A Comparative Study Of Interpreter’s Paralanguage In C-E Consecutive Interpretation

Paralanguage is a natural byproduct in the process of speech- making, and interpreters work with the speeches they make; thus, paralanguage will inevitably exert influence on interpreters’ performance. However, by far, most researchers interested in interpreting studies put their focus on linguistic information provided by interpreters and ignore paralinguistic information intentionally or unintentionally. Likewise, in interpreter training, proper use of paralanguage has never drawn enough attention from teachers, who might just mention little about it in the whole training process.Different work settings for interpreting have their own characteristics, and impose different requirements on interpreters working in these situations. This thesis aims to find out the differences of interpreter ’s paralanguage in voice qualities and vocal segregates in C-E consecutive interpretation through a descriptive comparative study of government press conference interpretation and international business negotiation interpretation, so as to bring paralanguage to the forefront of interpreters’ attention. In this way, interpreters can draw on the conclusions of this thesis to improve their output by adjusting their paralanguage. First, the author reviews previous researches on paralanguage and interpretation, government press conference interpretation and international business negotiation interpretation, so as to fully understand theories related to these areas and to lay a solid foundation for the next step. In the next part of theoretical framework, working definitions of relevant terms are offered based on the objective of this thesis, and classification of paralanguage and the importance of the study of paralanguage in interpreting are explored. The analytical framework and research methodology are explicated. In chapter four, a comparative study is carried out to compare the differences of interpreter ’s paralanguage in government press conference and internationa l business negotiation, and potential causes for these differences and targeted suggestions are given based on these discussions. By doing so, this thesis draws the following conclusions: there are apparent differences between interpreter ’s paralanguage in these two settings in terms of speech rate, sentence stress, unfilled pauses and filled pauses, which do impact interpreters’ performance and audiences’ evaluation of their work; besides differences in voice qualities that are mainly attributable to physical differences of the interpreters, differences in speech rate, sentence stress, unfilled pauses and filled pauses are related to the different characteristics of these two settings in participants, influence, source speech, level of interaction and requirements on interpreters and the differences in interpreters’ qualification, experience, and preparation beforehand.The implications of these differences are that interpreters shall adjust their speech rate according to different characteristics of settings, transmit sentence stress in the source speech accordingly and avoid unfilled pauses and filled pauses that do not coincide with syntactic structures. This thesis might help researchers recognize the role of other important paralinguistic elements in interpreting other than pauses; it might also help both teachers and student interpreters and professional interpreters to make further improvement in their practice and work.