Investigating effects of gender identity on interpreters’ styles: A case study of multidimensional analysis

Investigating gender effects on interpreters' styles: A case study of multidimensional analysis Yuan Xiaoshu Shi Yunzhang Wan Hongyu Shandong Agricultural University/Taian, China Shandong Agricultural University/Taian, China Shanghai International Studies University / Shanghai, China yuanxiaoshu@shisu.edu.com yzshi@sdau.edu.cn wanhongyu@shisu.edu.cn Abstract By using the diplomatic discourse interpreting corpus this study investigates gender effects on interpreters’ style in the framework of multidimensional analysis. The results showed that female and male interpreters share similar interpreting style in regard to dimensional functions of their interpreted texts, characterized by informational production, non-narrative concerns, elaborated reference, overt expression of persuasion, abstract information, and online information elaboration. However, they use different methods to shape akin interpreting styles. Independent-samples t-test showed that 14 factors significantly distinguish female interpreters from male ones. For example, female interpreters tend to use lengthier words, second person pronoun, "there be" structure, causative adverbial subordinators and connectives whereas male interpreters are more inclined to use the pronoun “it”, which-type attributives and other adverbial clause conjunctions. It is argued that keeping faithfulness to the source language leads to similar interpreter behavior whereas different roles in society and concern for target language practicality attribute to differences in choosing linguistic factors. 1. Introduction As a cultural and social construction, gender refers to gender roles distinguishing masculine behaviors from feminine behaviors. (Hu, 2018:118) Since Translation1 is in essence a process of bilingual transformation and information processing, its process and production are supposed to be influenced by gender. Corpus-based studies on translator’s style originate from Baker’s Towards a Methodology for Investigating the Style of a Literary Translator published in 2000. Thereafter, corpus-based methodology has witnessed great prosperity in investigating translator’s styles either from the perspective of vocabulary, syntax, collocation, semantic prosody, discourse and narrative features and other linguistic features (Winters, 2007；Meng Ji， 2008 ； Cermakova, 2015; Huang, 2014) or from the perspective of non-linguistic features, i.e., the strategies and tactics used by translators or interpreters (Bosseaux, 2006; Pöchhacker, 2007; Besien & Meuleman, 2008; Liu, 2011). However, researches in this strand have yielded methodological intractability. First, analyzing the translator's style from an individual dimension is comparable to "the blind touch the elephant" (meaning taking a part for the whole). This will cause overgeneralisation, threatening the integrity of the translator's style. However, we might run into agnosticism had we not made an in- depth investigation of each dimension. Second, while much has been made of “style” in written translation since “the translator’s voice” was invoked in Hermans in 1996, hardly anything has been written about interpreting 1 Capitalized T refers to both written and spoken translation. The present study, which is an exploratory attempt towards this far less explored territory, aims to globally and locally investigate the impact of interpreter’s gender upon his or her interpreting style in Chinese-English diplomatic consecutive interpreting. Under the framework of multidimensional analysis (MDA) and by using the diplomatic discourse interpreting corpus 1.0 (DDIC) developed by the authors and their research team, differences and/or similarities between male and female interpreters in terms of dimentional functions and linguistic features are …

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