A controlled experiment measured native Hong Kong Cantonese speakers' perceptions of the quality of three different simultaneous interpretations (SIs) into Cantonese. The SIs differed only in the interpreters' accents, native in one case and non-native in the other two. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups, listening to the following versions of the SI: (1) native-accented Cantonese (control group); (2) Mandarin-accented Cantonese; (3) Englishaccented Cantonese. To motivate participants to listen attentively, they were told beforehand that they would take a comprehension test before assessing the quality of the SI delivery. Ten questionnaire items measuring SI quality perception were analyzed quantitatively, while any additional comments were examined qualitatively. Overall, respondents in the two groups who listened to SI delivered with a non-native accent assigned lower quality ratings on all survey items than did respondents listening to native-accented Cantonese SI. Qualitative data suggest three possible explanations for the low ratings of the two SIs with a non-native accent: (1) extra listening effort was required to understand these SIs;(2) negative stereotypes were triggered by the interpreters' non-native accents;(3) feelings of insecurity or threat were prompted by the non-native interpreters' ability to perform SI into Cantonese.

This is a corpus-based study that investigates instances in which court interpreters in Hong Kong deviate from using direct speech and the first person, notwithstanding the requirement to use both of these when rendering statements made by witnesses or defendants. Quantitative data indicate that court interpreters do adhere to this requirement when interpreting Cantonese into English, but deviate from it when interpreting English into Cantonese. These data suggest that the use of reported speech and/or of the third person has identification functions that help Cantonese-speaking witnesses and defendants follow court proceedings and serve the pragmatic function of adding illocutionary force to interpreted utterances. Data from interviews with interpreters and legal professionals suggest that some latitude is exercised and tolerated when interpreters deviate from using direct speech and/or the first person when the target language is Cantonese. The findings indicate that court interpreters in the corpus observe strict professional guidelines by using direct speech most of the time, but occasional deviation from the direct approach suggests that court interpreters are able to make discretionary decisions to facilitate communication.

In this era of globalisation, translation technologies have become more popular in daily communication, the education sector, and the translation industry. It is observed that there is a prevalent use of machine translation (MT) among translation learners. The proper use versus abuse of MT can be a critical issue regarding its role in and impact on translation teaching. This exploratory study aims at investigating learners’ and instructors’ knowledge of MT, experience in MT use, perceived MT quality, ethics of MT use, and the perceived relationship between MT and translation training, in order to figure out the usefulness of MT in translation competence acquisition and the necessity of MT training. To this end, we conducted surveys and semi-structured interviews and found that the influence of MT in translation competence acquisition is determined by the properties of MT and learners’ quality. MT is particularly helpful in gaining lexical knowledge and knowledge to ensure translation efficiency, but not in bicultural knowledge. However, such usefulness builds on learners’ language proficiency, analytic ability, and learning motivation. In light of the findings, issues including the sustainability of MT from ethical and linguistic perspectives, and the potential and proper use of MT to inform translator training, are discussed.

This study investigated the effect of source language interference during English-Chinese simultaneous interpreting (SI) with and without text by examining the relationships between manifestations of language interference and interpreting modes. A corpus-based descriptive approach was used to investigate language interference during English-Chinese interpreting at various sessions of the United Nations General Assembly. An intermodal comparison was carried out in three dimensions, addressing (1) the general linguistic properties of the interpreted texts; (2) the distribution of reformulation strategies; and (3) strategies for interpreting passive constructions and attributive clauses, two structures representing structural asymmetries between English and Chinese. The results indicated that the interpreted texts produced by SI with text and SI without text showed different degrees of language interference.

This corpus-based study explores the effects of relay interpreting at meetings of the United Nations General Assembly by comparing features of disfluency between the outputs of relay and non-relay simultaneous interpreting (SI). The findings are as follows: (1) the output of relay interpreting is shorter and more dispersive than that of non-relay interpreting; (2) filled pauses are the most common type of disfluency; and (3) the relay SI output shows fewer lexical and phonetic E-repairs and more A-repairs for ambiguity, syntactic E-repairs, and D-repairs than the non-relay output. The results suggest that the use of relay vs. non-relay interpreting may affect interpreters’ output.

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This pilot study investigates the formulaic phraseology most frequently used in highly formulaic political documents by examining a self-built bilingual parallel corpus of 43 speeches delivered in United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meetings by Chinese representatives. The study also probes corpus-based approaches to explore formulaic phraseology and demonstrates a method to retrieve Chinese formulaic phraseology from the UNSC corpus. Formulaic phraseology is often seen in political discourse. It can be defined as a sequence, continuous or discontinuous, of words or other meaning elements that are, or appear to be, prefabricated, stored and retrieved whole from memory at the time of use rather than being subject to generation or analysis by the language grammar. This study begins with a literature review of formulaic phraseology, including its features and significance in simultaneous interpreting. It then exhibits a four-step retrieval process with the Sketch Engine software program to acquire Chinese formulaic phraseology from the corpus to fill previous studies’ gap. Key functional units of the Sketch Engine, including Wordlist, N-grams, and Concordance, are used to extract formulaic phraseology from the UNSC corpus. Methodological issues involved in identifying formulaic phraseology, such as length of phraseology and quantitative criteria (frequency and dispersion thresholds), are also discussed in the study. Three types of formulaic phraseology are identified: (1) greeting representatives and other members and expressing appreciation; (2) expressing concerns about the topic of the meeting; (3) expressing China’s viewpoints about the topic of the meeting. The training of interpreters would be more effective if this categorization of formulaic phraseology is incorporated into the curriculum.

Anecdotes abound on interpreters being used as scapegoats, but without hard evidence. The purpose of this study was to observe whether Cantonese-speaking listeners blamed the interpreter for unsatisfactory scores awarded to them in a comprehension test, after listening to a simultaneous interpretation (SI) into Cantonese delivered with a non-native accent. After answering twenty comprehension questions, all 173 participants were shown their scores on a screen. In the neutral feedback group, participants viewed their real, unmanipulated scores. In the positive feedback group, two points had been added to the score; in the negative feedback group, two points had been deducted. Participants were unaware of this manipulation. After viewing their scores, they completed an electronic questionnaire on the quality of the SI. Between-groups comparisons showed that, in terms of SI quality perception, the neutral feedback group differed significantly from the negative feedback group but not from the positive feedback group. These findings suggest that participants in the negative feedback group attributed their unfavorable test results to the interpreter, who was treated as a scapegoat.