A corpus-based study of modal verbs in Chinese–English governmental press conference interpreting

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Yifan Zhang¹  Andrew K. F. Cheung² 

[1] School of Foreign Languages, Huazhong University of Science and Technology;Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

关键词: Corpus-based;    Modal verbs;    Modal values;    Consecutive Interpreting (CI);    China;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1065077

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

This study investigates the use of modal verbs in Chinese–English government press conference (GPC) interpretation. Modal verbs mark the speaker’s opinion of or attitude toward the event described in a sentence. Interpreters also use modal verbs to indicate the stances of the source language speakers. The use of modal verbs has been examined in such contexts as research papers, textbooks, and second language learners’ output; however, studies that compare differences in modal verbs between source and target languages in the context of interpreting are sparse. The investigation being reported is based on a comparable corpus—an original Chinese GPC and its English-translated version—and a parallel corpus—a translated English GPC and the original English version from the US. The results of the comparable corpus analysis indicate that the frequency of modal verbs in translated English is significantly higher than in original Chinese, in which only 40% of the modal verbs in translated English are consistent with their Chinese counterparts, while others are employed through amplification and value variation. The results of the parallel corpus analysis suggest that the increase of modal verbs in the target texts may help to achieve certain types of pragmatic functions in English.

【 授权许可】

CC BY