Terminology and Interpreting in LSP conferences: a Computer-aided vs. Empirical-based Approach

ESSE 2010 Turin, 24th – 28th August 2010, Seminar 52: Interpreting Scenarios with English. Terminology and Interpreting in LSP Conferences: Computer-Aided vs. Empirical-Based Approach Extended abstract Simultaneous interpreters working in scientific conferences need to learn specialized terminology (LSP) and ontological structures in a rather short time, in order to produce adequate target texts (Viezzi 1996; Will, 2007). The terminological study carried out by the interpreter does not merely concentrate on lexical equivalencies but on a deeper level, on the contexts of the most problematic linguistic and semantic structures for knowledge acquisition . There is a time and place for everything and le mot juste for every time and place, particularly in special languages, a restricted area of human activity. […] There are in fact many circumstances where only a particular form of expression is acceptable. (Sager et al., 1981: 4) Analysing texts before the conference to detect and investigate any possible bottleneck that might hinder disambiguation during simultaneous interpreting is essential to ensure an interpreting of good quality. This paper investigates complex noun phrases (NPs) with premodification in scientific English and the interpreting pattern in the language pair English-Italian. Disambiguating and translating complex NPs with premodifications can be very demanding for simultaneous interpreters, due to their complexity and frequency of use (Gotti 1991, 2008). Premodifications can include a high number of constituents and their semantic relations can be quite obscure: only specialized knowledge and context will assist the interpreter in the disambiguation process (Carriò 2008). Detecting these “peculiarities” and working on them during the preparation phase may contribute to developing an automatic recognition system and applying an adequate coping strategy in the booth. In the paper the interpreting pattern will be analysed along the guidelines that some scholars have provided to understand and disambiguate complex NP with premodification (Salager-Meyer 1983; Carriò 2005; Quirk 1987). Methods Two methodologies have been used and applied to the same corpus of texts: one is more empirical and represents the most frequently adopted approach among conference interpreters, that is to say to read documents and select NPs manually; the second is supported by Wordsmith Tools, for the identification of clusters and contexts of use. Both lists of clusters will be used and assessed by the interpreter during simultaneous interpretation. The investigation was conducted on a corpus of abstracts and slides (English) provided by a conference organizer of veterinary training courses. The material consists of 25 veterinary texts referring, respectively, to clinical immunology and dermatology (10 texts) and breeding (15 texts) for a total of 31,372 words. The average length of the articles ranges from 1,549 to 2,973 words. The work is divided into four stages. During the first stage, NPs with premodifications were extracted and classified into 4 different clusters formed by 2, 3, 4 or 5 elements. Nouns were more frequent than adjectives but NPs with adjectives were not discarded, as a demonstration that the longer the NP, the more difficult it is to translate it (Carriò 2008). In the second stage an analysis of interpreting pattern was carried out for each group of cluster. The translation strategy adopted for disambiguation is paraphrase: the semantic and syntactic construction is fully “exploded” and made explicit. In the third stage a manual search was carried out, in order to identify NPs with premodification. The clusters identified manually were subdivided into categories, using the same method described above. In the fourth stage, the lists of clusters identified with W.S were compared with the lists of clusters produced manually, and both of them were tested and used in the translation booth. The clusters extracted manually by the interpreter present a cognitive conceptual structure; they are organized by order of appearance in the discourse and divided by categories (such as: pathologies, drugs, viruses): the terms will be more easily memorized and quickly retrieved during a simultaneous interpretation if structured in a conceptual system. The clusters extracted with Wordsmith Tools were ranked alphabetically and the contexts contributed to the process of knowledge acquisition. The list created by Wordsmith resulted very specific but it did not take into account the arbitrariness criterion that is of paramount importance to customize a terminological work. The work of terminology construction is an iterative process and software tools give their contribution in terms of speeding up the process of terms extraction, but the manual and cognitive contribution of the interpreter is undoubtedly unreplaceable. We hope that the present work will stimulate further investigations in setting guidelines for terminological work for conference interpreters in LSP, especially for the disambiguation of complex English NP with premodification in scientific English, considering other languages, such as French, Spanish and German. References Carrio, Pastor, M.L 2005. Contrastive Analysis of Scientific-technical Discourse: Common Writing Errors and Variations in the Use of English as a Non-native Language. Ann Arbor: UMI. Coetzee, J.M 1992. Isaac Newton and the Ideal of a Transparent Scientific Language (1982). Doubling the Point. Essays and Interviews. Cambridge / Massachussetts / London / England: Harvard University Press. 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