earticle

영어

Researchers have reported significant impact of L1 pronunciation on L2 pronunciation among Korean speakers of English for whom English is their second or foreign language. This paper aims to investigate whether this occurs with equal regularity in interpretation students. To the extent that it does occur, we would predict a clear negative effect on the quality of their interpretation, rendering it less comprehensible to the audience. The investigation was designed as follows: In the first part, the authors compared the phonemes as well as the phonetic variants of Korean and English. In addition, the phonotactic constraints of Korean, such as nasal assimilation and 'n' insertion, were discussed. In the second part, the authors gathered 18 students of translation and interpretation, none of whom had lived in an English-speaking country before the critical age. They volunteered to participate in the experiment to improve their delivery in English. For the experiment, they were asked to conduct Korean-into-English sight translation and their pronunciation was analyzed to gauge the influence of L1 pronunciation on their L2 pronunciation. The results offer examples of L1 pronunciation transfer. It can be concluded from the evidence that time should be set aside for dedicated pronunciation training for some interpretation students, since this weakness threatens to interfere with the comprehensibility of their delivery in their L2.