臺灣基督教會口譯活動初探

Abstract

本研究為針對臺灣基督教會口譯活動之初探研究，旨在了解臺灣教會口譯現況之外，又探討教會口譯聽眾與教會口譯員對教會口譯品質與教會口譯員角色之看法，並比較其異同。研究亦以專業會議口譯員之觀感為比較標準，嘗試了解教會聽眾在教會口譯評量上的偏好，又查驗教會口譯是否能歸類於社區口譯。

由於教會口譯的相關研究稀少，加上過去口譯評量項目定義不明，因此本研究試著從聽眾、教會口譯員與專業會議口譯員之角度探討教會口譯的品質與口譯員角色。問卷設計以回答以下三大問題為主軸：1.臺灣基督教會口譯之現況，2.教會聽眾與教會口譯員對於教會口譯品質及角色的看法及其比較，3.教會聽眾與專業會議口譯員評斷教會口譯品質時有無顯著差異。

研究結果顯示教會口譯聽眾與教會口譯員在品質與角色的期待上大致相符，並比一般會議口譯之聽眾及口譯員更重視口譯員之「可靠」與「幫助者」角色，此與過去社區口譯研究之結果類似。兩組受試對象僅在較不為重視的項目上達到統計上顯著之差異，而聽眾與會議口譯員之口譯評量結果亦無任何顯著性差異。研究最後並整合教會聽眾與口譯員對教會口譯活動之建言，其中包括訓練、溝通、支持、回饋與口譯模式等面向。

This study is a preliminary attempt to explore the nature of church interpreting in Taiwan and to understand the views of and differences between church users' and church interpreters' expectations concerning church interpretation quality and church interpreter's role. It also checks for preferences in the church congregation's evaluation of church interpreting performances. Attempts are additionally made to test the hypothesis that church interpreting is a variant of community interpreting.

Motivated by the lack of literature on church interpreting and the disparity in the definitions of interpreting quality criteria, this study investigates the quality and role aspects of church interpreting from the perspectives of the users, the church interpreters, and the professional conference interpreters, the latter used as an benchmark for comparison. Questionnaires are designed to elicit feedbacks from the subjects and answer the questions: 1. What does church interpreting look like in Taiwan? 2. What are the church congregation's and church interpreters' expectations regarding church interpreting quality and church interpreters' role, and how do they compare? 3. Does the church congregation evaluate church interpreting significantly different from the professional conference interpreters?

The results of this study find the congregation and church interpreters generally in agreement concerning the quality and role aspects, and differ from the conference users and interpreters in their emphasis on the interpreter's reliability as well as his/her helper role, which is more in keeping with results from previous community interpreting research. Statistical differences are found only on the less stressed quality and role criteria. Users' quality assessment posed no significant disparity with that of the conference interpreters. Recommendations pertaining to the areas of training, communication, support, feedback, and interpretation modes are also presented.