英语专业学生在英汉互译中时态使用和错误的实证研究_英语论文

An Empirical Study on English Major’s Usage and Errors of Tense in Consecutive Interpretation

摘要

在英语专业毕业生的就业方向中，成为口译译员是其中之一。同时，随着全球化的发展，对英语人才的需求量也在上升。随之兴起的是对于口译的学习与研究。本研究调查了英语专业学生在口译过程中使用的时态及出现的时态错误。研究文本来自中外管理培训班毕业典礼上的一段对话，约600字。每位受试者单独进行口译，笔者将录音转写并统计分析其中出现的口译错误，联系受试者的专业四级考试成绩，对英语学习提出建议。

研究结果显示，专四成绩不同的学生所使用的时态与所犯错误没有显著不同。但成绩越好的学生使用的时态种类更为丰富。受试者使用最多的三种时态为一般现在时、一般过去时、现在完成时。犯错最多的三个时态也是一般现在时、一般过去时和现在完成时。这三种时态是生活中最常用的时态，但也是犯错率最高的时态。然而所有受试者的口译都远远未达到口译译员的水准和要求。本研究结果表明，英语专业学生时态学习并未达标，因此英语专业学生应更注重时态的学习与练习。

关键词:  英语时态  汉语时态  时态错误   口译

Abstract

Among so many jobs, becoming an interpreter is one option for English major students. With the acceleration of globalization, society has higher demand for English talents, which results the wave of researching and studying interpretation and grammar. The present study is intended to investigate the tense usage and tense errors made by participants during English majors’ interpreting. The written text is a dialogue in the commencement of Sino-Swiss joint training course on management, with around 600 words. Every participant separately finishes the interpretation and the audio files are then transcribed into text. Later tense errors and tenses used are collected and analyzed. Finally, those data are related with participants’ TEM-4 grades and some suggestions are proposed for English learning.

Results show that there is no significant difference between participants of different English levels in tenses usage and tense errors. However, the variety of tenses used by participants is different, and participants of advanced English level use more kinds of tenses than participants of lower English level. The 3 most popular tenses used by participants are simple present tense, simple past tense and perfect present tense. At the meantime, most errors appear in the same three tenses, which are very common in our daily life. English major students should pay more attention on the three tenses. However, no matter of participants English level, they haven’t met the requirements of becoming an interpreter. The results indicate that capability of using tenses by the English major doesn’t meet the standard. Therefore, English majors should pay more attention to the learning and practicing of tenses.

Keywords: English tense  Chinese tense  tense errors  interpretation

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Research Background1

1.2 Significance of the Study1

1.3 Structure of the Thesis1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 General Introduction of English and Chinese Tenses . 3

2.1.1 Tenses in English3

2.1.2 Tenses in Chinese.4

2.1.3 Comparisons of Tenses in English and Chinese.4

2.2 Current Studies on Tense Errors5

2.2.1 Tense Errors in Writing5

2.2.2 Tense Errors in Oral English.5

2.2.3 Tense Errors in Interpreting6

2.3 Summary6

3 Research Methodology . 8

3.1 Research Questions8

3.2 Participants and Instruments.8

3.3 Types of Tense Errors9

4 Data Analysis and Discussion about Results.10

4.1 English Tenses Used by the Three Groups in C-E Interpretation.10

4.1.1 Descriptive Analysis of Tenses Used by the Three Groups10

4.1.2 Contrastive Analysis of Tenses Used by the Three Groups12

4.1.3 Summary of Tenses Used by the Three Groups14

4.2 Tense Forming Errors during C-E Interpretation.14

4.2.1 Descriptive Analysis of Tense Forming Errors in C-E Interpretation14

4.2.2 Contrastive Analysis of Tense Forming Errors in C-E Interpretation17

4.2.3 Summary of Tense Forming Errors in C-E Interpretation18

4.3 Tense Choice Errors during C-E Interpretation19

4.3.1 Descriptive Analysis of Tense Choice Errors in C-E Interpretation19

4.3.2 Contrastive Analysis of Tense Choice Errors in C-E Interpretation22

4.3.3 Summary of Tense Choice Errors in C-E Interpretation23

4.4 Tense Choice Errors during E-C Interpretation24

4.4.1 Descriptive Analysis of Tense Choice Errors in E-C Interpretation.24

4.4.2 Contrastive Analysis of Tense Choice Errors in E-C Interpretation26

4.4.3 Summary of Tense Choice Errors in E-C Interpretation.28

5. Summary.28

5.1 Major Findings.28

5.2 Suggestions on English Learning29

5.3 Limitations of Present Study.29

Conclusion30

Acknowledgements31

References.32