ON THE ISSUE OF INTERPRETERS’ PHONETIC COMPETENCE (BASED ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE)

Abstract

The article deals with one of the most important aspects of translators’ linguistic competence - their phonetics, since interpreters’ good pronunciation is of great practical value, including enunciation of phonemes, lexemes, intonation, articulation, stress placement, and even voice timbre. The novelty of this research consists in the fact that it is one of the few works analyzing typical pronouncing errors of Russian learners of English - mainly interpreters, but also teachers and other students of English - who use their English for various pragmatic purposes. Linguistic literature is replete with textbooks and teaching aids in theoretical and practical phonetics of the English language highlighting theoretical and practical aspects of forming correct pronunciation habits; however, they do not pay sufficient attention to most common pronouncing errors, i.e. stress misplacement, wrong articulation of vowels, diphthongs, consonants, etc., enforced by the interference of Russian phonetic system. The writer of this article analyses most common errors gleaned in the course of his career of a professional interpreter and university lecturer by drawing on his own experience and that of his colleagues - teachers and interpreters. This research seems topical due to the fact that audiences form their first impression of an English teacher or an interpreter by the proximity of his/her pronunciation to that of native speakers. The writer of this article holds an opinion that an interpreter’s pronunciation is his/her “business card,” allowing for the fact, however, that an interpreter does not have to speak without any foreign accent at all, but if the accent is still there it must not jar on native speakers’ ear; the enunciation has to be clear, distinct, pleasant, without obvious phonetic errors affected by the phonetics of the Russian language. Hopefully this article will help some Russian learners of English correct their pronunciation errors in their mastery of the English language, should those errors be taken notice of