Unit 5 semantic redundancy of oral messages. Interpreter’s note-taking

Main points

5.1 Semantic redundancy as one of the main properties of oral discourse

5.2 Ways of ensuring semantic redundancy of oral messages

5.3 Semantic redundancy: recommendations for interpreters

5.4 Interpreter’s note-taking

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5.1 Semantic redundancy as one of the main properties of oral discourse

Semantic redundancy (семантична надмірність) is an important property of any discourse, and especially of the oral one. It provides safeguards for successful transmission of information, i.e. ensures that the listener better understands the speaker and that the communicative intent of the speaker is achieved. It is generally believed that semantic redundancy of messages is based upon 1) repetition of components of the message and 2) interrelation of components of the message [see Максiмов 2006: 22-24; Чернов 1987: 79-88] which are manifested through contextual relationships discussed in the previous Unit. In oral discourse these relationships are ensured by means of lexical cohesion (or rather lexical and semantic cohesion), which is so important for successful comprehension and translation of oral messages.

Linguistic means of lexical cohesion are described in detail by Michael Hoey [1991: 51-75, 83], who focuses in his book on repetition which is treated as occurrence of one or more items (words or word combinations) in a sentence that by themselves tell the reader or listener nothing new but reinstate some elements from earlier sentences. With these assumptions in mind, we will break up linguistic means, which ensure redundancy of oral discourse, into two groups: repetition links and interrelation links. These links are established between meaningful components of oral discourse through anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric contextual relationships.

5.2 Ways of ensuring semantic redundancy of oral messages

Semantic redundancy of oral discourse is ensured by the following linguistic means:

5.2.1 Repetition links

a) simple lexical repetition which occurs when a lexical unit that has already occurred in the text is repeated with no grater alteration than can be explained in terms of a grammatical paradigm (e.g. singular vs plural forms, present vs past, first person singular vs third person plural, etc), e.g. country – countries; eat – ate; go – goes; he – him; I – we; вікно – вікна; пишу – писав; вона – її, etc).

Only lexical (повнозначні слова) words can enter into such a link. Connections between such grammatical or function words (службові слова) as articles, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries, negatives and particles are not treated as repetition links;

b) complex lexical repetition which occurs when two lexical items share a lexical morpheme, but are not formally identical, or when they are formally identical, but belong to different parts of speech (or, rather, have different grammatical functions), e.g. computer – computing; human – humanity; politics – political; книга – книжковий; сіль – солоний; їсти – їжа, etc).