Investigating effects of gender on interpreters' styles: A case study of multidimensional analysis A corpus-based multidimensional study of Chinese-English institutional interpreting
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Using the diplomatic discourse interpreting corpus, this study investigates the effects of gender on interpreters' style in the framework of multidimensional analysis. The results showed that female and male interpreters share similar interpreting styles for their interpreted texts, and informational production, non-narrative concerns, elaborated reference, overt expression of persuasion, abstract information, and online information elaboration characterize it. However, they use different methods to shape such an interpreting style. Independent samples t-test further showed that 14 factors significantly distinguish the female from male interpreters. For example, female interpreters use lengthier words, second-person pronouns, "there be" structure, causative adverbial subordinators, and connectives. In contrast, 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. In contrast, different societal roles and concerns for target language practicality are attributed to differences in choosing linguistic factors.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Suggested policy for journals that offer open access
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of authorship of the work and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors may enter into additional contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the paper in the journal (e.g., submission to an institutional repository), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are allowed and encouraged to publish their work prior to the final version published in this journal once accepted (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website), as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and higher citation of the published work (see The Open Access Effect).
References
Anderson, R., & Bruce W. (1976). Perspectives on the role of interpreter. In F. Pöchhacker & M. Shlesinger (Eds.), The interpreting studies reader (pp. 209-217). Routledge.
Angelelli, C. V. (2003). The interpersonal role of the interpreter in cross-cultural communication. In L. Brunette, G. Bastin, I. Hemlin, & H. Clarke (Eds.), The critical link 3: Interpreters in the community (pp. 15-26). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Angelelli, C. V. (2004). Revisiting the interpreter’s role: A study of conference, court, and medical interpreters in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. John Benjamins.
Baker, M. (1992). In other words. A coursebook on translation. Routledge.
Baker, M. (2000). Towards a methodology for investigating the style of a literary translator. Target, 12(2), 241-266.
Baker, P. (2008). Sexed texts: Language, gender and sexuality. Equinox Publishing.
Baker, P. (2014). Using corpora to analyze gender. Bloomsbury.
Bartłomiejczyk, M. (2020). Parliamentary impoliteness and the interpreter’s gender. Pragmatics, 30(4), 459-484.
Besien, F. V., & Meuleman C. (2008). Style differences among simultaneous interpreters. The Translator, 14(1), 135-155.
Bassnet, S., & Lefevere, A. (2001). Constructing cultures: Essays on literary translation. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge University Press.
Biber, D. (1989). A typology of English texts. Linguistics, 27(1), 3-44.
Biber, D. (1992). The multi-dimensional approach to linguistic analyses of genre variation: An overview of methodology and findings. Computers and the Humanities, 26(5), 331-345.
Biber, D. (2014). Using multi-dimensional analysis to explore cross-linguistic universals of register variation. Languages in Contrast, 14(1), 7-34.
Bosseaux, C. (2006). Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? A corpus-based study of the French translations of The Waves. Meta, 51(3), 599-610.
Brahnam, S., & De Angeli, A. (2012). Gender affordances of conversational agents. Interacting with Computers, 24(3), 139-153.
Bühler, H. (1985). Conference interpreting: A multichannel communication phenomenon. Meta, 30(1), 49-54.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge.
Carli, L. L. (2001). Gender and social influence. Journal of Social Issues, 57(4), 725-741.
Catford, J. C. (1965). A linguistic theory of translation. Oxford University Press.
Coates, J. (1997). Women’s friendships, women’s talk. In Wodak, R. (Ed.), Gender and discourse (pp. 245-262). Sage.
Crawford, M. (1995). Talking difference: On gender and language. Sage Publications.
Cecot, M. (2001). Pauses in simultaneous interpretation: A contrastive analysis of professional interpreters’ performances. The Interpreters’ Newsletter, 11, 63-85.
Coates, J. (2013). Women, men and language: A sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language. Routledge.
Crosthwaite, P. (2016). A longitudinal multidimensional analysis of EAP writing: Determining EAP course effectiveness. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 22(4), 166-178.
Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013). Language and gender (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Gal, S. (1991). Between speech and silence: The problematics of research on language and gender. In M. D. Leonardo (Ed.), Gender at the crossroads of knowledge: Feminist anthropology in the Postmodern Era (pp. 175-203). University of California Press.
Gile, D. (1995). Basic concepts and models for interpreter and translator training. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Grahn, M. (2024). Gendered institutions and where to find them: A critical realist approach. Politics & Gender, 20(2), 449-473.
Haas, A. (1979). Male and female spoken language differences: Stereotypes and evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 86(3), 616-626.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. Edward Arnold.
Holmes, J. (1993a). Chairpersons and goddesses: Sexist usage in New Zealand English. Te Reo, 36(1), 99-113.
Holmes, J. (1993b). Sex-marking suffixes in written New Zealand English. American Speech, 68(4), 357-370.
Holmes, J., & Sigley, R. (2001). What’s a word like girl doing in a place like this? Occupational labels, sexist usages and corpus research. Language and computers, 32, 247-263.
Hu, G. S. (1989). Tantan kouyi renyuan de yuyan fengge (investigating language style of the interpreters). Chinese science & Technology translators journal, 2(2), 34-36.
Hu, J., & Hu, Q. (2015). Hedges in C-E interpreting for publicity and its correlation with the gender of interpreter. Journal of Beijing International Studies University, 37(12), 29-34.
Hu, K. B. (2011). Yuliaoku fanyixue gailun [Introducing corpus-based translation studies]. Shanghai Jiaotong University Press.
Hu, K. B., & Meng, L. Z. (2018). Journal of Beijing International Studies University. Perspectives, 26(1), 117-134.
Hu, K. B., & Xie, L. X. (2015). jiyu yuliaoku de yizhe fengge yanjiu [Towards a corpus-based study of translator’s style]. Chinese Translators Journal, 38(2), 12-18.
Hu, Z. L. (2017). Yuyanxue jiaocheng [Linguistics: A course book (5th ed.)]. Beijing University Press.
Jespersen, O. (1992). Language: Its nature, development and origin. George Allen and Unwin, Ltd.
Jiang, X. Y., & Hu, K. B. (2020). A corpus-based study of disfluency in the Chinese-English Conference Interpreting as an indicator of interpreter style. Foreign Languages and Translation, 27(2), 11-17.
Johnson, P. (1976). Women and power: toward a theory of effectiveness. Journal of Social Issues, 32, 99-110.
Kessler, S. J., & McKenna, W. (1978). Gender: An ethnomethodological approach. University of Chicago Press.
Khabitovich, O. B., & Ulugbek kizi, N. M. (2025). Language and gender: A linguistic perspective. International Journal of Academic Pedagogical Research (IJAPR), 9(3), 117-119.
Krumhuber, E. G., Wang, X., & Guinote, A. (2023). The powerful self: How social power and gender influence face perception. Curr Psychol, 42, 15438–15452.
Kurt, K. & Kalina, S. (1996). The strategic dimension of interpreting. Meta, 41(1), 118-131.
Lakoff, R. T. (1975). Language and woman’s place. Harper & Row.
Lips, H. (1991). Women, men, and power. Mayfield.
Lockheed, M. E. & Hall, K. P. (1976). Conceptualizing sex as a status characteristic: Application to leadership training strategies. Journal of Social Issues, 32, 111-124.
Meyerhoff, M. (2018). Introducing Sociolinguistics (3rd Ed.). Routledge.
Munday, J. (2000). Introducing translation studies. Routledge.
Nawaz, M. et al. (2024). Examining how gender influences language styles and communication patterns in various social contexts. Journal of Policy Research, 10(3), 280-289.
Nida, E. A. (1964). Towards a science of translating: With special reference to principles and procedures involved in Bible translating. Brill Academic Publishers.
Nini, A. (2015). Multidimensional analysis tagger (1.3). Retrieved from http://sites.google.com/site/multidimensionaltagger.
Österbacka, E., & Räsänen, T. (2024). The association between gendered workplaces and the length of childcare leave. Finnish Yearbook of Population Research, 57, 1-20.
Paez, G. N., & Tin, M. S. (2021). Gender-based differences in Myanmar’s labor force. World Development Perspectives, 21(4), 100299.
Pan, F. & Li, X. (2017). Jizhe Zhaodaihui hanying kouyi zhong de xingbie chayi: yi charuyu I think he I believe weili [Gender differences in interpreting for Chinese Government press conferences: A case study of parenthetical “I Think” and “I Believe”]. Foreign Language Research, 41(5), 37-42.
Pym, A. (2010). Exploring Translation Theories. Routledge.
Pauwels, A. (2003). Linguistic sexism and feminist linguistic activism. In Holmes, J. and Meyerhoff M. (Eds.), The Handbook of Language and Gender (pp. 43-68). Blackwell.
Pöchhacker, F. (2016) Introducing Interpreting Studies (2nd edition). London: Routledge.
Sheng, D. & Li, X. (2024). A multi-dimensional analysis of interpreted and non-interpreted English discourses at Chinese and American government press conferences. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11, 472.
Shlesinger, M. (1995). Shifts in cohesion in simultaneous interpreting. Translator, 1(2), 193-212.
Sperber, D., & Deirdre W. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Blackwell.
Talbot, M. (2019). Language and gender (3rd ed.). Polity Press.
Thome, B. (1997). Gender play: Girls and boys in school. Rutgers University Press.
Usman, D., Mahajia, L., & Harmain, A. (2025). Gendered language in everyday conversation: A sociolinguistic perspective. Journal of Advance in Language, Literature, and Education, 1(2), 79-86.
von Flotow, L. (1997). Translation and gender: Translating in the “Era of Feminism” (1st ed.). Routledge.
Weatherall, A. (2002). Gender, language and discourse. Routledge.
Winters, M. (2007). A corpus-based study of speech-act report verbs as a feature of translators’ style. Meta, 52(3), 412-425.
Wang, B. H. (2019). Kouyi lilun yanjiu [Theorising interpreting studies]. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.