Structure of Thematic Monologues in Spontaneous Speech Translation

Abstract

The paper deals with the possibility of spontaneous speech translation that is based on the linguistic analysis of the certain structure of thematic monologues. Spoken language translation presents considerable challenges being complicated by syntactically and grammatically ill-formed speech, human and non-human noise, and speech recognition errors. The spoken utterance does not provide unambiguous markers indicating the phrase’s boundaries, and frequently contains irrelevant information. A successful system/ interpreter must therefore interpret the speaker's intent and deliver an appropriate message in the target language by extracting words of interest or by defining a certain structure according to which the spontaneous speech could be organized. In the course of our thesis within the framework of psycholinguistics and phonetics we discovered the certain cognitive – phonetic structure of spontaneous thematic monologues similar in Russian and English. It may appear useful at developing translation strategies and spontaneous speech translation systems. It can also help to increase the speed of information processing, to simplify the process of speech recognition and to develop schemes of translation’s examples in translation of spontaneous speech.