Grammatical Differences and Simultaneous Interpreting: An Empirical Approach

The book investigates the impact of grammatical differences on English-Mandarin Chinese simultaneous interpreting (SI) by drawing upon an empirical study of professional and student interpreters. It focuses on the effects of three English grammatical categories including passives, adverbials and noun phrases and of three Mandarin Chinese grammatical categories including co-verb phrases, noun phrases and topic-prominent clauses on SI between the two languages. For each category, interpretations of instances in which the grammatical structures are the same across the two languages are compared with interpretations of instances in which the grammatical structures differ across the two languages in terms of shortcomings in the accuracy of content such as errors, omissions, substitutions and factors affecting appropriateness of delivery such as grammatical errors, corrections and complete omissions. The results indicate that grammatical differences have a statistically significant impact on the interpreting performance of both professionals and students, although the impact of expertise is also attested through the consistently better performance of professionals than of students.

This book also focuses on the implications of this research for interpreting teaching and training by referring to the most suitable interpreting model, the detailed contrastive analysis of Mandarin Chinese and English, and the comprehensive empirical data of both professionals and students. The study significantly enhances the understanding of the impact of linguistic differences between languages on SI between them, and emphasizes that language-related strategies are a necessary part of interpreting teaching and training.