will focus
on the review of the socially-oriented studies on ST-TT relations in GPC inter-
preting, including two projects on translational norms (Wang 2009; Hu and Tao
2012), and two on the GPC interpreters’ agency role in terms of participation
framework and face work (Liu 2010; Sun 2013). Another two relevant projects
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tuntui hänestä tutulta, vaikkakin hän siellä saattoi havaita äskettäin
kaivettuja kuoppia aivan tien varressa sekä niiden ohella pengottuja
multakasoja, joka kaikki näytti osottavan, että jokin kullankaivaja oli
täällä äskettäin työskennellyt. Hän seisoi vielä ajatuksiin vaipuneena,
kun tomupilvi äkkiä laskeutui, ja nyt huomasi hän seisovansa
paikalla, jossa murha oli tapahtunut. Puuttui ainoastaan kuollut
ruumis ja sen silmäänpistävänä vastakohtana eloisa ja sievä nuori
tyttö, jotta asema olisi ollut aivan sama kuin viime kerrallakin.
Kuollut oli tosin poissa, mutta kun hän kääntyi, näki hän taasen
neiti Potterin muutamien askelten päässä takanaan, hevosella kuten
viime kerrallakin ja yhtä eloisana ja tarkkaavaisena kuin heidän ensi
kertaa tavatessaan. Kun hän oli taikauskoinen, värisytti häntä
kylmästi kauttaaltaan, ja sen jälkeen tunsi hän suurinta
vastenmielisyyttä tyttöä kohtaan.
"Kyllä."
"Ettekä tekään ole samanlainen kuin muut idän tytöt, joita olen
oppinut tuntemaan", vastasi, Cass.
"Tarkotan mitä sanon!" vastasi Cass jurosti. Mutta tuskin oli hän
antanut tämän vastauksen, ennenkuin hän käsitti, ettei se nostanut
hänen arvoaan miehenä; ja ennenkuin hän sai aikaa sanoa mitään
enempää, oli neiti Porter kadonnut.
Hän kohtasi tytön vielä kerran samana iltana. Oikeudenkäynti oli
yhtäkkiä keskeytetty Calaveron tuomarin saapumisen johdosta, ja
Joen asia siirtyi nyt Blazing Starin tilapäiseltä tuomioistuimelta täysin
lailliseen, mutta samalla tarkempaan oikeustutkintoon. Mutta sitä
ennen oli kuitenkin uudestaan kerrottu kertomus edelläkäyneestä
tutkinnosta ja sormuksen löydöstä. Kun syytetty oli kuullut tämän,
pyysi hän epäluuloisesti naureskellen nähdä löytäjän. Tämä tapahtui,
ja vaikka syytetty seisoi jo niin sanoaksemme hirsipuun varjossa —
jollaiseksi käytettiin muuatta niistä korkeista petäjistä, joiden lehvien
alla oikeus istui koolla — valtasi hänet kuitenkin niin
teeskentelemättömän sydämellisen iloisuuden puuska, etteivät
tuomari ja valamiehet voineet muuta kuin säestää häntä siinä.
Vakavuuden jälleen palattua halusi tuomari selitystä tähän
kummalliseen käytökseen. Mutta vastauksen sijaan päästi vanki
kuuluviin ainoastaan moiskahtavan äänen suustaan.
"Jos hän tahtoo istua sisällä, niin antakaa hänen tehdä kuten
tahtoo!"
"En!"
"Niin, tietysti!"
Cass oli olevinaan kuin olisi unohtanut mitä oli tapahtunut ja kysyi
hajamielisellä äänellä: "Kuka? Ah, ai niin, niin kyllä."
"Te tiedätte aivan hyvin, että teitä suututti se, että minä noudin
Hornsbyn, kruununvoudin, silloin kun löysimme ruumiin", lisäsi hän
aivan tarpeettomasti.
"Kunnes hän ajatteli —" sammalsi Cass, "että hänelläkin olisi lupa
käyttäytyä vapaammin, kun te ette ollut aivan niin — niin —
ymmärrättehän — niin varovainen kuin muut tytöt."
"Olen!"