Unit 8 Communicative Omission.ppt

Unit 8: Communicative Omission Consecutive Interpretation II Instructor: Niu Chunling U8: What is Communicative Omission? something neglected, left out, or left undone the act, fact, or state of leaving something out Skip over or leave out certain repetitive or redundant words, phrases, or expressions for communicative or rhetorical necessities. U8: Where does omission take place? Culture-specific concepts The source-language concept is not lexicalized in the target language The source-language word is semantically complex The source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning. The target language lacks a super-ordinate The target language lacks a specific term (hyponym) Differences in expressive meaning Differences in form U8: What are the coping strategies? Interpretation by a more general word (super-ordinate) Interpretation by a more neutral expressive word Interpretation by cultural substitution Interpretation by paraphrase using a related word Interpretation by paraphrase using unrelated words U8: C-E Omission C-E Omission often occurs at the semantic or discourse level, for the English language prioritizes brevity and concision. Eg: 尽管今年头几个月我国外贸出口增长较快，但不能据此对全年的外贸出口形势做出过于乐观的估计。这主要因为：一是每年头两个月的出口额在全年中所占的比重一般都比较小，不能完全反映全年的情况；二是由于去年同期出口出现负增长(show a negative growth), 因统计基数关系(due to such a statistical base), 今年的增长速度就表现得快了一些，实际上带有很大的恢复性增长的性质，这在一般贸易出口和国有外贸企业出口方面表现得尤为突出。 U8: E-C Omission E-C omission often occurs at the lexical level. The English logical devices such as pronouns, articles, prepositions, and connectives tend to be unnecessary, and thus can be left out in the interpretation. Eg1: University applicants who had worked at a job would receive preference over those who had not. 报考大学的人，有工作经验的优先录取。 U8: E-C Omission Eg2: When Rontgen（伦琴） put his hand before X-ray, he saw the bones of his hands only. 　　伦琴把手放在X射线前面时，只见到手上的骨头。 Eg2:The intensity of sound is inversely proportional to the square of the distance measured f