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Simultaneous interpreting (SI) has always been a challenging work due to its constraint of time and large requirement for excellent bilingual proficiency of simultaneous interpreters. However, besides its difficulty, SI is considered to be a highly technical work, which involves a lot of translation strategies. From the theoretical standpoint, compression in SI is extensively used as a labor-saving device with regard to redundant or repetitive information. So, what are the contents of speech can be radically omitted because it unfold many words per minute yet entail very little information? Based on our rich experience in handling SI jobs, we would like to share with you our own summaries and conclusions. 1/ Omission of expressions of public opinions, omitting these expressions can still realize the communicative act and achieve the effects of sense for sense translation, therefore, it is acceptable as a way of compression. E.g. was believed that… 大家都觉得 We are aware that… 我们都知道 You can see that… 你也看到 you know that … 你知道 since we know that… 我们知道 it is a common view that … 大家都知道 Our general impression is that … 普遍的印象是 The fact is that… 事实上
2/ Omission of expressions of speaker’s personal views. These information can be omitted as they are not the focus of the message. E.g. I think 我想,我觉得,依我看来 I hope 我希望 I believe 我相信 I know that 我想告诉你 As I said yesterday (several times) 我昨天讲过,我讲过很多次 You can see that 你也明白,你可以看到
3/ Substituting an abbreviation or Acronym for the full name or a phrase, this method can be adopted in order to compress the length of the sentence and catch up with the speaker. E.g. the Pearl River Delta Region 珠三角 (√) 珠江三角洲(χ) 执行总裁 CEO (√) the Chief Executive Officer(χ) 香港特别行政区 SAR(√) the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region(χ) 中小企业 SEMs(√) small and medium enterprises(χ) 尽快 ASAP(√) as soon as possible(χ) From the above examples, it is found that compression is an important skill and device in Chinese and English SI. The strategies of compression in Chinese and English SI include abbreviation, omissions of expression of speaker’s personal habit as well as omission of expressions of speaker’s public opinion. From the above study we can see that these strategies are flexible solutions of condensed structure and information in Chinese which can be taught in interpreting. Proper omission of words or phrases that do not affect the transmission of senses in certain situations and contexts and deletions of redundant linguistic components can be used as effective strategies in interpreting.