An Experimental Report On Filled Pauses In English-Chinese Consecutive Interpreting

Fluency is one of the most important criteria in interpreting quality assessment,disfluencies including pause,repetition and replacement are core indicators of interpreting fluency.However,as one kind of disfluencies,filled pauses hamper the fluency of interpreting significantly.They not only stand in the way of the effective transmission of source language,but also are obstacles for the audience’s understanding of the source information.In recent years,a large number of studies on non-fluency in oral activities and interpretations appear at home and abroad,but rather few studies on filled pauses in consecutive interpreting independently have been witnessed as well as studies on the main types of filled pauses and reasons for filled pause.This experimental report takes the filled pause as a major concern and classifies filled pauses into different types based on different stages of Willem Levelt’s language production model,drawing on the system of pause types proposed by several scholars based on the reasons.With twenty first grade MTI（Master of Translation and Interpreting）students from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（UESTC）as subjects and two CATTI level three interpreting model test texts as materials,this report collects and analyzes filled pauses appeared in the experiment to explore following questions: 1)Which types of filled pauses are mainly produced in E-C consecutive interpreting by MTI students? 2)What are the reasons for these types of filled pause? 3)What kinds of strategies can be taken to reduce main types of filled pauses?After the transcribing,labeling,and analysis of the collected audio recordings,as well as the review of questionnaire surveys and recalled interviews,it is found out that: 1)Filled pauses produced in the process of conceptualization and formulation and those appear in interpreting reproduction are the most frequently occurred types in E-C consecutive interpreting.Filled pauses caused by interpreting strategies seldom appear in consecutive interpreting,and filled pauses caused by physical and psychological factors rarely occur.2)The leading reasons for filled pauses in conceptualization and formulation are the lack of note taking skills,the weak short-term memory,the limited ability of language organization and the difficulty in extracting expression.In the reproduction,the insufficient self-monitoring and the inappropriate interpreting strategies adoption cause filled pauses.3)The coping strategies are:（1）In the conceptualization and formulation: the improvement of note-taking skills,the practice of listening of long and complicated sentences,retelling and public speaking.（2）In the reproduction: the strengthening of selfmonitoring,the appropriate adoption of interpreting strategies.This report explores the main types of filled pauses in E-C consecutive interpreting and puts forward corresponding causes and countermeasures,which brings pedagogical recommendations and training suggestions to MTI students and provides empirical support for studies on filled pauses in E-C consecutive interpreting.