SPEECH AND LANGUAGE PREPARATION OF ENGLISH-RUSSIAN COMBINATIONS’ SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETER

ABSTRACT

The main prerequisites for improving the reliability of the “interpreting system” lie in the nature of the knowledge and skills to be possessed by an interpreter. The nature of this knowledge and skills follows with a fair degree of certainty from the structure of the proposed model. However, a few preliminary remarks must be made.

First of all, we should distinguish between the linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge of the simultaneous interpreter, which directly follows from the overall structure of the model and the role played in it by the thematic component both at the level of the communicative situation of simultaneous interpreter, which depends as will be seen below, on a number of factors.

Keywords: SL (Source language); TL (Target language); Simultaneous Interpretation; Bilingualism; Dominant language; Syntax; Ex-colonial; phonemic perception; attributive compatibility; sentence-utterance; prepositions; conjunctions; PELS (predictive elements).

Both intuitively and theoretically, it’s clear that the knowledge and skills of simultaneous interpreter must be based on a good knowledge of two and “fluency “in both languages. Less clear is the specific set of parameters which should be applied to determine the degree of “fluency” in a given language, which is necessary for simultaneous interpreting. Since we are talking about it is natural to turn to the question of bilingualism, or more precisely the nature of the bilingualism of the simultaneous interpreter.

Obviously, the parameters of the simultaneous interpreter’s bilingualism will be different depending on whether he translates into his native language, or from his native to a foreign one. (As applied to simultaneous translation, it would be more accurate to talk about the dominant language). In the presence of a certain number of synchronists, in whom, apparently, only with the help of special tests it is possible to identify the nature of bilingualism - “balanced” or dominant – almost the overwhelming majority of simultaneous interpreters have the character of bilingualism in this parameter always detects the dominant speech mechanism. Therefore, we will continue to use them.

The requirements to increase the redundancy of the perceived message in application to the first of the levels we are considering- to the sound system of the English language means the development of the skill of recognizing words “by a syllabic ensemble with great redundancy”, that is, a significant expansion of professional memory for phonetic words. This skill should be close to the recognition skill that since childhood. It is produced by a native English speaker. In the memory of the synchronist, the typical fantastic characteristics of the sound system of the English language should be also stored, because without this it becomes impossible to perceive unfamiliar proper names and geographical names.

At the same time, when preparing a simultaneous interpreter, it should be remembered that it is necessary to master not only a certain standard of the sound system of the English language-British or American-Canadian but also the specific features of all other variants of the English language, including its “unofficial” variants (not only Australian, but also “Indo-Pakistani” as well as “African”). This specificity is manifested not only in the phonemic variants of English in the speech of an Englishman, American, Australian and English-speaking representatives of India, Ceylon or Tanzania, but also in the intonational variability of English language. Even though “the analysis of discrepancies in the sound system of the American and British versions of literary English indicates the complete predominance of elements common over distinctive elements”, the very fact of the existence of discrepancies in the field of intonation between the British and American versions of the English language is beyond anyone’s doubt.”

So, the first feature of the training of the synchronist of the English-Russian combination is not only a free (at a level close to the native level) perception of speech in English, but also a good orientation in the variability of the sound composition of the English language both at the phonetic and intonation levels. The variability of the language system, as well as the susceptibility of speech to the interfering influence of the native language of a speaker speaking a non-native language, are also manifested in syntax and vocabulary (both in the selection of words and in their use). The synchronist, of course, should be prepared to perceive not only British and American versions of English language, but also its “ex-colonial” variants (India, Pakistan, Ceylon; African countries). He should not lose the freedom of perception of speech in English and under the condition of deafening ko: gentle sonorous consonants, typical for German and Scandinavian speakers. Thus, the first requirement for the training of a synchronist is to teach the peculiarities of the TL associated with its national territorial variants (in phonetic composition, intonation, vocabulary and syntax), as well as to develop the skill of perceiving the speech of speaker’s speaking in the language with notable interference of the native language, manifested in the phonetic structure, intonation, vocabulary and syntax.

The impossibility of predicting he sound composition of an unfamiliar word and the practical impossibility of its phonemic perception in simultaneous translation poses another task when preparing a simultaneous interpreter. The synchronist must:

• It is good to know the most common names and surnames in English speaking countries;
• To know the mythological and biblical names and the names of literary heroes;
• To know the world map (geographical names) in English;
• To get the skill of independent preparation on the topic of the conference-preliminary acquaintance with the composition of the conference participants, with the names of the main political, public or scientific figures who may be mentioned during the conference;
• Acquire the skill of listening to numerical material with such a degree of comprehension that would allow, at least, to convey the order of magnitude.

As for the volume of the dictionary, it is enough to limit ourselves to two remarks. Firstly, when preparing a synchronist to work in a foreign-Russian combination (SL – TL), the volume of a general literary dictionary should be quite large, with such a level of proficiency in it that would be sufficient for free recognition of a phonetic words in the speech stream and a clear perception of an unfamiliar word. The latter should be briefly explained: in the context of meaningful speech consisting of familiar and clearly unidentifiable words, an unfamiliar sound complex should be identified precisely as an unfamiliar word, the meaning of which can be restored in the context, but which will not be mistaken for a word known to the translator. In the latter case, it is possible to distort the meaning. Secondly, the vocabulary of a simultaneous interpreter should be replenished taking into account the predominant topics with which the simultaneous interpreter will have to deal.

The most important factor in increasing the redundancy of the text for a simultaneous interpreter is a good knowledge of the syntax of the SL about there are natural, mandatory, and therefore the most predictable categories of the system, categories that form a sentence-utterance. The work on syntax and it’s predicative role should, apparently, be based on the idea of a greater predictive power of certain syntactic constructions and service words (prepositions, conjunctions) of the English language – the so – called fulcrums or PELS (predictive elements) in the terminology of S.A.Lukanina. A special role, apparently, is played by the Floors of distant action, that is such syntactic-constructive indicators that, changing the measure of uncertainty, predict the syntactic construction, as well as categorical factors (cause and effect relations, temporal and spatial dependencies, etc.). A number of conjunctions are among such predictive elements of distant action, introducing subordinate clauses (such as if, that, whether, etc.), compound conjunctions (such as neither…pog…),etc.

It seems that the calculus of remote-action PELS and their classification could form the basis for the development of a special system of exercises to be used during the training of a simultaneous interpreter of the combination of SL2—TL1.

It is necessary to achieve maximum automatism in the perception of the categorical meaning of some varieties of syntactic constructions typical of oratorial speech. So, for example, a synchronist should recognize a quasi-conditional construction “if something is to be done”, which has a categorical meaning of the goal, not the condition, in contrast to the subordinate condition introduced by the conjunction “is”.

The main syntactic difficulty, with the nature of which a simultaneous interpreter should be well acquainted. SL(English)—TR(Russian) This is a much more complex predicative structure of utterances-sentences in English oratory than the structure of utterances in oratory in Russian. Its complexity is determined by the following factors:

1. The number of predications per sentence;
2. Distant gaps between semantic groups of phrases components of a complex utterance;
3. A complex system of subordination of multi-level predicates and, often;
4. Nonlinearity in the subject and categorical correlation of predicates;

In order to create the necessary subjective redundancy in the “translating device”, the linguistic and cultural training of the synchronist is necessary, which would allow him to perceive allusions typical of the speech culture of the language and SL2—TL4.

The range of linguistic and cultural topics outlined by E.M.Vereshchagin and V.G.Kostomarov basically coincides wit the one that can be distinguished during the training of a synchronist. Therefore, we will limit ourselves here to just a few examples of the use of literary allusions, proverbs and sayings (and more broadly, the so—called background or regional knowledge) in public speeches addressed to a multilingual audience and, therefore, subject of simultaneous translation.

Finally, part of the general speech training of a simultaneous interpreter is the preparation for translation in standard speech situations of simultaneous translation. Such preparation, of course, should be preceded by the development of an exhaustive set (list) of standard CPSs and corresponding glossaries of stereotypical expressions for these situations.

References:

1. Chernov G.V. Theory and Practice of simultaneous Interpretation. M.: International Relations, 1978.-208 s. [in Russian]