To address the issue of ideology in simultaneous interpreting, CDA is applied to analysis of simultaneous renditions collected in an experiment specially designed for the purpose of the study. In the experiment, trainee interpreters as subjects perform tasks of simultaneously interpreting, from Mandarin into English, authentic political speeches concerning the relations between Taiwan and China or the status of Taiwan as an independent country. The comparison of source texts and target texts, which is also known as a textual analysis approach, is commonly adopted in translation studies for identifying textual alterations that may be caused by the translator’s ideology. In the present study, the political speeches used in the experiment are referred to as source language texts and the trainee interpreters’ renditions as target language texts in translation/interpreting terms. Both texts will be analyzed, but simultaneous renditions become the main focus for the critical discourse analysis.
The CDA method in this study will not be used in a conventional way as CDA practitioners usually do. As discussed in Chapter 3.2.2, CDA practitioners tend to be socially or politically committed to addressing the issue of inequalities by linguistic means, and the interpretive nature of CDA has often come under severe attack (e.g. Widdowson 1995, 2004;
Jones, 2007). Jones criticises CDA for its failure to “reconcile the use of linguistic methods and constructs with ‘extra-linguistic’ considerations of truth (2007: 365; original emphasis)”
and disapproves Fairclough’s belief that CDA can help determine existence of ideological signs in discourse without taking facts and truth into consideration (ibid). In consequence, to avoid criticism about CDA’s interpretative nature and lack of factual considerations, the rendition data analysis in this study will begin with a textual analysis by comparing the researcher’s literal translations of the source speech texts and the subjects’ renditions of the same source texts and see if there is discrepancy at the lexicogrammatical level between the two. The literal translations are converted from the source texts in the plainest and most
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complete manner in order to let readers know the complete original messages conveyed by the speakers. As the translations are produced under no time constraints in a written form, it should be reasonable that there is discrepancy in accuracy, completeness, and register between the written translations and the interpreting renditions. The focus of the textual analysis in this study will be on lexicogrammatical choice, disinterpreted messages and the meaning of a rendered text as a whole. In consequence, a ‘deviant’ rendition is defined in this study as a rendition containing misinterpreted or disinterpreted messages which lead to overstatement, understatement, or distortion of the meanings that the source speakers originally expressed.
The deviant renditions will be dealt critically with on linguistic level through the CDA method, with a reference to extra-linguistic facts or information obtained in the surveys and/or interview (see the following sections), and will be considered within social, cultural, or historical contexts to seek cause for the existence of deviant renditions and provide evidence for confirming whether the deviant renditions are signs of hegemony or resistance. The process of comparison and cross-referencing within CDA analysis in this study is called the
‘CDA Filter Process’ (see Diagram 5 below).
As shown in Diagram 5, the CDA Filter Process is designed to seek solid evidence for the existence of ideological signs and to determine whether the signs are those of hegemony or resistance to hegemony. To confirm whether a rendition is deviant and ideological, the researcher will first examine the wording of the rendition and see whether the rendition deviates from the source text to the extent that it overstates, understates or distorts the original meaning. The wording of the deviant rendition per se may be obviously ideological when analyzed within specific historic, cultural or social contexts. Then the researcher will move on to determine whether the deviant rendition is a sign of hegemony or resistance to hegemony by referring to the other ideological signs made by the subject in the renditions of the same or other source speeches (where applicable), the survey results, and/or interview data produced by the subject. Evidence for the existence of the ideological sign may be obtained at any stage
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of cross-referencing shown in Diagram 5, which means the filter process may stop whenever reasonable grounds for ideological deviancy are found. It is not subjective or biased interpretation but objective comparison and cross-referencing that will determine the existence of ideological signs. Thus, the practice of the CDA method in this research may avoid common criticism of CDA as subjectively and ideologically interpreting discourse.
Diagram 5. CDA Filter Process
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By applying the CDA method to analysis of deviant renditions, discursive strategies and linguistic devices through which political ideologies of the interpreter subjects are embodied in their renditions will be carefully investigated. While striving to see if it is possible in this study to find a general trend in how ideologies of hegemony and resistance of cross-strait interpreter subjects are realized linguistically, it should also be kept in mind that Munday (2007) points out that the traditional CDA analysis within monolingual discourse may not always be the most suitable for detecting and classifying textual alterations in translated texts as translators are usually “guided by intuition and previous linguistic experience of the two languages alone” and variants in translated texts are usually not introduced in “systematic”
manner (ibid: 204). Yet, despite the non-systematic variations in translated texts, in his analysis of different English translation versions of the same Spanish political speeches given by such revolutionary leaders in Latin America as Catro, Marcos, and Chavez, Munday still finds that “the perspective of the [source] message is blurred by translation choices that affect the transitivity structures, the interpersonal function and the spatio-temporal deixis particularly (ibid: 213)”. In other words, the application of the CDA method in analysis of renditions may help disclose vividly linguistic means through which translated texts become a site for representation of an interpreter’s ideology.
In addition to the CDA Filter Process, an overview of the ideological signs produced by each student interpreter will be presented in two separate tables, one for the China group and the other the Taiwan group, displaying the existence of ideological signs both by individual and by group. Moreover, the Chi-square statistical analysis of the ideological signs of each source speech will be conducted. The statistical analysis of the ideological signs can not only represent power struggles between Taiwan and China but also provide clear insights into the issue of ideology in simultaneous interpreting. It is the researcher’s belief that with survey questionnaires and statistical instruments, the application of the CDA method in the present study can adequately uncover ideologies embodied in simultaneous renditions.
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