Terminology preparation for simultaneous interpreters
Terminology preparation for simultaneous interpreters
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同声传译员的术语准备
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发表时间：
2015
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通讯作者：
Ran Xu
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文献类型：
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作者：
Ran Xu
同声传译需要在口译员的工作语文中有效地使用高度特定领域的术语。不可避免的是，口译员的工作领域很广，准备新话题的时间有限。为了确保在使用大量特定领域术语的专门会议上获得尽可能好的同声传译，口译员需要做好准备，通常时间压力很大。他们需要熟悉口译员工作语言中的概念、技术术语和专有名称。
关于使用现代术语提取工具和管道来完成同声传译任务的研究很少。一些先前的研究提到语料库作为口译员潜在的电子工具的应用。例如，Fantinuoli(2006)和Gorjance(2009)讨论了特定在线爬行工具的功能，并探索了从口译员的一次性网络语料库中提取专业术语的方法。然而，还没有任何实证研究来检验术语提取工具和语料库的使用如何帮助口译员提高准备效率，以及这些技术和做法如何影响口译员的同声传译表现。
这项研究调查了一个基于语料库的术语准备管道，其中包括使用自动术语抽取器和语料库构建小型可比较语料库。我们比较和评价了几种中英文术语提取和检索工具，并选择了性能相对较好的单个术语提取工具和一个检索工具用于本研究的实证研究。通过关于如何使用口译准备工具的培训，口译员应培养建立自己的术语资源的技能，并为专门的同声传译任务激活相关术语。
本研究还通过考察实习生同声传译输出的质量来考察工具的使用对实习生口译表现的影响。为此，我们在利兹大学与MA实习生口译员进行了两次实验，使用不同的准备程序(和工具)来准备两个专题的同声传译任务(中英文双向)：海底矿物(SM)和快堆(FR)。我还收集了来自焦点小组的数据，以调查受训口译人员对使用不同程序(和工具)的看法。
我们的结果表明，与传统的制备程序相比，同时使用术语抽取器(SylLabs工具)和协和器(Sketch Engine)的制备程序获得了更好的制备结果。这有助于提高受训口译人员在同声传译中的术语表达能力，显著提高术语准确率7.5%，并减少9.3%的遗漏错误。另一方面，术语准备(通过同时使用术语抽取器和协调器)并不是解决所有错误的“灵丹妙药”。我们的数据显示，准备程序(和工具)只帮助学生的整体SI分数提高了2.8%(但没有产生任何统计学意义)。
本文论证了技术会议术语准备培训可以作为现有专业口译培训的有益补充。重要的是，学生和培训者都要意识到，如果使用得当，电子工具可以帮助口译员准备术语，并取得更好的表现。为进一步研究现代术语提取技术在会议口译中的应用提供了方向。
Simultaneous interpreting requires efficient use of highly domain-specific terminology in the working languages of an interpreter. By necessity, interpreters often work in a wide range of domains and have limited time to prepare for new topics. To ensure the best possible simultaneous interpreting of specialised conferences where a great number of domain-specific terms are used, interpreters need preparation, usually under considerable time pressure. They need to familiarise themselves with concepts, technical terms, and proper names in the interpreters’ working languages.
There is little research into the use of modern terminology extraction tools and pipelines for the task of simultaneous interpreting. A few previous studies mentioned the application of corpora as potential electronic tools for interpreters. For instance, Fantinuoli (2006) and Gorjanc (2009) discussed the functions of specific online crawling tools and explored ways to extract specialised terminology from disposable web corpora for interpreters. However, there has not been any empirical study to test how term extraction tools and the use of corpora can help interpreters increase their preparation efficiency and how these technologies and practices influence interpreters’ simultaneous interpreting performance.
This study investigates a corpus-based terminology preparation pipeline integrating building small comparable corpora, using automatic term extractors and concordancers. We compared and evaluated several term extraction and concordance tools for Chinese and English, and a single term extractor and a concordancer with comparatively better performance were selected to be used in the empirical study of this research. With training on how to use the tools for interpreting preparation, interpreters are expected to develop the skills to build their own terminology resources and activate relevant terms for specialised simultaneous interpreting tasks.
This study also investigates the effect of using the tools on trainee interpreters’ performances by looking at the quality of their simultaneous interpreting outputs. For this purpose, we ran two experiments with MA trainee interpreters at the University of Leeds using different preparation procedures (and tools) to prepare for simultaneous interpreting tasks (English and Chinese, both directions) on two specialised topics: Seabed Minerals (SM) and Fast Breeder Reactors (FR). I also collected data from focus groups to investigate the trainee interpreters’ views on the use of different procedures (and tools).
Our results suggest that the preparation procedure using both the term extractor (Syllabs Tools) and the concordancer (Sketch Engine) yielded better preparation results compared with a traditional preparation procedure. It helped improve the trainee interpreters’ terminological performance during simultaneous interpreting by significantly increasing term accuracy scores by 7.5% and reducing the number of omission errors by 9.3%. On the other hand, terminology preparation (through using both the term extractor and the concordancer) is not a “magical cure” for all errors. Our data shows that the preparation procedure (and the tools) only helped to improve the students’ holistic SI scores by 2.8% (but not yielding any statistical significance).
This thesis demonstrates that training on terminology preparation for technical meetings could be a useful supplement to the already existing professional interpreting training. It is important for both students and trainers to be aware that electronic tools, when used properly, can assist the interpreters’ terminology preparation and achieve an enhanced performance. It also offers directions for further research in the application of modern term extraction technology for conference interpreters.