How Are Conference Opening Remarks Structured? A Corpus-Based Move Analysis of 74 Speeches (Wu, 2026, FORUM)

Conference English #5

Summary

Opening remarks are a conference genre with its own structure. Their job is to welcome the audience and set the tone for the event. This study carried out a corpus-based move analysis of 74 opening remarks (54,504 words) given by leaders of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) at international conferences, workshops, forums, summits and symposiums from 2018 to 2022. It identified 8 rhetorical moves and 30 component steps. Seven of the eight moves are obligatory, meaning they appear in at least 60% of the remarks. Yet no two remarks order their moves and steps the same way. The genre is regular and flexible at once. The study ends with a five-step teaching procedure and a function-based list of formulaic expressions for interpreter trainees and for anyone who has to give or interpret opening remarks in English.

Full citation: Wu, Yinyin. 2026. "The rhetorical structure of conference opening remarks: A corpus-based move analysis." FORUM: International Journal of Interpretation and Translation, 24(1), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.25007.wu

Access: Open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. The full text includes Appendix B, a list of useful expressions and sentence frames for opening remarks, grouped by rhetorical function.

Author: Yinyin Wu, Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation, National Taiwan University

Funding: Taiwan's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC 112-2410-H-002-067)

Why study opening remarks?

An international conference usually has three main parts: opening remarks, keynote speeches and panel discussions. Panel discussions are mostly spontaneous. Opening remarks, especially those given by government officials, are usually read from carefully prepared scripts, so they have features of both written and spoken discourse.

Interpreters often interpret opening remarks, but these remarks have received little research attention. If interpreters know the structure and typical wording of the genre, they can better predict what comes next and produce output in the right conference register. This study focuses on conferences in Taiwan, where simultaneous interpreting between Mandarin Chinese and English is usually provided.

Corpus and method

• Data: 248 speeches titled "remarks" were collected from the AIT website ("Speeches and Statements"). Only opening remarks at conference-type events were kept, which left 74 remarks.
• Size: 54,504 words in total. The shortest remark has 183 words and the longest 1,894, with an average of 737 words.
• Speakers: mainly the three AIT directors of the period: Brent Christensen (41 remarks), Sandra Oudkirk (9) and Kin Moy (3). The other remarks were given by other AIT leaders (17) and U.S. officials (4).
• Event themes: technology and innovation, economics and commerce, environment, crime, media literacy, education and talent, society and security, supply chains, women's empowerment, health, disaster relief and religion.
• Framework: the top-down corpus-based move analysis procedure of Biber, Connor and Upton (2007), building on Swales' genre analysis.
• Coding: a pilot stage and three rounds of coding by the researcher, then independent coding by two trained graduate interpreting students. Agreement among the three coders on 71 remarks reached 0.86.
• Obligatory threshold: a move or step counts as obligatory if it appears in at least 60% of the 74 remarks, wherever it occurs in the speech.

The eight moves of conference opening remarks

The overall purpose of opening remarks is to put the event in context, welcome the audience and unite them around a common goal. The eight moves are listed below with the share of remarks in which each one appears. Steps marked "obligatory" appear in at least 60% of the remarks.

Move 1. Set the scene (100%)
Steps: greetings (obligatory), personal background, introduction (obligatory), purpose or value of the event (obligatory), agenda, origin of the event, and the structure of the remarks.

Move 2. Acknowledge organizers, distinguished guests, and attendees (94.6%)
Steps: thanking organizers (obligatory), recognizing distinguished guests, and welcoming attendees (obligatory).

Move 3. Highlight the significance of the theme (94.6%)
Steps: explaining the theme's context and significance (obligatory), quotation, relevant events, problems, relevance to the audience or the world, and call for action (obligatory).

Move 4. Highlight the organization's efforts and commitments (86.5%)
Steps: personal efforts, the organization's efforts and accomplishments (obligatory), and the organization's commitments and stance (obligatory).

Move 5. Recognize the host's efforts and significance (82.4%)
Steps: the host's efforts and accomplishments (obligatory), and the host's significance (obligatory).

Move 6. Emphasize friendship and collaboration (73%)
Steps: friendship and partnership, shared values, collaborative efforts, and the impact of collaboration. The move itself is obligatory, but none of its steps are.

Move 7. Highlight global efforts (9.5%)
The only optional move. Speakers use it to show that the host is not alone and that other countries are working on the same issue.

Move 8. Conclude the remarks (100%)
Steps: hopes and wishes (obligatory), a gesture of goodwill, resources or other event highlights, invitations to other events, and gratitude (obligatory).

Regular and flexible at the same time

The rhetorical elements of opening remarks are largely fixed, but none of the 74 remarks orders its moves and steps in the same way. The corpus contains 1,782 step occurrences, about 24 per remark, or one step every 31 words. By comparison, an earlier move analysis of TED talks (Chang and Huang 2015) found about one step every 384 words. Opening remarks therefore seem to be a highly condensed genre: speakers follow the overall rhetorical structure while weaving moves and steps into a different pattern in each remark. One 127-word paragraph in the corpus contains six steps.

Ceremonial, informative and persuasive

Moves 1, 2 and 8 do the ceremonial work: introducing the event, welcoming and thanking people, and wishing the conference success. Moves 3 to 7 inform the audience about the theme and about what has been done. They are also persuasive. Together they build a narrative along these lines: we and our host have each made efforts as partners, the issue matters to everyone in the room, so your contributions count and we need to work together. This mix of informing and persuading makes opening remarks resemble TED talks, which aim to inspire change, more than academic presentations.

Useful expressions for opening remarks (Appendix B)

Appendix B groups formulaic expressions and sentence frames by move and step, so learners can connect each expression with its communicative function. A few examples:

• Introduction (Step 1-3): "It is my honor and distinct pleasure to welcome everyone to [event] on [theme] held under the auspices of [framework]."
• Purpose of the event (Step 1-4): "This very forum is a testament to the fact that…"
• Structure of the remarks (Step 1-7): "I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few of my thoughts about…"
• Problems (Step 3-4): "As you are all well aware, disasters can happen at any time and any place."
• Call for action (Step 3-6): "It is incumbent upon all of us to ensure…" or "…requires a whole-of-society approach."
• The organization's commitments (Step 4-3): "We are committed to / will continue to / will remain steadfast in our vigorous commitments to…"
• Complimenting the host (Step 5-1): "We applaud the success of…" or "[The host] is perfectly positioned to…"
• Hopes and wishes (Step 8-1): "I hope that the people in this room will form lasting connections…"

The paper also notes a common habit among interpreter trainees whose B language is English: overusing a few sentence starters such as "I am impressed with…". It suggests learning a range of ways to compliment a partner, including sentence starters that begin with the receiver of the compliment, such as "Taiwan has extensive experience with…", rather than with "I" or "we".

A five-step teaching procedure

Remarks archived on U.S. embassy and consulate websites are usually available in English and in local-language translation, which makes them good teaching material. The paper proposes five steps:

1. Understand the rhetorical structure. Before class, trainees read the results section and the move/step overview.
2. Analyze the structure. In pairs, trainees take the speaker's point of view and ask why each segment is there: to excite the audience, unite the room, or stress how serious a problem is.
3. Present and predict. Trainees present their analysis and pause at key points so classmates can predict what comes next.
4. Analyze the language. Trainees compile glossaries of useful phrases, sentence starters and sentence frames, grouped by move and step.
5. Sight translate back into English. Trainees sight translate the published translations of U.S. officials' remarks back into English and compare their versions with the originals.

Steps 1 to 3 build a top-down mental schema of the genre. Steps 4 and 5 add bottom-up work on phraseology. The author has used this unit in four semesters of a required graduate course in translation and interpretation, and end-of-term surveys gave an average score of 4.87 out of 5.

Where this study fits in research on conference English

This is the fifth study in a research series on conference English. The earlier studies worked bottom-up, finding recurrent multiword units from their co-occurrence patterns in corpora: phrasal verbs (Wu 2023), lexical bundles (Wu 2021), and multiword constructions (Wu 2024). The present study switches to a top-down, genre-level view. It ties formulaic language to specific communicative functions and positions within a speech, so learners know both what to say and when and why to say it.

• Wu, Yinyin. 2023. "Phrasal Verbs in European Parliament Conference English: A Corpus-Based Pedagogical List." The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 17(2): 301–318.
• Wu, Yinyin. 2024. "Multiword Constructions in European Parliament Conference English: A Corpus-Driven Pedagogical List." The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 18(3): 423–441.

Frequently asked questions

What is the structure of a conference opening remark?

Based on 74 opening remarks by AIT leaders, Wu (2026) identifies eight moves: (1) set the scene; (2) acknowledge organizers, distinguished guests, and attendees; (3) highlight the significance of the theme; (4) highlight the organization's efforts and commitments; (5) recognize the host's efforts and significance; (6) emphasize friendship and collaboration; (7) highlight global efforts; and (8) conclude the remarks. All moves except Move 7 are obligatory.

What is move analysis?

Move analysis is a genre analysis method developed by John Swales. It breaks a text into "moves", functional units that each serve a communicative purpose, and into smaller "steps" that carry out each move. Corpus-based move analysis, as described by Biber, Connor and Upton (2007), applies the method systematically to a collection of texts of the same genre.

How can interpreters prepare for opening remarks?

Interpreters can learn the typical move structure so they can predict how a speech will unfold, and build a repertoire of ready-made expressions for each move. Appendix B of Wu (2026) offers such a list, grouped into 8 moves and 30 steps.

Is the paper free to read?

Yes. The article is open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license at https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.25007.wu

How to cite

Wu, Yinyin. 2026. "The rhetorical structure of conference opening remarks: A corpus-based move analysis." FORUM 24(1): 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.25007.wu

Keywords: conference opening remarks, opening speech structure, move analysis, genre analysis, corpus-based research, conference English, interpreter training, formulaic language, sentence frames, diplomatic speeches, American Institute in Taiwan, Mandarin Chinese–English interpreting

Syntactic Differences between European Parliament Interpreted and Translated English: How Interpreters Package Information for Listeners (Wu, 2024)

Conference English #4: KISS = Keep It Short and “Stupid"? Rethinking Spoken Clarity

In short: In this open access article, published in T&I Review 14(2) (December 2024), I compare the syntax of simultaneously interpreted English and translated English produced from the same European Parliament (EP) plenary speeches. I examined five constructions that move information to the beginning or end of a clause: the passive, it-extraposition, existential there, clefts, and inversion. The passive and it-extraposition are significantly more frequent in translation. Existential there and clefts are more frequent in interpretation, although the difference is not statistically significant. The examples show what lies behind the numbers: interpreters break heavy, written-style sentences into smaller units that move from Given to New information. This makes the output easier for interpreters to produce and easier for listeners to process.

Key facts at a glance

• Article: Wu, Y. (2024). Syntactic differences between European Parliament interpreted and translated English. T&I Review, 14(2), 7–30.
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.22962/tnirvw.2024.14.2.001 (open access)
• Journal: T&I Review, published by the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation (GSIT), Ewha Womans University, Seoul; indexed in the Korea Citation Index (KCI).
• Research question: Do the syntactic differences between speech and writing found in non-mediated discourse also appear in mediated discourse, that is, in interpretation and translation?
• Interpreted English corpus: 35 simultaneous interpretations into English (18 from Spanish, 17 from Italian), 18,480 words, taken from the European Parliament Interpretation Corpus (EPIC), plenary sessions of February 2004.
• Translated English corpus: the English translations of the same 35 speeches from the EP's final verbatim reports of proceedings, 19,881 words.
• Source speeches behind the interpretations: read-out (16 speeches, 57% of words), impromptu (11 speeches, 22%), and mixed (8 speeches, 21%).
• Method: manual identification of five constructions in both corpora, Chi-square goodness-of-fit tests (SPSS 29), and qualitative comparison of aligned translation–interpretation pairs.
• Framework: Theme/Rheme and Given/New information structure (Systemic Functional Linguistics), building on Carter-Thomas and Rowley-Jolivet (2001) and Rowley-Jolivet and Carter-Thomas (2005).

Why compare interpreting and translation at the level of syntax?

Corpus studies comparing interpreting and translation (often called intermodal studies) have mostly looked at vocabulary: lexical variety, lexical density, core vocabulary coverage, and parts of speech. They generally find that interpreted language is more simplified than both spoken originals and translation. Syntax has received much less attention. In those studies the only syntactic measure was mean sentence length, and interpreted sentences turned out to be shorter.

Shorter sentences, however, do not tell us how information is organised. My starting point was a pair of studies on scientific discourse. Carter-Thomas and Rowley-Jolivet (2001) compared nine oral presentations by native English-speaking physicists at an international conference with the proceedings articles based on them. They found that five constructions are strongly mode-dependent. The passive and it-extraposition belong to writing, while existential there, clefts, and inversion belong to speech. In a follow-up study, Rowley-Jolivet and Carter-Thomas (2005) showed that non-native speaker scientists, although proficient in English, kept using written-style structures in their talks. They overused the passive and it-extraposition and underused clefts and inversion, the structures that break information into chunks listeners can process in real time.

My study asks whether the same mode differences appear when the speaker and the writer are not presenting their own ideas but mediating someone else's: interpreters speaking, and translators writing, from the same EP speeches.

Key concepts: Theme, Rheme, Given, New, end-focus, end-weight

In English, the Theme usually comes at the start of the clause and serves as its point of departure. It tends to carry Given information, which the listener can recover from context. The Rheme, the rest of the clause, tends to carry New information, the newsworthy part. Placing the most important information at the end is called end-focus. Placing grammatically heavy material at the end is called end-weight. Both principles make a message easier to plan for the speaker and easier to decode for the listener. The five constructions in this study are syntactic resources English uses to shift elements towards the beginning or the end of the clause.

Quantitative results

• Passive: 274 in interpretation vs 444 in translation. Significantly more frequent in translation, χ²(1, N = 718) = 40.25, p < .001, Cramér's V = .24.
• It-extraposition: 36 in interpretation vs 83 in translation. Significantly more frequent in translation, χ²(1, N = 119) = 18.56, p < .001, Cramér's V = .39.
• Existential there: 66 in interpretation vs 51 in translation. More frequent in interpretation, but not significant, χ²(1, N = 117) = 1.92, p = .166.
• Clefts: 32 in interpretation vs 23 in translation. More frequent in interpretation, but not significant, χ²(1, N = 55) = 1.47, p = .225.
• Inversion: 7 in interpretation vs 13 in translation. Rare overall and not significant, χ²(1, N = 20) = 1.8, p = .180. This is the only construction that runs opposite to Carter-Thomas and Rowley-Jolivet (2001), where inversion was typical of speech.

The passive and it-extraposition are thus strongly associated with the written mode, in line with the earlier findings on scientific discourse. The trends for existential there and clefts also match the earlier findings, although they did not reach statistical significance in this corpus.

How interpreters repackage information: qualitative findings

In the examples below, T is the translation and I is the interpretation of the same passage.

1. The passive: from heavy noun subjects to "we" + active verb

Of the passives in translation, 39% have the same or a similar passive in interpretation, 30% are omitted, and 31% become active voice. In translation, sentences often open with long, precise noun groups as subjects. This condenses a lot of information into the Theme and keeps the text impersonal. In speech, such subjects are hard to produce under time pressure and hard to process by ear. Interpreters instead tend to use a personal pronoun subject followed by an active verb.

T: The material adopted on 21 January already contained the main political messages and key conclusions. A series of positive results was mentioned, notably concerning job creation. Six million jobs have been created despite the climate of weak growth.

I: What we adopted on the twenty-first of January already includes the main political messages we want to send out and also the main conclusions. We praise positive results, particularly the creation of six million jobs, despite the weak rate of growth.

The interpreter opens with a wh-cleft ("What we adopted…") instead of a post-modified noun phrase, then frames the message with "we praise". The subject and verb sit close together, and the parts with the highest information value move to the end of the clause, respecting end-weight. Passives do occur in interpretation too: 63% of them have the same or a similar passive in translation. But in interpretation they are not preceded by heavy, complex noun groups as subjects.

2. It-extraposition: from subtle evaluation to direct stance

Every case of it-extraposition in the translation corpus carries an evaluative element, such as likelihood, importance, or necessity. It lets the writer comment on a proposition in a subtle, impersonal way. In interpretation, 42% of these cases become personal pronoun constructions. Some typical correspondences:

• it is possible to → I'm sure we can / you can
• it is essential to → we must / we need to / we have to
• it is important to → we must / we need to / you've got to
• it is necessary to → we must / we need to
• it should be recalled that → we should also bear in mind that
• it needs to be borne in mind that → we need to remember that / don't forget
• it is not possible to → you can't say

None of the extraposition cases in interpretation uses a passive, while 16% of those in translation do (for example, "it must be said that"). Combined with the passive, extraposition can also soften criticism:

T: It must be said that the Commission's conduct, marked by inaction and complicity, has been deplorable.

I: And moreover, the Commission has failed to take action on this.

When extraposition does appear in interpretation, it serves end-weight: the empty "it" takes the Theme position and the heavy clause is pushed to the end.

3. Existential there: delaying New information

Existential there places a semantically empty word in the Theme position, so the New information can come later in the clause. In interpretation, it often replaces a translated sentence that opens with a specific noun:

T: The results are encouraging. / I: There have been very good results.

T: A day should be set aside to honour the victims of terrorism. / I: There should be an international day for the victims of terrorism.

T: The saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions is common to all our languages.
I: In all our languages, there's a saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In the last example, the interpreter turns one sentence with a long clausal subject into three short units. Existential there may also work as a stalling device, giving the interpreter time to process more of the source speech. When the translation itself uses there, the interpretation is often even more direct, for example "There is no need to keep on reinventing the wheel" (T) vs "We shouldn't reinvent the wheel every other day" (I).

4. Clefts: springboards and signposts

Clefts split one clause into two parts: a background part with Given information and a focused part with New information. The corpus contains 12 wh-clefts in interpretation vs 7 in translation, 14 reverse wh-clefts vs 8, and 6 it-clefts vs 8. Wh-clauses such as "what I'm saying is" or "what we need is" act as springboards for starting an utterance, and they can replace complex noun phrases:

T: …and the margin for manoeuvre is indeed limited.

I: …and what we can do is limited.

Reverse wh-clefts such as "that is why" link back to the previous idea and give it focus. In one passage the interpreter uses "that is why" twice, where the translation uses "hence" and "for the same reason".

5. Inversion: rare in this setting

Only 20 inversions were found, 5 subject–verb and 15 subject–operator (for example, "Only then can…"). In the physics conference talks studied by Carter-Thomas and Rowley-Jolivet, subject–verb inversion often referred to slides ("Here's a picture of…", "On the left are…"). EP plenary speakers rarely use visual aids, which may explain why the construction is uncommon here.

What this means for interpreter training and public speaking

Interpreter training often presents the "salami technique", slicing long sentences into shorter pieces, as a way to manage the interpreter's own cognitive load. This study supports a broader view. Repackaging information into smaller, Given-to-New units helps the interpreter produce speech in real time, and it also helps the audience process it. The same principle applies to anyone speaking English in public, especially speakers of English as an additional language, who may assume that more advanced English means longer and more nested sentences.

The aligned examples can be used directly in class. Students can practise replacing heavy noun subjects with "we" + active verb, turning "it is essential to" into "we must", using "there is/are" to delay new information, and using wh-clefts ("what we need is…") or "that is why" to frame and link ideas.

Limitations

The two corpora are small and come from parliamentary debate, which is political in nature, so the statistical results cannot be generalised to all interpreting and translation. Some differences may also reflect the source texts: the interpretations were based on read-out, impromptu, or mixed speeches, while the translations were based on revised written versions of those speeches. The study covers only five constructions.

How this study connects to my other work

My earlier studies of European Parliament English focused on vocabulary: lexical bundles (Wu, 2021), phrasal verbs (Wu, 2023), and a pedagogical list of multiword constructions (Wu, 2024, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer). This article moves from words to syntax and discourse. Looking back, the information structure perspective also offers a way to explain why multiword constructions help interpreters: they may help speakers follow the Given-to-New principle and place heavy material at the end of the clause, which reduces their own processing load and makes speech easier to follow. This connection is my later reflection and is not argued in the original article.

Frequently asked questions

What is the main finding of this study?
Interpreted and translated English from the same EP speeches package information differently. The passive and it-extraposition are significantly more frequent in translation. Existential there and clefts are more frequent in interpretation, though not significantly. This mirrors the difference between spoken and written scientific discourse.

Do interpreters simply use shorter sentences?
Not only. They reorganise information: they replace heavy noun subjects with pronouns and active verbs, express evaluation as direct stance ("we must" instead of "it is essential to"), and use structures that present one unit of information at a time.

Do interpreters avoid the passive?
No. The interpretation corpus contains 274 passives, and 63% of them match a passive in translation. The difference is that passives in interpretation are not preceded by long, complex subjects.

Which corpus was used?
The interpreted English data come from the European Parliament Interpretation Corpus (EPIC), distributed by ELRA. The translated English data come from the EP's final translated verbatim reports of the same February 2004 plenary sessions.

Who might find this article useful?
Interpreter trainers, interpreting students working into English as a B language, teachers of English for specific purposes and public speaking, and researchers in corpus-based translation and interpreting studies.

Is the article free to read?
Yes. It is open access via its DOI: https://doi.org/10.22962/tnirvw.2024.14.2.001

Citation

Wu, Y. (2024). Syntactic differences between European Parliament interpreted and translated English. T&I Review, 14(2), 7–30. https://doi.org/10.22962/tnirvw.2024.14.2.001

Related publications

• Wu, Y. (2021). Lexical bundles in English EU parliamentary discourse: Variation across interpreted, translated, and spoken registers. Compilation and Translation Review, 14(2), 37–86. https://doi.org/10.29912/CTR.202109_14(2).0002
• Wu, Y. (2023). Phrasal verbs in European Parliament conference English: A corpus-based pedagogical list. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 17(2), 301–318. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2023.2183452
• Wu, Y. (2024). Multiword constructions in European Parliament conference English: A corpus-driven pedagogical list. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 18(3), 423–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2024.2334582

About the author

Yinyin Wu teaches at the Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation, National Taiwan University, Taipei. Her research interests include conference interpreting, retour interpreting, B language enhancement, interpreting pedagogy, and corpus linguistics, with a focus on the linguistic features of European Parliament conference English. ORCID: 0000-0003-4877-7719

Multiword Constructions in European Parliament Conference English: A Corpus-Driven Pedagogical List for Simultaneous Interpreting (Wu, 2024, Open Access)

Conference English #3: Open Grammar Devices in Simultaneous Interpreting

Start free, stay free.

In short: In this article, published in The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 18(3) (2024), I compiled the European Parliament Conference English Multiword Construction Pedagogical List (EP-CE MWC List). It contains 232 multiword constructions (MWCs) drawn from a 664,732-word corpus of English spoken in European Parliament plenary sessions, covering both interpretations into English and original English speeches. The list is designed for interpreters working into English as a B language (retour interpreting). Its most practical part is 118 "Less Specific" MWCs, which I group into Heads, Hinges, and Highlighters. These work as open grammar devices, padding, and tone-softeners in simultaneous interpreting (SI). The full list (Appendix A) and an unannotated interpreted speech for classroom use (Appendix B) are freely available with the article.

Key facts at a glance

• Article: Wu, Y. (2024). Multiword constructions in European Parliament conference English: a corpus-driven pedagogical list. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 18(3), 423–441.
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2024.2334582 (open access, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Corpus: the EP Conference English Corpus (EP-CEC), 664,732 words in 1,770 speeches. It was built from the TC-STAR transcriptions of European Parliament plenary sessions held from May 2004 to January 2005.
• Interpreted English: 1,410 speeches (517,872 words, 78% of the corpus), interpreted from 19 source languages.
• Original English: 360 speeches (146,860 words, 22%), mostly delivered by native speakers.
• Extraction criteria: four-word lexical bundles occurring at least 13 times (20 per million words) in at least five different speeches, identified with WordSmith Tools 7.
• Result: 645 four-word bundles, combined and collapsed into 232 MWCs (about one third of the original number).
• Specific MWCs (114): 12 meaning-based groups, e.g. EU Institutions, People, Procedures, Rules and Regulations, Time, Action.
• Less Specific MWCs (118): 53 Heads, 28 Hinges, and 37 Highlighters.

Why ready-made chunks matter for interpreters working into English

With English as a lingua franca, many conferences now use only two languages: the host language and English. Interpreters are therefore often expected to work into English even when it is not their native language. Interpreter trainers such as Gile, Jones, and Setton and Dawrant advise trainees to memorise fixed and semi-fixed expressions in their B language. These expressions are available immediately, so they reduce production effort, and they make the output more fluent and idiomatic.

Research on formulaic language points the same way. Prefabricated chunks are stored and retrieved whole from memory. They make speech more fluent for speakers and easier to process for listeners, because a familiar frame tells the listener where the sentence is going. They also mark the speaker as a member of a professional community. EU interpreters, for example, pick up phrases from senior boothmates and build a shared repertoire.

What was missing was an empirically derived list of such chunks for conference interpreting. The EP-CE MWC List supplements the stock phrases trainers offer from experience with phrases that professional interpreters and Members of the European Parliament actually use again and again.

From lexical bundles to multiword constructions

Four-word lexical bundles are often structurally incomplete (it comes to the). Different bundles also overlap (when it comes to, it comes to the). To make the list teachable, I combined overlapping bundles into larger MWCs, each with a root structure and variable slots. I distinguish three types of overlap:

• Complete overlap: two bundles come from one five-word sequence, e.g. those in favour please + in favour please show → those in favour please show.
• Complete subsumption: a higher-frequency bundle absorbs a lower-frequency one, e.g. when it comes to (141) + it comes to the (29) → when it comes to the.
• Partial subsumption: a measure created in this study for bundles that only partially overlap, e.g. the work of the + of the Irish presidency → the work of the Irish presidency.

Variable slots are shown with options separated by slashes. One example is when/if/here we are ['re] talk[ing] about a/the, which merges seven bundles. Frequent context words are added in parentheses, as in (this) is the best way (to).

Heads, Hinges, and Highlighters: categories built for simultaneous interpreting

Earlier bundle studies used functional categories such as "stance bundles" and "referential bundles" (Biber, Conrad, and Cortes 2004). Those labels describe bundles for researchers. The EP-CE MWC List instead groups the Less Specific MWCs by what they let an interpreter do in real time:

• Heads (53) open a sentence. They have a subject (mostly I or we) and a verb, and usually end in that or to. Subgroups are Request (25), Stance (21), and Negative Stance (7). Examples: we need to make sure that…, I'd like to take this opportunity to…, we have to bear in mind that…, I don't think we should…
• Hinges (28) bridge two clauses or verb phrases. Subgroups are Neutral (13) and Cause/Result (15). Examples: at a time when…, this means that…, with a view to…, in such a way that…, be in a position to…
• Highlighters (37) put a spotlight on the noun phrase that follows. They usually take the form "preposition + the + (blank) + of the". Subgroups are Topic (24), People/Institutions (5), Cause/Result (4), and Connector (4). Examples: when it comes to the…, in the light of the…, on the question of…, on the part of…

What is open grammar?

Setton and Dawrant (2016) describe open grammar as the ability to start a sentence in a way that keeps options open, and then either continue it or wind it up without being trapped by the speaker's syntax. In SI, a long source sentence can be sliced into short, self-contained units. The interpreter then avoids both backtracking and falling far behind the speaker. Heads, Hinges, and Highlighters are ready-made tools for this. They can also serve as padding, buying time when a speaker is slow or unclear, and as tone-softeners for suggestions and disagreement.

Example 1: a Highlighter sets up the topic first

Here is a real European Parliament interpretation. List items are in brackets:

[We also need to] recognise that [when it comes to the] most important issues, we do have an overlap of interests. Be it [in the case of] terrorism, be it [the fight against] nuclear proliferation, be it [in the case of] our climate situation.

A more succinct version would be: Our interests overlap on important issues like the fight against terrorism and nuclear proliferation, and our climate situation. The Head we also need to buys time. When it comes to the turns the topic into a stand-alone unit before the comment. This is similar to the SI strategy of "framing and filling", and it is especially handy when the source language is topic-prominent, as Chinese is. Each list item is rendered as it arrives, without the interpreter needing to know how long the list will be.

Example 2: parallel Heads and a Hinge

This example comes from the English interpretation of a speech delivered in German by Helmut Scholz on 5 July 2021:

[We need to have] communication between peoples. [We need to make sure that we have] participation in elections, in a representative democracy. That's one thing. [But what we need even more perhaps is] daily involvement in debates — political, economic, social. [That is what] can actually contribute to us all shaping the future and the kind of society that we want.

One long idea becomes a string of short, complete sentences. Three parallel Heads set a rhythm that listeners can follow. The Hinge that is what lets the interpreter cut and restart, tying the new sentence back to the previous point.

A later insight: information structure

A later study of mine compared interpreted and translated English in the European Parliament (Wu 2024, T&I Review 14(2)). It helped me see what else these chunks do. They put something light and given at the start of the sentence (we need to, that is what) and push the heavy, new information to the end. This pattern follows the principles of given-before-new and end-weight. It makes the sentence easier for the interpreter to produce and easier for the audience to process.

A caveat for B-language interpreters

Less Specific MWCs are padding, and overusing them makes the output wordy. A native speaker says we need to make sure that in one light breath. Said slowly and heavily, or mumbled, the same chunk makes the interpreter lag behind the speaker and can crowd out the real message. Into a B language, these frames pay off only once they come out whole, fast, and clear. Until then, it is better to go straight to the point.

A three-step classroom task

The article proposes speech analysis as a complement to concordance-based activities:

1. Listen to the prosodic features of MWCs in a speech: intonation, pauses, and pace. Shadow the interpreter.
2. Highlight MWCs on the transcript.
3. Analyse how the MWCs frame ideas and develop the discourse.

The demonstration uses the five-minute English interpretation of Helmut Scholz's speech on citizens' participation in EU decision-making (European Parliament plenary, 5 July 2021). In this 743-word interpretation, 35 MWCs from the list account for 151 words, so at least one fifth of the speech is formulaic. Of the 35, six are Specific MWCs, 16 are Heads, three are Hinges, and 10 are Highlighters. Appendix B gives the unannotated transcript so that trainees can mark the chunks themselves first.

Frequently asked questions

What are multiword constructions (MWCs)?

MWCs are recurrent word sequences with a fixed root structure and variable slots. In this study, they were built by combining overlapping four-word lexical bundles into units that are more complete in structure and meaning.

Who is the EP-CE MWC List for?

It is for conference interpreters and trainees working into English (especially English as a B language), interpreter trainers, and teachers of English for specific or academic purposes.

Is a corpus from 2004 still relevant?

Some Specific MWCs are tied to their time; the fight against terrorism might today be the fight against Covid-19. Most Less Specific MWCs, however, are sentence frames rather than topical terms. The 2021 speech shows that they are still in active use.

How does this study relate to the author's other work?

It expands Wu (2021), a study of four-word lexical bundles across interpreted, translated, and spoken registers of EU parliamentary English, by using a much larger corpus and interpreter-oriented categories. It sits alongside Wu (2023) on phrasal verbs in European Parliament conference English, and Wu (2024, T&I Review) on syntax and information structure.

Where can I get the full list?

Appendix A of the open access article contains all 232 MWCs. The full list of 645 four-word bundles is available as supplemental material.

Citation

Wu, Y. (2024). Multiword constructions in European Parliament conference English: a corpus-driven pedagogical list. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 18(3), 423–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2024.2334582

Open access under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please cite the source when quoting.

Related publications

• Wu, Y. (2021). Lexical bundles in English EU parliamentary discourse: Variation across interpreted, translated, and spoken registers. Compilation and Translation Review, 14(2), 37–86. https://doi.org/10.29912/CTR.202109_14(2).0002
• Wu, Y. (2024). Syntactic differences between European Parliament interpreted and translated English. T&I Review, 14(2), 7–30. https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/landing/article.kci?arti_id=ART003153959
• Wu, Y. (2023). Phrasal verbs in European Parliament conference English: A corpus-based pedagogical list. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 17(2), 301–318. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2023.2183452  Read my blog post on this study

About the author

Yinyin Wu teaches at the Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation, National Taiwan University, Taiwan. Her research uses corpus methods to study conference English, interpreting, and B-language enhancement for interpreters. ORCID: 0000-0003-4877-7719 

This is the third post in the Conference English series, which moves from two-word phrasal verbs to longer word sequences and the rhetorical structure of whole speeches.

Lexical Bundles in European Parliament English: How Interpreters, Translators and MEPs Use Four-Word Formulas Differently (Wu, 2021, Open Access)

Conference English #2: Four-word Lexical Bundles in European Parliament Conference English

Summary. This open-access article by Yinyin Wu (Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation, National Taiwan University) compares four-word lexical bundles in three kinds of English produced at the European Parliament (EP). The three registers are simultaneous interpretations into English, written translations of the same speeches, and original English speeches. Using the European Parliament Interpretation Corpus (EPIC) and WordSmith Tools, the study identified 892 bundle types. Only about 10% of them occur in two or all three registers. Noun-phrase and prepositional-phrase bundles dominate in all three. Interpreted English stands out functionally: stance, referential and subject-specific bundles each make up about a third of its bundle types. Obligation bundles such as we have to account for almost half of its stance bundles.

The article at a glance

• Title: Lexical Bundles in English EU Parliamentary Discourse—Variation Across Interpreted, Translated, and Spoken Registers
• Chinese title: 歐盟議會英語語篇之詞串研究—口譯、筆譯及演說之語域差異
• Author: Yinyin Wu (吳茵茵), National Taiwan University
• Journal: Compilation and Translation Review (編譯論叢), Vol. 14, No. 2 (September 2021), pp. 37–86
• DOI: 10.29912/CTR.202109_14(2).0002
• Access: Open access [https://naeraj.naer.edu.tw/wSite/PDFReader?xmlId=2057911&fileName=1631174409649&format=pdf]
• Data: EPIC, plenary sessions of February 2004
• Method: Corpus-driven identification of four-word bundles, followed by structural and functional analysis
• Funding: Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST 107-2410-H-002-255)

What are lexical bundles?

Lexical bundles are word sequences that recur frequently in a body of text. Examples are on the basis of, in the light of and when it comes to. They are not idioms. Their meaning is transparent and they are usually not complete grammatical units. Even so, they work as the building blocks of discourse. Because software identifies them by frequency, they offer an objective way to study formulaic language. Four-word bundles are the most widely studied length: three-word sequences are too numerous to analyse, and five-word sequences are too rare.

Why compare interpreters, translators and MEPs?

The study builds on Line Henriksen's article "The song in the booth: Formulaic interpreting and oral textualisation" (Interpreting, 9(1), 2007). Henriksen borrowed Milman Parry's concept of the Homeric formula to describe simultaneous interpreting in the EU. She asked ten Danish staff interpreters at the European Commission to interpret the same speeches. Some of them rendered recurrent source-text ideas with the same stock Danish formulas, glossed in English as "take the lead" and "lead the way", whatever the English wording. Henriksen argued that formulas spread among colleagues until a booth's output becomes uniform. She compared this to the "oral textualisation" of the Homeric poems. In her view, diplomats, officials, translators and interpreters all take part in weaving the text of EU discourse.

Wu (2021) extends Henriksen's argument in three ways:

1. It examines the English produced by interpreters, translators and MEPs, not by interpreters alone.
2. It operationalizes formulaic language as lexical bundles identified computationally, not chosen by the researcher.
3. It uses authentic plenary data, not renditions elicited in an experiment.

There is also a teaching motivation. In Taiwan, most interpreters and translators are non-native speakers of English but often have to work into English as a B language. Most English-booth interpreters and English translators in the EU are native speakers. Their output is therefore a useful model for training.

What data were used?

The study compares three corpora, 157 texts and 79,899 words in total:

• Interpretation corpus: 38 simultaneous interpretations into English from Spanish and Italian (18,611 words).
• Translation corpus: the official English translations of the same 38 source speeches (20,577 words).
• Speech corpus: 81 original English speeches delivered in the plenary (40,711 words).

The interpretations and speeches come from EPIC (Russo et al., 2005). They were recorded at the plenary sessions of 10, 11, 12, 25 and 26 February 2004. The translations come from the English verbatim reports published by the EP. According to Bernardini et al. (2016), those translations were produced independently, without reference to the interpreters' output. Hesitations, repetitions and fillers were removed from the transcripts so that the three corpora could be compared fairly. Politics, justice, and economics and finance are the main topics in all three corpora. The speech corpus also includes many speeches on health.

How were the bundles identified and classified?

The corpora are small and of different sizes, so raw frequency thresholds were used:

• Interpretation corpus: bundles occurring at least twice (108 per million words), yielding 302 bundle types and 704 occurrences.
• Translation corpus: bundles occurring at least twice (97 per million words), yielding 364 bundle types and 918 occurrences.
• Speech corpus: bundles occurring at least three times (74 per million words), yielding 226 bundle types and 922 occurrences.

In total, 892 bundle types with 2,544 occurrences were analysed. All three thresholds are above 40 per million words, the highest cut-off used in previous lexical bundle studies.

The structural classification follows Biber et al. (2004), as adapted by Jablonkai (2010). It has four categories: verb-phrase-based bundles, dependent-clause bundles, noun-phrase/prepositional-phrase-based bundles, and bundles with adjectives, adverbs or numbers.

The functional classification follows Biber et al. (2004): stance bundles, discourse organizers and referential bundles. It adds the category of subject-specific (EU-related) bundles from Jablonkai (2010) and several subtypes from Simpson-Vlach and Ellis (2010), such as evaluation, hedges, discourse markers and metadiscourse. The concordance lines of every bundle were checked to decide its main function in context.

How many bundles do the three registers share?

Very few. Differences far outweigh similarities in actual bundle use.

• Interpretations and translations of the same speeches share only 58 bundle types: 19% of the interpretation bundles and 16% of the translation bundles.
• Interpretations and speeches share 35 types. Translations and speeches share 37 types.
• 92 bundle types occur in two or all three corpora. They make up only 10% of all bundle types but 30% of all bundle occurrences (768 of 2,544).
• 19 bundle types occur in all three corpora. They make up 2% of the types but 11% of the occurrences (289).

The translation corpus has more bundle types than the interpretation corpus (364 vs. 302). Translators work under less time pressure and can vary their wording more. This is in line with Bernardini et al. (2016), who found interpreted EP texts simpler than their translated counterparts.

The 19 bundles found in all three registers are: I would like to, of the European Union, the European Union and, in the European Union, on the basis of, the rule of law, that the European Union, the implementation of the, of the Lisbon strategy, the end of the, the fight against terrorism, when it comes to, it is important to, the Commission and the, the Council and the, in the Member States, of the European Parliament, in the fight against, with the European Union.

What structural patterns did the study find?

All three registers show the same order of structural categories:

• Noun/prepositional phrase-based bundles are the largest category: 49% of bundle types in interpretations, 56% in translations and 64% in speeches.
• Verb-phrase-based bundles come second: 33% in interpretations, 25% in translations and 20% in speeches.
• Dependent-clause bundles are similar across registers: 16%, 17% and 15%.
• Other bundles (with adjectives, adverbs or numbers) make up only 1–2%.

This is the same order as in Jablonkai's (2010) study of EU documents. The dominance of noun- and prepositional-phrase bundles marks EU parliamentary English as formal and informational, like academic English.

Within that shared pattern, interpreted English is the most oral of the three: it has the highest share of verb-phrase bundles. The speeches are the most literate: they have the lowest share of verb-phrase bundles and the highest share of noun/prepositional-phrase bundles. This is less surprising once we know how the speeches were delivered. 53% were read out, 17% were partly read out, and only 30% were impromptu.

What functional patterns did the study find?

Interpreted English is functionally distinctive. Referential bundles make up 32% of its bundle types, stance bundles 30%, subject-specific (EU-related) bundles 30% and discourse organizers 8%. With three categories at about a third each, it combines communicative priorities (stance) with informational ones (referential and subject-specific). This places it in the middle of a continuum, close to academic spoken registers such as classroom teaching.

Translations and speeches are more alike. Subject-specific bundles are the largest category in both: 37% in translations and 50% in speeches. They are followed by referential bundles (33% and 24%), stance bundles (21% and 20%) and discourse organizers (9% and 6%). Translations and speeches are more informational than interpreted English, but less so than EU documents, where stance bundles make up only 3% of bundle types (Jablonkai, 2010).

What makes interpreted English distinctive?

• Obligation bundles dominate. Obligation/directive bundles make up almost half of the stance bundle types in interpreted English (41 of 91). Interpreters use we have to, we need to, we must and we've got to more than translators and MEPs do. These bundles emphasize the action to be taken. They are also light words that give the interpreter a little time.
• It is always "we", never "you". In all three EP corpora, obligation bundles never contain you. In university teaching, by contrast, they often do: you have to be, you might want to (Biber et al., 2004). Lecturers speak with authority over students. MEPs, and the interpreters and translators who serve them, speak as equals.
• Desire is expressed in one way. Every desire bundle in interpreted English contains want: I don't want to, we want to do. MEPs express desire in many ways: I hope that we, we look forward to, I welcome the opportunity.
• Simpler sentence frames. Eight of the 34 focus bundles in interpreted English are simple frames with that is, it is or this is, such as that's not the way and it's not just a. The translation and speech corpora each contain only two such focus bundles.
• "On the one hand" without "on the other hand". Interpreters used on the one hand but never followed it with on the other hand. Under time pressure, they may forget the first half of the frame or switch to a shorter word such as but.

What is distinctive about translated and spoken English?

Translated English contains no desire bundles, no discourse markers and no metadiscourse bundles. It is the only register with text-deixis bundles such as as stated in the, and the only one with non-causal elaboration bundles such as that is to say. Its topic-introduction bundles are the most varied, for example should like to highlight, the third priority is and to point out that.

MEP speeches look the most literate in structure, but their functions still show oral features. Desire bundles make up a quarter of their stance bundle types. They contain discourse markers such as thank you very much and metadiscourse bundles, and they have no text-deixis bundles.

What does this mean for interpreter and translator training?

• Prioritize shared bundles. Interpreting trainees can focus on bundles found in both interpretations and speeches, to support their comprehension and production of conference English. Translation trainees can focus on bundles found in both translations and speeches, because translators sometimes work with scripted political speeches.
• Teach by function. A functional typology shows trainees which chunks belong to which register and what those chunks do there: expressing obligation, introducing a topic, framing an abstract concept, referring to an EU institution, and so on.
• Teach complete chunks. Overlapping bundles can be merged into longer patterns with variable slots, such as (in) the fight against terrorism / drugs / international organised crime. These are more complete in meaning and easier to memorize.

What are the limitations?

• The three corpora are small compared with those of most corpus-driven studies. Patterns in larger corpora need further study.
• Overlapping bundles may inflate counts. For example, in the fight against and the fight against terrorism often belong to the same five-word sequence.

Future research could examine lexical variety, lexical density, collocations and sentence length in EP English. It could also compare interpreted, translated and spoken registers in other languages, such as Mandarin Chinese.

Related posts in the Conference English series

• Phrasal verbs in European Parliament conference English (Wu, 2023, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 17(2))
• Multi-word constructions in European Parliament conference English (Wu, 2024, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 18(3)), which builds on this lexical bundle study

How to cite

Wu, Y. (2021). Lexical bundles in English EU parliamentary discourse—Variation across interpreted, translated, and spoken registers. Compilation and Translation Review, 14(2), 37–86. https://doi.org/10.29912/CTR.202109_14(2).0002

About the author: Yinyin Wu teaches at the Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation, National Taiwan University, Taiwan. This is the second post in the Conference English series, which moves from two-word phrasal verbs to longer word sequences and the rhetorical structure of whole speeches.

Phrasal Verbs in European Parliament Conference English: A Free 169-Item Pedagogical List for Interpreters (Wu, 2023)

 

Conference English #1: Phrasal Verbs in European Parliament Conference English

In short: Phrasal verbs in European Parliament conference English: A corpus-based pedagogical list (Wu, 2023), published in The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 17(2): 301–318, identifies the 169 most frequent phrasal verbs used in European Parliament (EP) plenary sessions, together with their key meanings in conference contexts. These 169 phrasal verbs account for 87.07% of all phrasal verb occurrences in a 724,054-word corpus. The findings have been compiled into the European Parliament Conference English Phrasal Verb Pedagogical List (EP-CE PHaVE List), a 34-page, 9,000-word resource that anyone can download for free as the article's supplemental material.

Why are phrasal verbs difficult for interpreters?

A phrasal verb (PV) is a two-part verb made up of a lexical verb and an adverbial particle, such as set up, carry out or put forward. Phrasal verbs are a notoriously difficult category of multiword units, even for advanced learners of English, for two reasons:

• Syntax. The verb and the particle can be separated in some cases but not in others.

• Meaning. Many phrasal verbs are idiomatic and polysemous, so the combined meaning cannot be worked out from the two parts.

Comprehension. Every word is familiar, but the combination means something else:

• flesh out means to add more details to something: "Subsidiarity can be fleshed out with substance."

• water down means to make a text or position less forceful: "I would vote against any attempt to change that or water it down."

• put forward means to propose: "We intend to put forward a new package of measures."

• wake up to means to become aware of a problem: "…get us to wake up to the fact that things can't go on in the way that they have been going on."

Production. Research on simultaneous interpreting shows that professional interpreters working into English as a non-native language (English B) use phrasal verbs much less often than native English interpreters (English A). The rate is one phrasal verb every 409 words, compared with one every 236 words (Cresswell, 2018). Under the time pressure of simultaneous interpreting, trainee interpreters tend to fall back on literal one-word choices. Some examples:

• "increase / enhance efforts" instead of step up efforts

• "in order to cause change" instead of bring about change

• "let people know the points being made" instead of get the points across

What corpus did the study use?

The study is based on the European Parliament Conference English Corpus 2.0 (EP-CEC 2.0), which contains 724,054 words of transcribed speech from EP plenary sessions. It combines two sources:

• TC-STAR English Training Corpora for ASR: Transcriptions of EPPS Speech (May 2004 to January 2005)

• part of the European Parliament Interpretation Corpus (EPIC, February 2004)

About three quarters of the corpus (536,483 words, 74.1%) is simultaneous interpretation into English from 19 source languages. The remaining quarter (187,571 words, 25.9%) consists of speeches delivered in English by Members of the European Parliament. Because so many speakers and interpreters contribute to the corpus, the phrasal verbs identified are not the idiosyncratic habits of any single person.

How common are phrasal verbs in European Parliament English?

The corpus contains 461 different phrasal verbs with 3,551 occurrences in total. That works out to roughly one phrasal verb in every 200 words, the same ratio as in the British National Corpus (Gardner & Davies, 2007) and in EU documents (Trebits, 2009). Given how fast speakers deliver in EP plenaries, listeners and interpreters meet a phrasal verb roughly once a minute.

Which phrasal verbs matter most?

A small group of phrasal verbs accounts for most of the occurrences:

• The top 27 phrasal verbs account for 45.34% of all phrasal verb occurrences.

• The top 104 account for 77.67%.

• The top 169, about one third of all 461 types, account for 87.07%.

The 10 most frequent phrasal verbs in European Parliament conference English are:

1. carry out

2. set up

3. go on

4. point out

5. put forward

6. come up

7. set out

8. look forward

9. move on

10. bring together

How the list was built:

• Phrasal verbs were identified with the CLAWS4 part-of-speech tagger and WordSmith Tools 7.

• The search allowed up to five intervening words between the verb and the particle, to catch cases such as get a piece of legislation through.

• Every hit was checked manually against phrasal verb dictionaries.

• The results were cross-checked against earlier lists by Liu (2011) and Trebits (2009).

• The cut-off for the pedagogical list was a raw frequency of 4, equivalent to 5.5 occurrences per million words.

How many meanings does each phrasal verb have?

Every one of the 3,092 concordance lines for the top 169 phrasal verbs was analysed for meaning. Instead of relying on dictionaries, which may list up to 20 meanings for a single phrasal verb, the study recorded the meanings that actually occur in conference English. The results:

• In total, the 169 phrasal verbs have 314 meanings, an average of 1.86 per phrasal verb.

• The list includes only meanings that cover at least 10% of a phrasal verb's occurrences. That leaves 264 listed meanings, or about 1.56 per phrasal verb.

• 109 of the phrasal verbs have only one listed meaning, and 36 have two.

• The primary meaning (Sense 1) accounts for 85.79% of all occurrences.

• The listed meanings cover 98.4% of the occurrences of the 169 phrasal verbs.

How is conference English different from general English?

The EP-CE PHaVE List was compared with the general-English PHaVE List by Garnier and Schmitt (2015):

• 78 phrasal verbs (46.2%) on the EP-CE PHaVE List do not appear on the general-English list. They are marked with two asterisks (**), for example put forward, look forward, bring together, step up, flesh out and water down.

• 31 phrasal verbs (18.3%) appear on both lists but have a different primary meaning in conference English. They are marked with one asterisk (*).

• 60 phrasal verbs (35.5%) share the same or similar primary meaning on both lists. Their examples show how they combine with the abstract nouns typical of conference English, such as open up new prospects.

Bring in shows the difference. In general English, it usually means "bring something to a place" (I brought in my laptop today). In the European Parliament, its main meaning is "introduce something abstract" (bring in the rule of law), followed by "invite a country to join the EU" (bring in 25 Member States).

What does the EP-CE PHaVE List contain?

The free 34-page list includes:

• a user's manual explaining how the list was built and how to use it

• the 169 phrasal verbs ranked by frequency, with asterisks marking conference-specific items

• context-specific definitions with typical collocates. For example, set up is defined as "establish, create, or arrange something (commissions, procedures, priorities, objectives, guidelines, etc.)"

• the frequency percentage of each meaning

• authentic, unsimplified example sentences taken directly from European Parliament plenary speeches and interpretations

A sample entry:

88. COME DOWN

1. Move from a higher location to a lower one (often fig.) (33.3%)

We are pleased to see these borders come down.

2. (+ to) Reduce itself to one particular thing that is the most important or essential matter (33.3%)

But we do need more money. I think it comes down to that.

3. (Idiom: When it comes (down) to the crunch) When a situation becomes extremely serious and a decision must be made (11.1%)

We say that for ten years and then suddenly we go back on our word when it comes down to the crunch.

4. (+ against) Decide or say in an official or public way that one opposes SB/STH (11.1%)

It must come down heavily against the legality of this particular barrier.

5. (+ on) Punish or criticise SB/STH very strongly (11.1%)

The authorities are coming down on independent media.

How can trainers and trainees use the list?

• For comprehension: sight translate each example sentence into your mother tongue, making sure the nuance of each listed meaning comes through.

• For production: group phrasal verbs by function so they are easier to remember. For example: 

o to make proposals: put forward, bring forward, come forward, bring in, put in, put up

o to explain in detail: flesh out, set out, lay out, put down

o to establish something: set up, lay down, set down

o to wrap up a speech: sum up, wind up

• For prioritising: start with the items marked with asterisks, because they behave differently in conference English than in general English.

The list is designed for conference interpreter trainers and trainees working with English as a B or C language. It is also useful for teachers of English for Specific Purposes and for researchers in corpus linguistics.

What are the limitations?

• The list is based purely on frequency. It does not rank items by how transparent or difficult their meanings are.

• European Parliament debates are politically oriented, so the list may not fully cover conferences on finance, technology or other fields.

• As Garnier and Schmitt (2015) put it, such a list "should be seen as a starting point for instruction and learning, not the end-point."

Free resources

• Download the EP-CE PHaVE List (free, Word, 34 pages): [https://www.tandfonline.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1080%2F1750399X.2023.2183452&file=ritt_a_2183452_sm2764.docx]

• Read the full article: a limited number of free e-prints (50 copies) are available: [https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/NZN66SARPVHRMWKWR4B7/full?target=10.1080/1750399X.2023.2183452]

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2023.2183452 

Frequently asked questions

What is the EP-CE PHaVE List?

The European Parliament Conference English Phrasal Verb Pedagogical List (EP-CE PHaVE List) is a free, corpus-based list of the 169 most frequent phrasal verbs in European Parliament conference English, with their key meanings, meaning frequencies and authentic examples. It was compiled by Yinyin Wu (2023).

How many phrasal verbs should a conference interpreter learn first?

According to Wu (2023), the 169 most frequent phrasal verbs cover 87.07% of all phrasal verb occurrences in European Parliament plenary English. They are an efficient, data-driven starting point.

What are the most common phrasal verbs in European Parliament speeches?

The top five are carry out, set up, go on, point out and put forward.

How often do phrasal verbs occur in conference English?

About once every 200 words in European Parliament plenary English, the same ratio as in general British English.

How is the EP-CE PHaVE List different from the PHaVE List by Garnier and Schmitt (2015)?

The PHaVE List covers general English. On the EP-CE PHaVE List, 46.2% of the phrasal verbs do not appear on the PHaVE List at all, and another 18.3% have a different primary meaning in conference English.

Is the list free?

Yes. The 34-page list can be downloaded free of charge as the supplemental material of the article in The Interpreter and Translator Trainer.

How to cite

Wu, Y. (2023). Phrasal verbs in European Parliament conference English: A corpus-based pedagogical list. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 17(2), 301–318. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2023.2183452 

The Interpreter and Translator Trainer is indexed in A&HCI and SSCI. It ranked 19th of 203 (top 9%) by five-year Impact Factor in the 2023 JCR "Language & Linguistics" category.

About the author: Yinyin Wu teaches at the Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation, National Taiwan University, Taiwan. This is the first post in the Conference English series, which moves from two-word phrasal verbs to longer word sequences and the rhetorical structure of whole speeches.

 

口譯教室裡的劇場課：In sync with the speaker

上週「聲音與肢體開發工作坊」的最後二十分鐘，鄭傑文老師請大家圍坐成一圈，分享今天上完課的心情。「很久沒有這麼開心了」、「笑個不停」、「尷尬」、「後悔」、「原本只會用一種方式唱歌，現在才發現聲音可以有前有後，這麼多元」、「本來聲音發不太出來，但是搭配肢體活動後，聲音就放出來了」……。

其中一位同學的分享讓我印象深刻：「這種場合我通常特別容易感到疲累，但旁邊兩位同學太有活力了，我感受到他們的能量，也跟著 high 了起來！」

在口譯課堂上，我經常提醒學生要 in sync with the speaker，要跟講者心靈相通、融為一體，想像自己就是講者。我會挑選特別精彩的段落，讓學生練習記住內容的同時，還要抓住講者的肢體語言、聲音表情，但又不能模仿得太誇張、太刻意。

但，in sync with the speaker 不只用在講者說得繪聲繪影的時候。

以前一整天的講座，我口譯到傍晚四、五點時，通常會感受到聽眾的浮躁，講者也往往會速速帶過原本準備的內容，以便留點時間讓聽眾提問。這時，我也會翻得比早上更為俐落，盡量不拖延到時間。

但是在逐步口譯課堂上，當影片中的講者輕輕說一句：“I think I’m running out of time”，然後速速帶過幾張投影片時，學生不見得能感受到講者的心急，反而繼續在次要的細節裡繞圈圈。

在課堂上，有些同學就算能抬起頭來看著聽眾說話，也不見得有在「感知」現場的氛圍，或是散發出真正的溝通意願，我形容為「在自己的泡泡裡口譯」。

在教室這種空間裡，「感知現場氛圍」與「散發溝通意願」往往是最難言傳的。多多觀摩前輩實戰、親自上場口譯，甚至參加劇場訓練，透過這些多元刺激，或許能慢慢補足這塊拼圖。

這次的「聲音與肢體開發工作坊」，讓同學暫時不用語言來溝通，而是用心、用全身的感官去感知同學的能量，進而順著場域的氛圍流動。這，就是活在當下。

逐步口譯時，如果口譯員只顧著全神貫注翻出筆記上的內容，卻沒有撥出5-10%的注意力，去感知講者、聽眾和整個空間的氛圍而隨之調整，現場就會產生一種違和感，使得講者與聽眾之間多了一層距離。

聲音與肢體開發工作坊2026

＠台大翻譯碩士學位學程

口譯教室裡的劇場課：用「玩」的心態，把聲音放出來

大三時參加台大外文系畢業公演，排練了半年，最後一週才有機會進場彩排。外教中心的小劇場說大不大，說小不小。當時經費不足，沒辦法讓演員每人一台mini麥，而是在舞台前緣放置幾支麥克風隔空收音。

彩排時，導演鄭傑文刻意坐在最遠的角落，要我們不只是咬字清晰（字尾音t, d, b, m, n尤其要清楚），聲音還要傳送到最後一排觀眾。那是我第一次聽到voice projection的概念。

十位演員裡，有些人天生嗓門大，有些人天生音質清亮，似乎不怎麼費力，聲音就能穿透到對面的牆壁。我不是，只能用蠻力把聲音放大。第一天演完，整個嗓子都啞了，喉嚨痛到不行，第二天應該是靠著腎上腺素麻痹痛感撐過去的。

畢業公演有很多遺憾。為了不活在悔恨中，只能把遺憾化作動力繼續學習。於是大四時去戲劇系修楊汗如老師的崑曲課，寒假時參加溫宇航老師的崑曲營。後來還去北藝大修魏海敏老師的京劇課、參加救國團的京劇營、參加百老匯音樂劇演員來台開設的音樂劇工作坊。

崑曲京劇的吊嗓子、音樂劇伴隨鋼琴的暖聲練習，在課程結束後頂多維持一個月，然後就從生活中消失了。生活中總是有更重要的事情要處理，就連跟著網路影片按部就班暖聲練習十分鐘都擠不出來。

也許無法融入生活的關鍵，就在於我以為要按部就班。只要是正經八百的事，就會有很多藉口不想做。

傑文的聲音開發工作坊是用玩的。我驚奇的是，同學在玩了一個半小時後，聲音真的變得不一樣了！

下半生，不管做什麼事情，心情上都要用玩的！

謝謝傑文帶領我們把聲音放出來！

聲音與肢體開發工作坊 2025

＠台大翻譯碩士學位學程

一行禪師首部電影《正念的奇蹟》，即將於9月1日在台灣上映。

託學姊的福，

去台北光點看了「正念的奇蹟」，

真是視覺和聽覺的饗宴！

Benedict Cumberbatch 的英國腔實在太帥了，

跟他演福爾摩斯的感覺很不一樣，禪味十足！ 

預告片裡一位女眾法師說：

“A smile can be a beautiful sound/微笑也可以是美麗的聲音”
原來是有學員問她：妳會怎麼定義神聖的聲音？

看到這個回答，我不禁微笑了起來：

對啊，為什麼聲音一定要用耳朵聽，不能用眼睛看，或心領神會？ 

片中還有很多例子都讓我覺得自我設限的認知層層打破

比如預告片裡小女孩問：我狗狗死了，我很難過，怎麼辦？

一行禪師回答：這就像你在看天上的雲，有一朵你特別喜歡，

結果風一吹來，那朵雲就不見了，

你很傷心，但雲其實是化作雨水

你在喝手中的那杯茶時

就看到了那朵可愛的雲 

這麼簡單的譬喻就打破了生死、生滅的界線

而這個界線也是人自己劃出來的 

9/1上映

大推！